Superman Returns my next worry: if enigma2k is for real... :(

superfever · Apr 23, 2005

my next worry: if enigma2k is for real, then superman is the kid's father and the kid has telekinetic power. it sounds totally BS, insane and impossible. but he did say that...

bosef982 · Apr 23, 2005

Who is enigma2k? Why should I care what he said? What has he said that has given us any validity in what he's said past what I think when anyone else SPECULATES?

superfever · Apr 23, 2005

he was the first one give us the description of superman suit. all is head on. because he said it in a very negative tone, we dish him and bash him right away. and then, batgirl came and give us the almost exact description but in a very positive tone. we welcome her with big arms.

scifiwolf · Apr 23, 2005

If Superman was gone for 6 years, and the kid is 4-5 years old, how could he be Supermans? Unless Kryptonian sperm is really slow, but I'd think it'd be supersperm.

Lord Blackbolt · Apr 23, 2005

they changed it to 4 years

superfever · Apr 23, 2005

the timing is perfect.

not to kicking the death horse again... but this enigma2k... he seems isn't lying now.

Captain Villa · Apr 23, 2005

bosef982 said:

Who is enigma2k? Why should I care what he said? What has he said that has given us any validity in what he's said past
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We called him a liar when he gave us a desctription of a suit we all hated, inch by inch.

That description is spot on to what was released yesterday.

I apologise for not believing him. He seems real.

superfever · Apr 23, 2005

but later he talked about the superkid and his power. this was totally insane. how could we take him seriously.

The Guard · Apr 23, 2005

Enigma's description wasn't spot on, and there were others before him that described the suit in more detail.

Desk · Apr 23, 2005

I'm very inclined to believe that the boy will be revealed as Superman's.

It just seems too coincidental that Superman is gone from Earth for between 4-6 years, and in the scenes where he has returned Lois is holding a boy who could, ahem, "conceivably," be his.

It also ties into Singer's reports that the new film will follow the second film, which saw a mortal Supes consummate his relationship with Lois.

The Batman · Apr 23, 2005

I'm starting to think enigma is right...

his description of the suit sounded awful...and the suit is awful. he said everyone would hate the suit...and guess what? Pretty much everyone hates the suit....

CConn · Apr 23, 2005

scifiwolf said:

If Superman was gone for 6 years, and the kid is 4-5 years old, how could he be Supermans? Unless Kryptonian sperm is really slow, but I'd think it'd be supersperm.
Click to expand...

Actually, if the boy is indeed 5 (and 3 months to be exact) the timeline would fit perfectly: 5 years and 3 months + 9 months = 6 years.

Captain Villa · Apr 23, 2005

The Batman said:

I'm starting to think enigma is right...

his description of the suit sounded awful...and the suit is awful. he said everyone would hate the suit...and guess what? Pretty much everyone hates the suit....
Click to expand...

SupesAffiliate · Apr 23, 2005

And then at the end the kid will evolve beyond anything humanly imaginable and leave Earth to explore the infinate cosmos with his super brain powers.

The Guard · Apr 23, 2005

Dr. Manhattan?

scifiwolf · Apr 23, 2005

CConn said:

Actually, if the boy is indeed 5 (and 3 months to be exact) the timeline would fit perfectly: 5 years and 3 months + 9 months = 6 years.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I already did that math and came to that conclusion. I was just being funny, but I think the humor turned out kinda lame. It's the dreary weather outside. It's throwin me off. Seriously, it's freakin snowing!

Alexander · Apr 23, 2005

Pish posh. The only way for Supes to bang Lois would be with a Kriptonite condom, and that would kill him. Haven´t you ever read Larry Niven´s "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex'? It´s online somewhere!

Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex
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By Larry Niven*

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Things of the form (*text*) are footnotes in the original text.

He's faster than a speeding bullet. He's more powerful than a locomotive. He's able to leap tall buildings at a single bound. Why can't he get a girl?

At the ripe old age of thirty-one (*Superman first appeared in Action Comics, June 1938*), Kal-El (alias Superman, alias Clark Kent) is still unmarried. Almost certainly he is still a virgin. This is a serious matter. The species itself is in danger!

