Dan Liebke’s Astonishing Tales

We open with Lois and Superlad wandering through the dam, trying to unravel what the hell happened last episode. Superlad decides this is the perfect time for him to reveal that he’s leaving Smallville.

“I thought that was Rosenbaum?” says Lois.

“No,” says Superlad. “Not leaving the show -” (he curses his agent’s drunken contract negotiations) “- leaving the town of Smallville.”

“Oh,” says Lois. “But what about the farm?”

While Superlad drones on about neighbouring farmers agreeing to tend to the Kent creamed corn crops, Lois is distracted by a spaceship in the bushes.

“Whoa,” she says. “Awesome.”

“It’s probably just a, um, home-made gyrocopter,” says Superlad. “Or some kind of bat.”

But Lois won’t listen to Superlad’s lies and is therefore repelled by a spaceship force field that knocks her out. The blonde hottie who saved Sinead last episode shows up and she and Superlad go at it until the opening credits rescue us from their pointless biffo.

After the credits, Lois and Superlad return to TIAC’s apartment.

“We just saw a spaceship,” says Lois.

“Probably just a bat,” says TIAC. “Or some kind of home-made gyrocopter.” And she gives a streetwise thumbs-up to Superlad, who misinterprets it as a come-on.

“I know what I saw,” says Lois. “Once I change out of these muddy clothes, I’m going to write the best article on spaceships my editor’s ever seen.”

Lois writes her articles in the nude now?

She runs off. Superlad turns to TIAC. “Lois writes her articles in the nude now?” Hmmm… Maybe there’s something to this journalism caper. He twists his non-existent moustache in thought.

But TIAC doesn’t have time to pander to Superlad’s invisible facial hair fondling. Not this week. She demands to know more about the spaceship. Superlad fills her in on that and also the super-blonde hottie.

“Oh, for freak’s sake,” says TIAC. Bad enough with all the brunettes out-hotting her, stealing all the decent men and leaving her with Jimmy-James Olsen. Now she’s got another blonde to compete with?

“And she can fly!” says Superlad.

TIAC mutters some more.

Over to the Smallville prisons and Sinead strides back and forth in his cell, looking radiant in his orange prison garb. His lawyer comes in.

“You’re free,” he says. “Somebody else confessed to ‘killing’ Lana.”

“Who?” says Sinead, getting to the crux of the issue as always.

“A disgruntled employee who is dying of, whatchacallit, cancer,” says the lawyer. “Now come on, let’s get out of here. I’ll buy you a porterhouse.”

“My porters don’t need houses,” says Sinead. “They’re perfectly happy living in the tents the other side of the septic tank.” He furrows his bald brow in thought. Or are they? Perhaps this is the disgruntlement of which his lawyer speaks…

But there’s no time to ponder his servants’ housing crisis any further. He has a scene with TIAC. He freshens up and heads off to it.

“So you’re free,” says TIAC. “How did you elude justice this time?”

“Before Porthos disappeared, I think he paid off some dying man to confess to Lana’s ‘murder’.”

“‘Murder’?” says TIAC, who can hear inverted commas if she listens closely enough.

“I don’t think Lana’s dead,” says Sinead. “I mean, come on. This is Lana we’re talking about. She never stays dead. It’s part of her, whatchacallit, charm.”

TIAC raises her eyebrows at that. “But this time they found bits of her splattered all over Main Street. Her remains passed both a DNA test and the Pepsi challenge!”

“You stupid, silly naive little girl,” says Sinead. “Look, TIAC. You’re Lana’s best friend. If she told anybody about her plan, it would be you.”

“I’m her best friend?” says TIAC. It surprises her every time.

Back to the dam for Superlad, where he discovers the spaceship is gone and a couple of park rangers are dead. He heads straight back to The Daily Planet to tell TIAC.

TIAC has only just made it back there from the previous scene and is trying to get some work done. But, no. She sighs and picks up the script. “According to this, your Super Blonde Hottie has been running around preschools, frightening the kiddies and baring her midriff with abandon.”

And, indeed, this is true. For we cut to Super Blonde Hottie, midriff unencumbered by cloth, picking up a small boy out of the urine-flecked sand pit and asking him his name.

“Rumer,” says the kid. SBH wrinkles her nose and drops him back down.

She turns to grab another one, but Superlad shows up and stops her. He grabs her and drags her someplace private at superspeed.

“Humans can’t run that fast,” says SBH.

“Well, I can,” says Superlad. “I’m the fastest there is.” He sees no need to muddy the moment by mentioning the Flash kiddie.

“Yeah?” says SBH. “Well, I can fly.” And she goes to fly off. Superlad grabs her legs and pulls her back down.

“Let’s chat about your navel,” he says. He shakes his head. “Ha ha ha! I mean, Kryptonian heritage. Let’s chat about that.”

