I’m trying to remember when I first stumbled upon The Man of Steel. Probably, some older cousin forgot one of his Superman comics at our house. Initial contact isn’t that important. It’s the outcome that counts.
While I don’t know how the affair started, I do know that it has never really ended. I still have that same fluttery feeling when I see that muscled blue unitard with the red cape flying defiantly behind it. Surely this is the ultimate pinnacle of society’s ethics. Surely it is a sign that one day we will seek to do only good. And be able to fly. My nine-year-old concept of Superman remains my adult version of him.
But, despite all his prowess, Superman still had his foible. Notice that there is no ‘s’ on that word. Superman was assigned but one foible – susceptibility to kryptonite. This substance is so synonymous with the concept of fatal weakness that things that cause us to fall prey to our flaws are now referred to “our kryptonite”. Superman made that possible.
I always worried that I would find a chunk of kryptonite in the back yard. It seemed possible, as other stuff showed up there inexplicably – bits of glass in brown, green, or blue (never clear), unidentified car parts, evidence of dogs we didn’t own, rocks that weren’t there yesterday. Landscaping wasn’t much of a priority back then, nor was there much guidance about where to throw your junk. In the post WWII neighbourhood, you had a house, maybe a driveway, and likely a picket fence to enclose your kingdom. Planting stuff was left up to God or Nature, depending on your leanings, and a mingling of grass and weeds was a more than suitable lawn. The peony bush that crept over from the neighbour’s yard was dually claimed without further thought. It was enough.
The on-going and seemingly insurmountable issue of the kryptonite threat kind of bothered me. I felt like it shouldn’t exist, him being “invulnerable” and all. But I could not deny the role kryptonite had to play in demonstrating how elusive and unreachable excellence could be.
The kryptonite thing got started when Superman’s planet spontaneously blew up, in what Wikipedia lists as a “cataclysmic event”. There are no additional details. In my ever-growing list of apocalyptic events to worry about, cataclysm doesn’t even make the first eighteen. That kind of bothered me – if planetary annihilation happened to Superman, maybe it could crop up here too. Thankfully, Jor-El, Superman’s dad, saw it coming. He built some kind of space cradle and jettisoned baby Superman into space at the last possible second, aiming it at the ever-reliable Planet Earth. Baby Superman didn’t need food or diaper changes, so he was fresh as a rose and quite appealing when he and his space cradle plopped down at the Kent’s farm somewhere in fictional Iowa. They took him in and raised him like a single-bodied twin, with the Clark Kent/Superman alter-ego thing known only to them.
The ultimate downside of Superman's planet going kablooey (other than losing a whole planet full of very technically advanced people) is that it generated a whole lot of kryptonite, as is common with exploding planets. And some of that foul mineral followed the super cradle to Earth. Some of this kryptonite arrived sooner, some later, and most of it fell preferentially into the back yards of super villains, many of them babies themselves at the time. This did not bode well for Superman’s future.
Kryptonite introduced me to a whole new term: invulnerable. What? I had to look that up in the dictionary at school, the internet still being at least thirty years out from being invented, and Mom being too preoccupied with apple pie baking to stand in as a dictionary. I discovered that things were either ‘vulnerable’ or ‘invulnerable’, but mostly the former. Kryptonite, in all its gleaming green glory, not to mention its alternatively coloured forms, could jolt Superman out of his never-going-to-need-a-gym state of health. He could be killed, or just be injured, or get sick. Superman could throw up.
Was nothing in life perfect?
Despite the kryptonite affliction, Superman had a few lessons up his Spandex sleeve. Don’t be a criminal was probably the most memorable one, although I kind of liked the idea of crime, since it gave Superman and Nancy Drew a raison d’etre. Other than that, it was all just the white bread world of Winnie the Pooh.
Superman also motivated me towards independence. Each Friday I was given my allowance, a quarter. It was never two dimes and a nickel, always a quarter. Out of that twenty-five cents I had to come up with a sound financial plan each week. Would I squander it on a sickeningly huge bag of candy, or maybe a modest bag of candy with an ice cream cone on the side? A five-cent popsicle could also be good value for my money, leaving twenty cents for discretionary spending. But there was always that twelve cent Superman comic to consider. Issues of the comic didn’t necessarily come out every week, but the odd time two issues would come out in the same week, leaving only enough change for the purchase of a wad of gum drops. Comics, however, could certainly be read numerous times, an excellent and lasting investment. Foregoing the candy was a no-brainer. I bought and read those Superman comics like a dying man reads the Afterlife Manual.
Each Saturday I would take that twenty-five cents in my fist (never once losing it) and venture six block to the magazine store downtown. I would bypass the local “corner store” in case they lacked the newest comic and induced me to waste my money on sponge toffee. It was a solo journey that I undertook with all the solemnity of a first climb of Everest. If no new Superman issues waited in the display case, I would ponder other purchases, perhaps Richie Rich, or Donald Duck, or even Archie – but only if I thought this might be the week where Betty would triumph over that b----- , Veronica. It was imperative to buy the Superman comic, lest he be stuck in kryptonite up to his neck. If so, I would need to rescue him by grimly turning the pages until he out-witted his evil opponent. After that, we would both need to retreat to our Fortresses of Solitude in complete exhaustion.
While Sunday school, regular school, and “the look” from Mom were all valuable in tweaking my moral compass, I could not deny that Superman played a more than a minimal role in the crafting of my ethics framework.
Lessons Learned
Invulnerability: Good
Crime: Bad
Kryptonite: Really Bad
Financial Management: Forego the candy
Walking to the Store Solo: Stellar
