Super weapons in the hands of morons. Not good.
Last time on My Adventures with
Superman, Clark decided to learn a little more about his heritage. Faking
sick to get out of work, he returned to the Kent farm to dig up his crashed
ship, much to his ma Martha’s dismay. He activated an AI hologram of a bearded
man that if you know even only the basics of Superman lore can deduce is
Jor-El, his biological father. Jor-El’s hologram can’t speak English but shows
Clark a vision of their home world’s destruction, their sun being turned from
yellow to red and a massive war that seemed to consume the planet just after
Clark’s pod launched. The AI gives Clark his Superman suit, which Martha then
modifies slightly to give her seal of approval to. Meanwhile, Lois and Jimmy tried
to find the crazy lady that tried to kill them with Robots, believing finding her
will lead them to Superman. From Jimmy’s suggestion they found the downed boat
she stole and then a trail through the sewers. They interrupted a meeting
between the woman, Leslie Willis, and a Black Ops operative trying to get the
stolen tech back. Leslie showed off she’d gotten a harness on from that weapon
stash that gave her electrical powers. She fought the Black Ops agent while
trying to set off bombs she set up in the sewers but is ultimately thwarted by
the arrival of Superman. He’s able to get the crystal out of the harness,
taking away Leslie’s powers and then cleans up the damage. Lois and Jimmy
submitted their story on the events. Lois then went over to Clark’s apartment
to tell him what happened, they almost kissed, but are interrupted by Jimmy who
informs them their story was scooped by Cat Grant, Ronnie Troupe, and Steve
Lombard, much to Lois’ fury. Leslie was taken into custody by the Black Ops
agent and tortured for information on the stolen weapons, which she gave away
to every criminal in Metropolis, and on “Taskforce X, Zero Day and Nemesis
Omega.” While not said outright, it’s heavily implied in episode, and revealed
in the credits, that Black Ops is in fact Slade Wilson aka Deathstroke. Leslie
is NOT in for a good time. Enough recap. Let’s get to it.
We open on a blimp crashing into a
building and the pilot almost falling to his death. Superman flies in and saves
him, and then catches a steel girder that was launched from the blimp in an
explosion. Lois runs in and asks for a comment, but Superman obviously doesn’t
want to talk. He flies off to help with the blimp clean up and Lois runs after
him.
Meanwhile on Stryker’s Island, two
goons are breaking in. They’re Mist aka Kyle and Roughhouse aka Albert. Kyle
has a breastplate from Leslie’s stash that lets him turn invisible, and Albert
has a pair of gloves that let him have superstrength. They’re looking to free
their sister, Siobhan (pronounce it like Sha-bon) McDougal. They find her a
second later, and free her, explaining a scary lady gave them these crazy
weapons. They give her a helmet that lets her unleash sonic blasts. She puts it
on, using it to blast back the guards and blowing a hole in the prison to
escape.
We’re shown the exterior of the
Daily Planet as Superman flies in. He switches to his Clark clothes, holding a
cup of coffee while muttering to himself about how late he is. He sees Lois and
is about to call out to her when his vision starts flashing red and he starts
getting a headache. She runs into him, and he gives her the coffee. It’s from
her favorite coffee shop, from across town, that Clark said he got during a
jog. My man is not hiding his identity well at all if Lois was listening with
her full attention. She thanks him for the coffee, saying she needs it after chasing
Superman across town all morning and getting nothing. Clark says that maybe
Superman doesn’t want her to record all his secrets and publish them, to which
Lois announces that Superman doesn’t know that’s her plan. She has Clark
“pretend” to be Superman to show him how easy it is to do an interview. Clark
flubs pretending to be Superman but when Lois asks for the interview, he
sincerely says that if it was within his power, he’d do anything for her. They’re
interrupted by hearing Jimmy yelling at someone to get back. They make it to
the Newspaper Morgue to see that they’re getting scooped by the Daily Planet’s
top news team, Steve Lombard from Sports, Cat Grant from Human Interest/Gossip,
and Ronnie Troupe investigative journalist and the only one not enjoying this.
