Friday, August 07, 2009

Superman on Pet World!
















The next stop on our summer vacation was a weird planet of doughboys. Not the Pillsbury kind, but strangely pliant, gooey guys Superman called “yeast men.”

We’ll have to blame this unwanted trip on Perry White, because the whole nightmarish experience started with Perry’s assignment to Clark of a story about a medical researcher who has a theory that “people can sometimes acquire immunity to harmful substances by being exposed to them long enough.”

Well sir, our Man of Steel sets right out to try out that theory on a Green Kryptonite meteor that has recently landed in the desert. He figures the best way to keep the Green K nearby all the time is to manufacture a collar out of it. This he does, and puts on the neckpiece, just in time to go all woozy right in front of … some visiting aliens!

As most aliens seem to be nowadays, this group is out prospecting for a representative example of Earthian life. So they snag this critter in the blue suit and take him back to their world, where they give him a few intelligence tests and decide he’s just about a smart as a monkey.

Meanwhile, as you can imagine, the Collar of Green K is blunting the edge of Superman’s super-wits and super-abilities.

Finally, after graduating to watch dog and nabbing a break-in artist, Superman has eventually proven he has enough smarts to try the “grown-up” obstacle course. A part of this involves a walk through super-hot fire, which he takes gladly.

While the yeast-men are mourning the supposed death-by-burning of their latest pet, the Man of Steel bursts into view, finally freed of the diabolical Kryptonite neckpiece, which melted in the flames. He quickly constructs a device to communicate with the yeast-men in their weird, whistling language, and is soon accepted as a full entity.

The doughboys are sad to see him go, but they send Superman homeward with good will, to a predictable dénouement with Lois Lane and a stray kitten.

Wow! What a silly adventure! Yet, what if the Green K HADN’T melted, friends?!? What then?





See you next week with another instalment of our Super-vacation!










Something involving time-travel, I think ...
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© by Mark Alfred