An unwed Superman is a mobile Superman. Thus it has been alleged that those who chronicle the Man of Steel's adventures are responsible for his condition. But the cartoonists are not to blame.

Nor is Superman handicapped by psychological problems.

Granted that the poor oaf is not entirely sane. How could he be? He is an orphan, a refugee, and an alien. His homeland no longer exists in any form, save for gigatons upon gigatons of dangerous, prettily colored rocks.

As a child and young adult, Kal-El must have been hard put to find an adequate father-figure. What human could control his antisocial behavior? What human would dare try to punish him? His actual, highly social behavior during this period indicates an inhuman self-restraint.

What wonder if Superman drifted gradually into schizophrenia? Torn between his human and kryptonian identities, he chose to be both, keeping his split personalities rigidly separate. A psychotic desperation is evident in his defense of his "secret identity."

But Superman's sex problems are strictly physiological, and quite real.

The purpose of this article is to point out some medical drawbacks to being a kryptonian among human beings, and to suggest possible solutions. The kryptonian humanoid must not be allowed to go the way of the pterodactyl and the passenger pigeon.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I
What turns on a kryptonian?

Superman is an alien, an extraterrestrial. His humanoid frame is doubtless the result of parallel evolution, as the marsupials of Australia resemble their mammalian counterparts. A specific niche in the ecology calls for a certain shape, a certain size, certain capabilities, certain eating habits.

Be not deceived by appearances. Superman is no relative to homo sapiens.

What arouses Kal-El's mating urge? Did kryptonian women carry some subtle mating cue at appropriate times of the year? Whatever it is, Lois Lane probably didn't have it. We may speculate that she smells wrong, less like a kryptonian woman than like a terrestrial monkey. A mating between Superman and Lois Lane would feel like sodomy-and would be, of course, by church and common law.

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II
Assume a mating between Superman and a human woman designated LL for convenience.

Either Superman has gone completely schizo and believes himself to be Clark Kent; or he knows what he's doing, but no longer gives a damn. Thirty-one years is a long time. For Superman it has been even longer. He has X-ray vision; he knows just what he's missing. (*One should not think of Superman as a Peeping Tom. A biological ability must be used. As a child Superman may never have known that things had surfaces, until he learned to suppress his X-ray vision. If millions of people tend shamelessly to wear clothing with no lead in the weave, that is hardly Superman's fault.*)

The problem is this. Electroencephalograms taken of men and women during sexual intercourse show that orgasm resembles "a kind of pleasurable epileptic attack." One loses control over one's muscles.

Superman has been known to leave his fingerprints in steel and in hardened concrete, accidentally. What would he to to the woman in his arms during what amounts to an epileptic fit?

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III
Consider the driving urge between a man and a woman, the monomaniacal urge to achieve greater and greater penetration. Remember also that we are dealing with kryptonian muscles.

Superman would literally crush LL's body in his arms, while simultaneously ripping her open from crotch to sternum, gutting her like a trout.

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IV
Lastly, he'd blow off the top of her head.

Ejaculation of semen is entirely involuntary in the human male, and in all other forms of terrestrial life. It would be unreasonable to assume otherwise for a kryptonian. But with kryptonian muscles behind it, Kal-El's semen would emerge with the muzzle velocity of a machine gun bullet. (*One can imagine that the Kent home in Smallville was riddled with holes during Superboy's puberty. And why did Lana Lang never notice that?*)

In view of the foregoing, normal sex is impossible between LL and Superman.

Artificial insemination may give us better results.

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V
First we must collect the semen. The globules will emerge at transsonic speeds. Superman must first ejaculate, then fly frantically after the stuff to catch it in a test tube. We assume that he is on the Moon, both for privacy and to prevent the semen from exploding into vapor on hitting the air at such speeds.

He can catch the semen, of course, before it evaporates in vacuum. He's faster than a speeding bullet.

But can he keep it?

All known forms of kryptonian life have superpowers. The same must hold true of living kryptonian sperm. We may reasonably assume that kryptonian sperm are vulnerable only to starvation and to green kryptonite; that they can travel with equal ease through water, air, vacuum, glass, brick, boiling steel, solid steel, liquid helium, or the core of a star; and that they are capable of translight velocities.