Ronnie explains that Perry assigned them the Superman story and told them to
use the info that Lois and company gathered to help them with it. She’s trying
to be the adult in the room while Steve keeps using the term scoop like it
means steal. Ronnie promises to give them credit for their work when the story
is finished and they leave, Cat popping back into tell them the copier is broken
and she needs it fixed by lunch. Lois is dejected at first but then rallies,
saying that they just need to scoop the scoop team. Jimmy’s down for it,
thinking they can post the story on Flamebird and get him to seven followers.
Clark tries to convince them to look at a different story instead, and Lois
asks him what story could be bigger than Superman. Thankfully, the cable news
has the breaking news story of Stryker’s Island break out. Jimmy notes that the
tech they’re using is the same kind that “Livewire” used, that being the name
he dubbed Leslie Willis. Clark vows to track down those criminals and stop
them… quickly realizing that sounds super weird to say out loud out of context
to his friends. He pivots to turning his statement into investigating the story
for them to show Perry. Lois agrees to it. When Clark walks off, Jimmy comments
that he’s surprised she dropped the Superman story so easily, to which Lois
says, “Who says I have?”
We jump over to the old gym that
Siobhan and her crew are hiding out in. Kyle shows her the last weapon they got
from the Crazy Lady; a freeze ray that can freeze objects solid in a flash. The
button sticks, though, so Albert has to smack it to turn it off. With their new
ice gun, they plan to make the biggest score of their lives. They chant
Intergang forever in celebration.
Clark, Lois, and Jimmy arrive at
Stryker’s Island. Clark wonders how they’re going to convince the staff to let
three interns in. Lois says she can, but Clark has to promise not to get upset.
Why? Because she stole Steve, Cat and Ronnie’s press passes. Clark is,
obviously, upset, but Jimmy is onboard. Clark says he won’t go along with this,
so Lois says fine, they can go back to the Daily Planet and brainstorm Superman
interview ideas. … They head into the Warden’s office, Lois introducing herself
as Cat, Jimmy as Ronnie, and Clark, sullenly, claims to be Steve. The Warden
goes along with the interview, explaining that Siobhan and Intergang are a
group of terrible criminals, meaning they’re bad at being criminals, showing
them a video of Intergang being terrible at a convenience store heist. Albert
seems incapable of using codenames for the group and Siobhan gets caught on
camera with her face exposed. Very, very bad criminals. Jimmy tries to get the
warden to let them investigate the cell, to which she says no to, but is
interrupted by a call telling her that the Daily Planet reporters just arrived.
The trio run off, and try to make for the exit, but then notice the damaged
wing of the prison that Kyle and Albert broke through. Lois reveals she stole
the Warden’s access card, getting a chuckle out of Clark and a “Oh just make
out already” moment from me as she gets him to say that he approves of theft
just this once.
They get into the cell, Jimmy and
Lois looking around while Clark stands guard. He looks at the hallway, his
vision going red again and giving him a headache. Lois finds a flyer for a
security company, A Security System, with times written on it. The Warden arrived
with security, though, so they have to bid a hasty retreat. Away from the
prison, they regroup and try to figure out what the numbers mean. Jimmy shows
them the picture he took of a schematic for a bank on the back of a cat poster.
They realize that they’ll be going after the Metropolitan City Bank, the
biggest bank in town, to get their gang some respect. They realize that with
those times, the heist is going to go down in the next fifteen minutes.
We cut to the bank, where Intergang
disables the security cameras, freeze most of the people in it and break into
the vault with a combination of icing it over and using Siobhan’s scream to
crack it open. They celebrate stealing the cash, Kyle being the only one to
want to grab the money and run. Siobhan encourages her brother to relax, as
this is a heist that they can revel in. Outside, Clark tries to get Lois and
Jimmy to hide while he goes to “call the authorities” aka change into his
costume. He’s stopped when Lois says that she and Jimmy are going to go get
captured. She then explains about the whole getting kidnapped to get to
Superman plan, Jimmy saying it worked with Livewire when Clark is skeptical and
Clark yells at them both upon learning that was on purpose.
