WEAKNESS

No One knows him better than I do.

The Extreme Lengths to which Our Boy has gone to Make Himself Strong are powerful indicators of The Weakness he feels that he must overcome.

That Weakness is still there, inside.

-- Hurt.

Doctor Simon, Hurt.

He's Daddy's Evil Twin -- 

And Your Own.

 

"Samson’s Hair. 

Achilles’ Heel. 

The oddly elaborate gymnastic contortions that exposed the vulnerable spots of Celtic superwarriors. 

Even the greatest heroes needed a weakness, 

or there would be no drama, no fall or redemption.

  If nothing could hurt Superman, 

what could hurt him?

  In fact, Weisinger and his writers understood 

The Most Important Thing

about Superman: 

That His Heart 

was vulnerable, 

and 

His Self-Esteem 

could be fragile. 

The Super was just 

The Icing on The Cake, 

The sugar coating : 

These were stories about 

Man and His Role 

in A New World.

  But now that The Man of Tomorrow had achieved near-divine heights of omnipotence, The Need for some kind of convincing Physical Vulnerability was becoming greater. 

Or so goes the prevailing opinion. 

The glowing green killer mineral Kryptonite had been introduced in the 1943 Superman radio series. 

The contaminated remains of Superman’s Home Planet fell to Earth in meteor form—much more often than the debris of A Distant World might reasonably be expected to fall, and in sufficient quantities to threaten Superman’s Life on a regular basis. 

As a weapon, it had a certain symbolic resonance: 

The notion that radioactive fragments 

of Superman’s Birth World 

had become toxic to him 

spoke of The Old Country, 

The Old Ways, 

The Threat of The Failure 

to Assimilate.

 

Superman was a 

naturalised American. 

The last thing he needed 

were these lethal reminders of 

Where He’d Come From; 

That he, The Son of Lordly Scientists, 

had been reduced to 

Toiling in a farmer’s field or 

Minding the general store.

  Weisinger knew how his young readers’ minds worked 

and stretched the idea a little further: 

If there was Green Kryptonite, 

couldn’t there be other colors too? 

The prismatic splintering began 

with the invention of Red K, 

The Cool Kryptonite --

Possibly because it made literal 

The Master Silver Age Theme 

of Bodily Transformation. 

It was mineral LSD for Superman, 

affecting not just His Mind 

but also reshaping His Body 

into A Playground of Fleshly Hallucination.

  No two trips on Red K 

were the same, in-story 

logic promised. 

Red K would affect Superman 

in a different way every time 

and theoretically might never become boring. 

So, under its influence, Superman might develop 

The Head of An Ant, scaling The Daily Planet building as 

The Commander of a Nightmarish Army of 

Giant Insects —

“BZZ-BZZZ … 

WE MUST CAPTURE LOIS LANE … 

SHE WILL BE OUR QUEEN!”

— or split into Good Clark, Bad Superman, 

or even become goofy for forty-eight hours.

  Red K and The Silver Age are inextricable. 

Red K was LSD for superheroes, and under its influence 

Superman could unclench 

his entire being and 

Walk The Razor’s Edge 

of Joyous Self-Abandonment 

and Ego-Annihilating Terror — 

An American Pioneer.

Red-K served equally as a handy metaphor 

for the adolescent hormonal shifts, physical changes, 

and weird moods of elation and despair 

that were being experienced by its readers.

  Other Kryptonite variants were created 

as plot mechanics demanded 

rather than with any eye to longevity. 

That’s Why --

Gold Kryptonite 

removes Superman’s Powers permanently, 

Blue Kryptonite 

affects only Bizarros, 

and 

White Kryptonite 

is deadly to plants, 

which makes it about as interesting 

as matches, DDT, or a stout spade.

But, of course, 

Superman’s Ultimate Weakness 

was his Secret identity. 

Why wouldn’t shy Clark Kent 

choose to tear open his shirt 

and reveal to his unrequited love 

The Potent God-Man behind the buttons? 

Instead he hid The Truth from Lois Lane, 

devising deceptions that became so elaborate as to be cruel : 

The Ghastly Tricks of Semantics 

a Man-Boy might play on a Child-Woman, 

all in the guise of 

“Teaching Her a Lesson.”

  A story like “The Two Faces of Superman” showed the hero promising to marry Lois Lane but only if she met him at a particular time outside the church. 

When she met his conditions, 

he contrived to seal her car door with his heat vision so that she couldn’t get out. 

Unable to marry him at precisely the correct hour meant that Lois forfeited her chance. 

A relieved, chortling Superman took to the skies, having hoodwinked the predator once more.

  Like Rumpelstiltskin, Tom Tit Tot, and the other creatures of folklore who knew that 

names held power 

and kept theirs secret, 

Superman maintained his distance 

from Clark and vice versa. 

Their paths rarely crossed. 

He hid His Heart in a plain suit, 

behind glasses. 

For Lois, A Girl, to know Who He Was would be The End. 

She’d only pressure him into exchanging his gaudy suit and life of adventure for something less embarrassing, more domestic. 

She would expect him to be home for dinner, when there were stricken ocean liners to rescue. 

In the end, his self-deceiving fantasies of one day carrying Lois up the aisle were just that, and if he married Lois, he’d be Clark forever. 

It wouldn’t matter how strong or fast he was, he’d be Clark racing around the globe to pick up groceries. "

....or making soufflés with his heat-vison

"I never drink when I fly."

** TAKES A DRINK **

** LOSES THE ABILITY TO FLY **