What kind of a test tube will hold such beasties?

Kryptonian sperm and their unusual powers will give us further trouble. For the moment we will assume (because we must) that they tend to stay in the seminal fluid, which tends to stay in a simple glass tube. Thus Superman and LL can perform artificial insemination.

At least there will be another generation of kryptonians.

Or will there?

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VI
A ripened but unfertilized egg leaves LL's ovary, begins its voyage down her Fallopian tube.

Some time later, tens of millions of sperm, released from a test tube, begin their own voyage up LL's Fallopian tube.

The magic moment approaches...

Can human breed with kryptonian? Do we even use the same genetic code? On the face of it, LL could more easily breed with an ear of corn than with Kal-El. But coincidence does happen. If the genes match...

One sperm arrives before the others. It penetrates the egg, forms a lump on it's surface, the cell wall now thickens to prevent other sperm From entering. Within the now-fertilized egg, changes take place...

And ten million kryptonian sperm arrive slightly late.

Were they human sperm, they would be out of luck. But these tiny blind things are more powerful than a locomotive. A thickened cell wall won't stop them. They will *all* enter the egg, obliterating it entirely in an orgy of microscopic gang rape. So much for artificial insemination.

But LL's problems are just beginning.

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VII
Within her body there are still tens of millions of frustrated kryptonian sperm. The single egg is now too diffuse to be a target. The sperm scatter.

They scatter without regard to what is in their path. They leave curved channels, microscopically small. Presently all will have found their way to the open air.

That leaves LL with several million microscopic perforations all leading deep into her abdomen. Most of the channels will intersect one or more loops of intestine.

Peritonitis is inevitable. LL becomes desperately ill.

Meanwhile, tens of millions of sperm swarm in the air over Metropolis.

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VIII
This is more serious than it looks.

Consider: these sperm are virtually indestructible. Within days or weeks they will die for lack of nourishment. Meanwhile they cannot be affected by heat, cold, vacuum, toxins, or anything short of green kryptonite. (*And other forms of kryptonite. For instance, there are chunks of red kryptonite that make giants of kryptonians. Imagine ten million earthworm size spermatozoa swarming over a Metropolis beach, diving to fertilize the beach balls... but I digress.*) There they are, minuscule but dangerous; for each has supernormal powers.

Metropolis is shaken by tiny sonic booms. Wormholes, charred by meteoric heat, sprout magically in all kinds of things: plate glass, masonry, antique ceramics, electric mixers, wood, household pets, and citizens. Some of the sperm will crack lightspeed. The Metropolis night comes alive with a network of narrow, eerie blue lines of Cherenkov radiation.

And women whom Superman has never met find themselves in a delicate condition.

Consider: LL won't get pregnant because there were too many of the blind mindless beasts. But whenever one sperm approaches an unfertilized human egg in its panic flight, it will attack.

How close is close enough? A few centimeters? Are sperm attracted by chemical cues? It seems likely. Metropolis had a population of millions; and kryptonian sperm could travel a long and crooked path, billions of miles, before it gives up and dies.

Several thousand blessed events seem not unlikely. (*If the pubescent Superboy plays with himself, we have the same problem over Smallville.*)

Several thousand lawsuits would follow. Not that Superman can't afford to pay. There's a trick where you squeeze a lump of coal into its allotropic diamond form...

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IX
The above analysis gives us part of the answer. In our experiment in artificial insemination, we must use a single sperm. This presents no difficulty. Superman may use his microscopic vision and a pair of tiny tweezers to pluck a sperm from the swarm.

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X
In its eagerness the single sperm may crash through LL's abdomen at transsonic speeds, wreaking havoc. Is there any way to slow it down?

There is. We can expose it to gold kryptonite.

Gold kryptonite, we remember, robs a kryptonian of all of his supernormal powers, permanently. Were we to expose Superman himself to gold kryptonite, we would solve all his sex problems, but he would be Clark Kent forever. We may regard this solution as somewhat drastic.

But we can expose the test tube of seminal fluid to gold kryptonite, then use standard techniques for artificial insemination.

By any of these methods we can get LL pregnant, without killing her. Are we out of the woods yet?

