Superman faces off against his most dangerous foe yet. His own lies. And Deathstroke.
Last time on My Adventures With
Superman, Clark and the gang get their first real assignment. They’re sent
to Amazo tower to get quotes from people about Amazo Tech CEO Dr. Anthony Ivo
for a Most Eligible Bachelor article. The fact Cat Grant didn’t want to go do
it herself really should have told them something. They arrive at the gala and
Clark and Lois immediately butt heads on what they should be doing. Clark wants
to follow the cards and get the quotes for Cat, Lois wants to ask some in your
face questions, ya know, real news. Clark gets to talk with Ivo himself, Ivo
attempts to bride Clark with an offer of introducing him to hot women if he
forgets some incriminating things Clark heard him say to one of his Board
members, and then insults Lois. Clark freaks out and gets thrown out. Clark and
Lois bond a little as she sews up his torn jacket, allowing them to see that
Ivo has a bunch of stolen tech weapons in a secret lab. He unveils the Parasite
1.0 armor and tries to kill his board member to get Superman’s attention. When
Superman saves the member, he gets caught in the Amazo Panic Room, and Ivo uses
it and the Parasite’s energy draining function to try to suck Superman dry.
Lois and Jimmy are able to shut down the Panic room and Clark realizes that the
Parasite will lose power so long as he doesn’t fight him. The suit hits critically
low energy and basically sucks Ivo dry to try to keep going. Superman saves Ivo
and turns him over to the authorities, but unfortunately in all that confusion
someone steals all the tech. Clark and Lois have a moment, both admitting to
thinking of tonight like a date before Clark walks her back to the Planet.
Leaving Jimmy behind and feeling left out. At the Planet, Lois types up her
story about the Amazon tech collapse, but then gets distracted by a magazine.
Clark had earlier seen a tabloid article that Jimmy and Lois were going to
research in talk about his flying escapade as a child and had hastily torn the
story out, stuffed it in his pocket, but then been distracted by Lois so forgot
to dispose of the magazine. Lois puts together a new timeline, finds the
article in Clark’s pocket (he’d given her his jacket at the end of the night),
and she rather angrily announces that Clark Kent is Superman. Enough recap. Let’s
get to it.
We open with Lois staring at her
personal murder board, not getting any sleep. She’s staring specifically at a
headshot of Superman she’d gotten and drawn glasses onto. Obviously, still not
too happy about learning that her friend and love interest has been keeping
secrets from her for several weeks at least. We jump over to Jimmy excitedly
waking up. See, he’d gotten Lois and Clark to agree to go with him on a camping
trip to search for bigfoot. He looks down from his bunk to gush to Clark, only
to find out that Clark’s already gone. He assumes “jogging”, but I think we all
know he’s doing the Superman thing. He gets an alert on his phone saying that
he’d gotten a response video on Flamebird. Turns out, some dude has found his
stream and is now going through all his videos and just shouting “NAH!” at them
to ‘disprove’ his actually completely true conspiracy theories, like Atlantis
being real.
We jump a few hours ahead to Jimmy
making his way to the office. He calls Clark to remind him of the camping trip,
but Clark is only half listening because he’s got Superman stuff to do. And
because he’s nervous due to his decision to tell Lois he likes her. Jimmy tells
him that he’s pretty sure she already knows, but he’s dead set on the idea that
it’s not real until he says it. He notes that Lois has been staring at him a
lot for the last day or so and that feels like a good sign to him. Oh, you poor
dumb Superman. He gets distracted by a train going off the tracks and tells
Jimmy to cover for him until he gets to work. Jimmy then calls Lois, also to
remind her of the trip. She says she’s already packed but wants to know,
hypothetically, if she listed off some dates for Jimmy if he’d be able to
remember where Clark was at those times. She then notes a time that Clark ran
off to get a bagel, disappeared for 20 minutes and then came back without a
bagel. And then notes that he uses that excuse a LOT. Jimmy asks if she’s
hungry and wants a bagel, but she says no and asks him to also cover for her
while she’s doing her Superman research. Jimmy makes it into the office and is
stopped by Steve Lombard. The big sportswriter says he needs a camera man for a
special assignment and Perry gave him Jimmy. Jimmy looks at his boss’s office
and just sees Perry drop the shade on his window. Jimmy is dragged off by
Steve.
In town, a criminal crew, lead by
Rory aka Heat Wave, are preparing to rob a pawn shop. They are all outfitted in
the tech weapons, most of them with strength enhancing gloves like Roughhouse,
but Rory sports a full suit of armor with flamethrower gauntlets. Their group
is suddenly attacked by someone that moves like a blur. In seconds, most of the
crew are captured by the blur. Rory beats a hasty retreat. We see just enough
of the blur and then glowing red eyes to know that it’s not Superman… so who is
it?