The one unfrozen security guard
tries to stop Intergang, but Siobhan blows her away with a scream and Albert
uses an ice blast to cause a further distraction. The ice beam cuts through to
the outside, separating Clark from Jimmy and Lois and letting him change. He
flies in as Superman and tells them to take cover. He enters the bank and does
battle with Intergang. He’s stronger than Albert, but Siobhan’s scream keeps
him busy long enough for Kyle to set up the ice ray and fire at him. The ray
starts malfunctioning again after Superman gets hit by another sonic blast.
Albert goes to hit it to fix it, with the gloves on this time, and breaks the
whole thing. It causes the device to overload, releasing a crystal that freezes
everything in sight. It freezes Superman and Intergang and starts spreading
outside. Superman sees the ice getting close to Lois and Jimmy as he’s almost
frozen over, causing his latent heat vision to finally go off. He melts himself
free and destroys the machine’s power source. He gets a vision of robot
soldiers attacking something. Superman gets Intergang taken care of when EMTs
arrive, he tells them to look after the people in back. As he leaves, we see
the other EMT is in fact Slade, and he makes eyes at the Intergang members.
Outside, Superman tells Lois and
Jimmy that Clark is fine, that he saw him run to safety when he flew in. He
offers to give Lois that interview she wanted. Ronnie, Steve, and Cat arrive to
try to scoop Lois again, but Clark picks her up and flies off to give her the
exclusive. He flies her to the Daily Planet roof and the interview starts.
Superman tells her that he’s giving her the interview because she and Jimmy
stuck around to help during the freeze ray and wants to thank her for it. She
asks several questions, all of Superman’s answers being I don’t know or some
variation. He says that he’s here to help Metropolis and that’s what matters
before flying off. He races around to the roof entrance, changing in route and
messes up his hair before running to Lois. She apologizes for putting him in
danger, and reveals she got the interview. Clark asks her what she thinks of
Superman, to which she says, “he’s a liar,” to his shock.
Alright, so we’ve seen just how
destructive these weapons of unknown, probably Kryptonian origin, can be. The
freeze ray alone nearly made a new iceshelf in the middle of the US which, we
probably do need because global warming, but its placement is not ideal. I do
feel the running gag that this version of Intergang is extremely bad at crimes
is just to highlight that these weapons are incredibly destructive even in the
hands of people that don’t know how to properly use them. I’ve heard some
people complain that Siobhan McDougal is another character that has gotten her
powers through this tech, like Livewire, but I’ve seen Siobhan AKA Silver
Banshee get her powers from implied chemical accidents to being a literal
banshee, so I don’t see the problem with hers being tech based this time. “It
feels samey” some say, to which I say, read an older comic. 19/20 powers are
from industrial accidents. Also, loved the running gag that Albert seems
incapable of using codenames. They repeated it just enough that it didn’t get
irritating. I also liked seeing the whole team being on a story this time.
Having Clark being the squeaky third wheel, trying to keep them from doing
unsafe or illegal things is just perfect for the big blue boy scout. As is him
cracking a little when Lois stole the ID card. The bit where Lois and Jimmy
pretend to be Cat and Ronnie, while Clark is super dejected to just say “Steve.
Sports” is one of my favorite bits thus far. It was also nice to see Clark get
his heat vision. It’s a Superman staple and he just feels incomplete without
his literal burning gaze. The vision of the robots is interesting. I wonder if
those were Kryptonian war machines… or… well, there’s one famous interstellar
robot villain of Superman’s that I can think of, and Brainiac would be a hell
of a finisher for the first season, all I’m saying. I have no idea what Slade
might end up doing with Intergang, but it can’t possibly be fun for them. The
interview at the end was rather interesting. I liked that Clark did answer
honestly and to the best of his ability, but his utter lack of knowledge on his
own past and powers puts Lois’ journalistic back up. In most continuities, Lois
I think would be quick to trust what Superman said as honest. The fact she’s assuming
not answering is a deliberate lie is interesting and probably suggests
something about this Lois’ past. Maybe she’s been lied to by omission before?
Who knows. Clark’s face, though, at hearing his alter ego be called a liar is
priceless and I’m so glad I got to see it. Next time, Dr. Ivo unveils his
latest product. No it’s not the Amazo android.
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/86778213
Twitter: @BasicsSuperhero
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