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XI
Though exposed to gold kryptonite, the sperm still carries kryptonian genes. If these are recessive, then LL carries a developing human foetus. There will be no more Supermen; but at least we need not worry about the mother's health.

But if some or all of the kryptonian genes are dominant...

Can the infant use his X-ray vision before birth? After all, with such a power he can probably see through his own closed eyelids. That would leave LL sterile. If the kid starts using heat vision, things get even worse.

But when he starts to kick, it's all over. He will kick his way out into open air, killing himself and his mother.

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XII
Is there a solution?

There are several. Each has drawbacks.

We can make LL wear a kryptonite (*For our purposes, all forms of kryptonite are available in unlimited quantities. It has been estimated, form the startling tonnage of kryptonite fallen to Earth since the explosion of Krypton, that the planet must have outweighed our entire solar system. Doubtless the "planet" Krypton was a cooling black dwarf star, one of a binary pair, the other member being a red giant.*) belt around her waist. But too little kryptonite may allow the child to damage her, while too much may damage or kill the child. Intermediate amounts may do both! And there is no safe way to experiment.

A better solution is to find a host-mother.

We have not yet considered the existence of a Supergirl. (*She can't mate with Superman because she's his first cousin. And only a cad would suggest differently.*) She could carry the child without harm. But Supergirl has a secret identity, and her secret identity is no more married than Supergirl herself. If she turned up pregnant, she would probably be thrown out of school.

A better solution may be to implant the growing foetus in Superman himself. There are places in a man's abdomen where a foetus could draw adequate nourishment, growing as a parasite, and where it would not cause undue harm to surrounding organs. Presumably Clark Kent can take a leave of absence more easily than Supergirl's schoolgirl alter ego.

When the time comes, the child would be removed by Caesarian section. It would have to be removed early, but there would be no problem with incubators as long as it was fed. I leave the problem of cutting through Superman's invulnerable skin as an exercise for the alert reader.

The mind boggles at the image of a pregnant Superman cruising the skies of Metropolis. Batman would refuse to be seen with him' strange new jokes would circulate the prisons...and the race of Krypton would be safe at last.

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Reprinted from All the Myriad Ways © 1971 by Larry Niven.
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DavidTyler · Apr 23, 2005

Yes. I remember reading this a long time ago. In fact, If I ever get around to unpacking my books (My GF and I have been living together for 7 years and she has this aversion to me putting up shelves on the wall.), I think I have this.

bosef982 · Apr 23, 2005

Please refer to my latino review thread...it'll explain a bit I think.

bosef982 · Apr 23, 2005

I don't agree with some of the things you say Alexander, but damn, that was hilaroius!

Alexander · Apr 23, 2005

I didn´t said that. Kevin Smith and Larry Niven did, respectively. And yes, the idea was to be hilarious.

Ruthmarks · Apr 23, 2005

SupesAffiliate said:

And then at the end the kid will evolve beyond anything humanly imaginable and leave Earth to explore the infinate cosmos with his super brain powers.
Click to expand...

Doctor McCoy smiles. "Well, Superman ... it's been a long time since I delivered a baby. And I hope we gave this one a good start."

Cue Jerry Goldsmith theme.

Dum-da-da-DUM ...da-da-DUM!

Alexander · Apr 23, 2005

Brainiac: Luthor never told you what happened to your son.
Supes: He told me enough. He told me you killed him!
Brainiac: No. *I* am your son!
Supes: No! That's not true! That's impossible!

Agentdemon · Apr 23, 2005

Alexander said:

Brainiac: Luthor never told you what happened to your son.
Supes: He told me enough. He told me you killed him!
Brainiac: No. *I* am your son!
Supes: No! That's not true! That's impossible!
Click to expand...

heh??

Ruthmarks · Apr 23, 2005

Alexander said:

Brainiac: Luthor never told you what happened to your son.
Supes: He told me enough. He told me you killed him!
Brainiac: No. *I* am your son!
Supes: No! That's not true! That's impossible!
Click to expand...

Brainiac: Look at the script, Kal-El! You know it to be true!

Superman: Noooooooooo!

Cue John Williams' "Empire Theme."

Heroes

Superman Returns my next worry: if enigma2k is for real... :(

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