Sometime later, Lois arrives at the
Daily Planet and is going over her notes on a plan to get Clark to tell her
he’s Superman. She’s distracted once she gets to the Newspaper Morgue and sees
a package waiting on the desk. Lamenting for the thousandth time that this is
NOT the mailroom, she tries to move the big box, only to discover that it’s
filled with Dumbbells for Steve. I speak as someone in shipping. Don’t. Order.
Weights. Online. You. Asshole. Clark comes in and says he wants to tell her
something, but noticing the reclosed box asks if she needs help with that and
lifts the dumbbells like the box was empty. Lois immediately says she knows,
back tracks and encourages Clark to tell her what he’s talking about. He says
that he wants her help with a story and that it’ll be easier to show her than
tell her. He goes to get something from the hall, throwing the dumbbells onto
one of the cabinets and shattering it. Clark, buddy, you’re doing a terrible
job today with the secret. He wheels in his own Murder Board, though he calls
it an investigation board, and explains that he wants to do a story on the
advanced weapons that Livewire stole and have since been circulated throughout
Metropolis. While they know Livewire stole them, they don’t know who made the
weapons. He wants to track down who did and expose them. Clark says that
there’s also something familiar about those weapons, though he’s not sure why.
He shows Lois an old dispatch scanner he dug out of the Daily Planet’s storage,
thinking they can use it to hear reports of the tech weapons being used and
then investigate. Clark really wants to pursuit this story and would like her
help to do it. Lois suggests that maybe they should talk to Superman about
them, Clark says that he’s pretty sure that Superman doesn’t know. She’s
insistent that the three of them sit down to talk, obviously trying to force
Clark to tell her he’s Superman, but he’s not biting, distracted by the idea
that Lois is willing to help him with the story. He almost says he likes her
but is distracted by the dispatch scanner saying a bus is out of control. He
runs off, saying something about a bagel and quickly saves the day. Lois gets
both an update on her phone about Superman stopping the bus and on the scanner.
Clark comes back in, hears another alert, and goes back out to fix it. Lois
decides on a “new plan” and throws on her coat.
Lois said earlier she’s 99% certain
he’s Superman. Pretty sure after this we can bump it up to 99.9%.
We go to the street where Jimmy is
suffering through time with Steve. While Steve pontificates about how he’s
going to show Jimmy how to live, because he thinks they’re similar, Jimmy texts
Lois and Clark for help getting him out of this but neither sees the texts. Steve
claims Jimmy is the “Steve” of the group, that he’s a “lone wolf.” Jimmy
refuses to believe this. Steve then lists how he’s separated from the other two
and that he is a Steve. Steve tells him that being a Steve is great and shows
Jimmy the Steve Code, words to live by. All we know for certain about the code
is that Don’t Skip Leg Day is on there three times. They arrive at Metropolis
Stadium and Steve runs off to get started. Jimmy begs Clark to send him a text
about a fake emergency so he can leave, but obviously Clark doesn’t answer. He
gets Steve’s phone and starts recording, only to discover Steve is Nah, the
dude trolling his Flamebird account.
Superman flies around town saving
people and cats, and Lois sprints behind him. She always arrives just after he
leaves, so this strategy isn’t going well. She gets a lucky break when the
Scanner says there’s a robbery in progress at the McGuinness Luxe Garage, the
building she just so happens to be standing by. Superman hears the report and
that tech weapons are involved and flies off. Lois calls out to him and tells
him to hold it. She tells him that her “good friend” Clark has questions about
the tech weapons and how she wants his help with that story. She asks, with an
obviously suspicious look on her face if he knows Clark Kent. Superman plays it
off, saying that Clark is that quite young man that works with her and Mr.
Olsen, complimenting himself by saying Clark is thoughtful and upstanding.
Clark, buddy, the hole you’re digging yourself in is turning into a chasm. Lois
gets in close, saying that she’s not going to let Superman out of her sight
until Clark can have a chance to talk to him, handcuffing herself to him while
he’s distracted by her getting into his personal space. It’s just then that a
car pulls up and Heat Wave and her crew get out of the garage. Superman does
his best to fight them while handcuffed to Lois, the two of them basically
doing a weird dance while he moves her out of the way. Lois kicks one of the
goons in the gut, then is almost hit with a tech gauntlet, only for Superman to
grab it and crush it. He gets a vision of flaming debris, a damaged cornfield
and a man in a tank top looking horrified. He drops the gauntlet and tries to
pretend he’s okay. They notice that Heat Wave’s gloves aren’t working, he zooms
over to stop her. Heat Wave, upon seeing her getaway car drive off, drops to
her knees and says she’s sorry and begs him not to kidnap her.