“I don’t have time,” says SBH. “I’m looking for a small boy. His name is Kal-El.”

“Have you tried Nicolas Cage’s house?” says Superlad.

Over at the Daily Planet, TIAC’s attempts to get work done have been scuppered by the arrival of Lois, who still wants to totally write the story about the spaceship. TIAC thinks it’s a stupid idea.

But you know who doesn’t think it’s a stupid idea? The Daily Planet’s new editor. Now that Princess Leia and the Rebels have left the Daily Planet behind, he wants to restore it to the great newspaper it once was. And he sees spaceships as the key.

“All the best newspapers have built their empire on spaceship stories,” he claims. “Now, Snorkers–”

“Lois.”

“Whatever. You write me a kick-ass spaceship story and I’ll hire you to work here with your cousin who, frankly, is nowhere near as hot as you.”

“Gotcha.”

Back to the Kent Farm. That Nicolas Cage lead didn’t work out (kid bruised far too easily for a Kryptonian), but Superlad has just remembered he also sometimes goes by the name ‘Kal-El’.

“You can’t be the one I’m looking for, though,” says SBH. “The Kal-El I’m looking for is a sweet, chubby baby who laughs when you tickle his feet.”

Superlad whips the shoes and socks off. A few tickle-enduced giggle fits later and his identity is confirmed.

“But I left Krypton straight after you,” says SBH. “How come you’re so much older and ripped now?”

“You must have landed in the Smallville dam,” says Superlad. “The water must have put you in suspended animation for eighteen years.”

SBH looks stunned. Neither of them question the fact that water tends to not so much induce suspended animation as, y’know, make your skin wrinkly. “Well, Zor-El clearly never allowed for such a ludicrous plot point,” she says.

“Zor-El?” says Superlad.

“Jor-El’s brother,” says SBH. “We’re cousins.”

Superlad’s enormous erection seems very out of place

And, suddenly, Superlad’s enormous erection seems very out of place. He changes the subject by mentioning that Krypton exploded.

“Exploded?” says SBH. “Like that Lana chick everybody’s going on about?”

“Yes,” says Superlad. “Except Krypton’s not coming back. You and I are the only survivors. So we may have to breed, despite the cousin thing…”

“But wouldn’t our children be morons?”

“Smoking hot morons.”

But SBH has no time to deal with that. She’s decided to mention the fact that if anybody other than her tries to open her spaceship, it will self-destruct.

“In what way?” says Superlad.

“I believe your President would call it… a nukular explosion.”

So those two spend the rest of the episode trying to track down the spaceship, while some damn fool scientists try to open it. Superlad and SBH ask TIAC for help, but she’s got nothing. (SBH: “She’s useless - just a human.” Superlad: “She’s a human that’s smarter than the two of us put together.” TIAC mumbles that a small cocker spaniel is smarter than those two put together.)

Eventually, with the aid of some ad hoc superhearing training, SBH tracks down the exploding spaceship and smothers the explosion with her super-midriff. The spaceship disappears, stranding SBH on the show. “Don’t sweat it,” says Superlad. “We’ve already got a slot for you on the opening credits.” There’s some nonsense about a lost crystal, but let’s not get bogged down in that just yet.

Lois, of course, gets embroiled in the exploding spaceship thing. Because she is - how you say? - stupid, she tries to touch the spaceship (again) and is knocked out (again) by the force field. She writes up the story, and despite it being riddled with spelling errors and containing a few paragraphs of half-written Supernatural fan-fic in the middle, the new editor of the Daily Planet loves it. He can’t, however, publish it. “No photo,” he says. “But what the hell, let’s hire you anyway to pretty up the place.” He points to TIAC. “You… shove over a bit.”

And Sinead obviously tracks down Lana in China. He flies over (in a plane - let’s not go crazy with the SFX) to confront her, explaining to the audience how she’s still alive this time (some gibberish about blowing up a clone of Lana instead of the real one). He promises that if Lana comes back to him, he’ll never do anything mean to her ever again. “Hell, I’m off this show in twenty episodes anyway,” he says. He pulls out a calendar and crosses off another date with a huge black marker.

And that’s that. Superlad heads up to the North Pole to check with the SS Jor-EL that SBH really is his cousin. The SS Jor-El confirms that, alas, it is so. But that he should also keep an eye on her (and her midriff), just in case she’s trouble. “You got it,” says Superlad, beaming like a buffoon. “Now, what about my training?”

“Training?” says the SS Jor-El. “Oh… yes… uh. Right. Um. Watching your cousin’s midriff. That shall be your training.” He pauses. “Um, yes. That’ll do.”

Next Week: Superlad trains harder than he ever has before.

Discuss this episode at KryptonSite

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