Back with Jimmy, he’s furious to
learn that Steve is Nah. Steve is super excited about this and seems to not get
why Jimmy would be upset. He says that he had to do voice over for the first
few videos because he doesn’t know how to work a camera, and that today is
going better than he’d hoped. Jimmy is even angrier at learning that Steve
tricked him into blowing off work for this side project. Steve scoffs at his
anger, pointing out that they also avoid doing what Perry tells them to do. He
again calls them lone wolves and Jimmy freaks out. He screams that he, Clark,
and Lois are the three amigos, the Three Musketeers! Steve then asks “D’Artagnan”
what happened when he called his friends trying to get out of working with
Steve. I give the dude props for the solid Three Musketeers reference. He
says that they’re tight now, but things change and people get left behind.
Jimmy refuses to believe that, gets an alert about the Bigfoot search and he
storms off to hunt it with his best friends.
Meanwhile, Lois attempts to
interrogate Heat Wave. She tells the big woman that she hates two things
“Secrets and liars” while giving Clark a side long look. She demands Heat Wave
tell them what she meant by kidnapping, or Superman is going to go wild on her.
Superman says that he won’t. She then says she’ll go wild on Heat Wave.
Superman says she shouldn’t threaten people. So she settles on her “or else”
being Superman will worry excessively about her welfare. Heat Wave tells them
that SUPERMAN has been kidnapping everyone that has the tech weapons, her crew,
members of the Gazzo crime family as well as random pickpockets and bag men.
She was trying to steal a ride out of town before she got caught too. She says
that only Superman could move that fast, and that she’s not going down that
easy. Her suit finally powers on and she hits Superman with a flame attack,
Superman just barely getting Lois behind him. Heat Wave leaps away. Lois asks
what they can do now, and Superman tells her that first they need to head back
to the Daily Planet. As they fly off, the man that actually attacked Heat Wave
says that the two targets are going on opposite directions and asks for advice.
He’s told to focus on getting the tech back.
Superman drops Lois off at the
Planet. She asks what they’re going to do and Clark says that he’s leaving her
here because it’s too dangerous for her. Lois says that she won’t let him go,
but Superman snaps the handcuff holding to them and starts flying off. Lois
screams after Superman not to do this, finally shouting Clark once he’s too far
to hear. Or so it seems.
Heat Wave has been chased by the
man in Black and Orange to a construction site just off the highway to
Bludhaven. Her flames seem to stop him and draw Superman to where the fight is.
She still thinks Superman is after her and tries to burn him. He forces her
arms down and says he’s just trying to help. Heat Wave creates a fire tornado
to try to get him. The man in black, watching from a crane, is finally
confirmed to be Slade Wilson. He’s advised by his handlers to take out both the
final target and Nemesis Omega. Said Handlers appear as holograms behind him,
they’re a man referred to as the General and Amanda Waller. They were with him during
Livewire’s interrogation, forgot to mention that. Waller says that the suit is
operating at optimum efficiency and that integrating the recovered tech
improved it. He calls in ‘support’ and goes to fight.
Heat Wave knocks Superman back with
a fire fist before being hit with the freeze ray. Agent Wilson walks in,
flanked by two robots. The General tells Wilson to take him out. Superman heat
vision cuts the arm off one robot but is knocked around by the other. Waller,
observing, notes that Superman seems weaker than they anticipated. Superman
finally realizes that the tech is the army’s and that they’re the ones
kidnapping people. Wilson leaps behind him and slices his neck with a pair of
plasma katanas, saying he has a Super Brain too. Superman asks them why they’re
doing this, and the General walks up, saying he can stop playing dumb and that
there’s no one here to swallow his lies. Superman has another flashback of this
man as the tank top soldier from before. He asks who this guy is, and the
General says that he’s the one keeping the Earth safe. One of the robots swings
the severed arm like a hammer at him, cutting through the hologram. The General
tells him machines to keep hitting Superman, banging him into the ground.
Superman finally catches the hit and slams the robot down again. The other
robot grabs him and throws him through a wall and into the active bridge. Superman
slices it to pieces with heat vision. Wilson rushes him, digging his swords
into the sides of Superman’s neck. Superman throws him off, Wilson swings
around, slicing the bridge supports while trying to cut Superman. The bridge
starts collapsing, Superman shouts “NO! People need help!” and throws Wilson
back. He catches the falling bridge and lifts it back up. Wilson combines his
swords into a rifle and prepares to shoot. Waller tells him to fire the shot but
The General calls him off. He doesn’t want civilian casualties. Waller gives
the classic “kill 100 now to save billions later” line. The General tells her
to back down and she does. He orders Wilson to retreat and says he’ll be seeing
you, Superman. Superman heat visions the bridge back into place and then flies
off.
Superman flies back to the Planet
and sees Lois still waiting on the roof for him. He flies around and changes
into his street clothes. He joins her on the roof and Lois, distraught, hugs him
and says she was so worried about him. She notices the cuts on his neck from
Slade’s blades. Clark tries to, stupidly, say that they’re cuts from shaving.
Clark, 1. The cuts are too far down your neck for that to be believable and 2.
Are HUGE. Lois tells him to stop lying to her. Clark tries to play dumb, and
Lois hits her limit. Deciding not to give Clark an out, she says they’ll do
this the hard way and jumps off the side of the building. Clark catches her and
she angrily starts hitting his chest for lying to her. When he puts her back
down on the roof, they have a big blow out, Lois angry that he lied to her face
for so long and refusing to trust her with what he’d been up to, and Clark
furious that she’d risk killing herself to force him to talk and accusing her
of wanting to publish all his secrets. Lois tells him that she said that before
knowing Superman was him and is clearly hurt, he still thought she’d do that.
She tells him that whatever they were, they’re done now and storms off,
ironically as a storm starts.
Jimmy waits at the bus stop for his
friends until 9 pm and decides that if they’re not going to make time for him,
then he’s done with them too. He heads out into the woods and starts his
investigations. He is almost immediately attacked by a giant creature of some
sort, something that looks like a giant gorilla. Well… crap.
I’ll start with the villain of the
week. Now, I personally feel like Deathstroke is overused. He’s a cool
character, don’t get me wrong, but he seems to work his way into every DC
project of the last decade. It makes sense, he’s like the Doctor Doom of DC,
having seemingly outgrown his original team of heroes. That said, I suppose if
I was outfitting a soldier with an experimental suit of armor and weapons to
fight the God Damned Superman, Slade Wilson is the man for the job. The
combination of the plasma swords, his enhanced strength and speed, and the
robots for back up make him especially deadly. It’s interesting to see how his handlers’
handled things. Amanda Waller, like in all her incarnations, is very much an
“ends justify the means” sort of woman, whereas the “General” seems to want to
put Superman down with as little collateral damage as possible. These competing
philosophies are going to buttheads sooner rather than later. This is the first
time that we’ve heard many details on Zero Day and confirmation that Superman
is Nemesis Omega. From context, it seems that Clark’s landing in this universe
was chaotic. Most stories I’ve seen seem to suggest Clark landed on the Kent Farm
with little fuss. Maybe some kryptonite raining down with him, but that’s about
it. I’d wager that with a name like Zero Day, Clark’s landing is more like in Smallville,
where Clark’s pod came with some much kryptonite raining down that it caused
mass destruction and death. But I guess we’ll see where this goes. Heat Wave is
funny too, the fact her suit never seems to work right is a fun sight gag. Okay,
I’ve delayed long enough, let’s talk about the breakup. I’ve already seen folks
dog pile on Lois for her reaction here. While I wouldn’t say she’s blameless, if
you remember the context from the previous episode, I think you might get why
her last straw was Clark telling an “I’m fine,” lie. Forgot that context? Her
mother died when she was young, her mom was extremely sick before she died, and
ma and pa Lane kept how sick she was from Lois. Care to guess what little white
lie a child might be told in that situation a lot? “I’m fine.” “It looks/sounds
worse than it is,” “I’m okay.” With that context, I very much get why her
friend/love interest saying “I’m fine” while having cuts that look like if they
were much deeper would have taken his head off is too much for her. I also get
Clark being scared to tell her given how vocal she’d been about her dislike of
Superman and the fears that as ambitious as she is she might say something she
shouldn’t about him in an article. They both really should have taken a breath,
separated, and come back to talk later, but obviously that didn’t happen. I
will say, Lois not taking the reveal well is a unique spin on their
relationship. Most I’ve seen either see her surprised but happy upon learning
the truth, or perhaps she was angry at first, but she’d found out earlier and
kept it to herself long enough to cool off by the time Clark tells her. At the
end of the day, they’re two stubborn young people that let flaring emotions make
them say things I’m pretty sure they’ll regret. I’m just glad Clark didn’t try
to pull the “I was trying to protect you from my enemies” line. I don’t care
who says it, 9/10 a love interest is safer knowing to look out for costumed
psychos than being surprised when they get kidnapped. Shame Jimmy wasn’t there,
he might have been able to get them to cool off. Speaking of Jimmy, I think his
subplot was well done. I think most of us can empathize with feeling squeezed
out of a relationship when a friend is in a new relationship, even more so when
it’s both your best friends testing the waters. He’s feeling insecure and Steve
obviously fed into it with his trolling, and it really sucks it all went down
on this day where Clark and Lois are dealing with some shit. I hope everyone
can say they’re sorry in the following episode, but we’ll see. Next time, back
to Beast Wars, see you there.
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/86907551
Twitter: @BasicsSuperhero
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