The Scions of the House of El bond.
Last time on My Adventures With
Superman, there’s trouble in paradise. Lois and Clark are assigned to the
Metropolis Most Eligible contest, a bonified publicity stunt, because the contest
listed Superman as a contestant. Clark agrees to do it with Lois’ support
because it’s a fundraiser for a children’s hospital. Cat Grant forces Lois to
take her along as 1. Gossip is her life, but 2. Because she knows Superman’s “secret.”
Turns out, she knows that Superman isn’t single but assumes that he’s dating
one of the other contestants. Lois tries to put on a brave face but one of the
other contestants Silver St. Cloud flirts with Superman hard and it clearly troubles
her. It’s not helped by Cat, who is truly trying to be helpful, tells her that
Superman and the other contestants are beyond them. From Clark’s perspective,
the day goes great, except for Hank Henshaw screaming the Earth is for
Earthlings at him. Meanwhile, Jimmy is avoiding Clark. Why? Because he knows he
screwed up at the STAR Labs expo and doesn’t know how to fix it. He’s further
distracted when he pulls a young woman out of the way of a truck. The young
woman is Kara and she’s looking for her cousin. Jimmy is smitten and after
realizing that Kara was incredibly sheltered (she doesn’t know what ice cream
is) offers to show her around town while they look for her cousin. After a fun
day, Jimmy takes her to the top of the Daily Planet, and they have a moment
staring at the sunset. Jimmy has an epiphany that he can’t keep avoiding Clark
and asks Kara to come with him to apologize. They arrive during the final
moments of the contest, and Kara recognizes the Man of Steel as her cousin.
Superman being named the Most Eligible. Silver St. Cloud gives Superman a kiss
on the cheek and Lois’ heart can’t take it. Superman follows her, blowing off
Kara when she approaches him. Lois finally tells Clark about her dad leaving
and the Gotham Gazette job odrkffer, and Clark tells her about the beacon. Lois
says they aren’t working, and Clark asks if she’s breaking up with him. Before
she can answer, Kara reveals herself to be Kara Zor-El and pulls out her
Kryptonian battle suit. Her ‘father’ Brainiac Primus orders her to execute the
useless Kryptonian. Superman and Kara battle, Kara wailing on him because Superman
doesn’t want to fight her. She fires her heat vision at him, and Superman,
desperate to protect the civilians, unleashes his freezing breath to stop it.
Brainiac sees it and changes Kara’s orders to capture Kal-El. They battle some
more, Kara finally knocking Clark out and capturing him. Jimmy and Lois in a
helicopter watch in horror as Kara flies into space dragging Superman behind her.
Enough recap. Let’s get to it.
Clark wakes up finding himself in a
hard light casket on Kara’s ship. He is furious to learn that he’s been
kidnapped, Kara telling him that she extricated him from a backwater planet.
Clark breaks himself free with relative ease and demands to get a helmet so he
can fly home. His suit makes a helmet, and he flies out of the ship. Unfortunately,
Kara’s ship has already left our Sol Solar system and so it’s just endless
expanses of stars in all directions. Clark asks where earth, his home, is and
Kara tells him Earth isn’t his home. His home was Krypton, and together they’ll
bring it back.
Clark tries to fly home, Kara’s
ship slowly floating along side him as his cousin points out the futility of
trying to get back to Earth on his own. Which is fair, space is big and if you
don’t know exactly where you’re going you could spend forever flying in the
wrong direction. Kara promises that she’ll take Kal-El back to Earth… when they
go to conquer it for the Empire. Clark refuses to even entertain that idea. Kara
decides that being on Earth has made Clark’s brain weak and that they’ll need
to fix that before bringing him to her father. Clark is shocked to hear that
there are more Kryptonians out there and that his uncle might also be alive.
Kara says that she’s spent her whole life reestablishing the Empire with her
father for the good of the universe and says she wants to show Clark her Krypton.
Back inside the ship, Kara gets out
a memory band, a device that can record and display memories. The one she takes
out has recordings of Krypton before the fall. We see Krypton, a highly
advanced alien society with a ton of Kryptonians flying about doing their day-to-day
activities. Kara tells Clark that Krypton was the most advanced, scientifically
and culturally, planet in the universe. They brought less advanced planets into
the fold and made their peoples ‘into model Kryptonian citizens.” The deadpan
way Kara says that last part is creepy as hell. Kara shows him a courtyard where Kryptonians
have gathered. She’s named all the people recorded here, silly names like Food
Citizen One and such. Kara muses about what Kryptonian food must have tasted
like. In one of the saddest little moments, Kara pulls Clark over to a bunch of
kids playing space jacks. The kid drops the little ball, it throws the little
jacks into the air and you try to catch as many as you can. Kara places her
hand within the hologram of the child’s and matches her moments perfectly. Like…
how many thousands of times has she watched this video to perfectly mimic one
child’s hand motion? She says she did it all the time as a child, when not
training of course. Clark, recognizing a red flag when it’s flapped in his
face, reminds Kara that these people are all gone and that he knows what it’s
like to be lonely. Kara takes off the memory band and angrily snaps that she’s
not lonely. Clark tells Kara that he has a life on Earth and asks if he can
show her what he’s fighting for on Earth.
Clark puts on the band, and we see
a memory of him playing catch with Pa Kent while Ma watches from the house. Young
Clark tosses the ball at Jonathan, but even tossed lightly the ball has enough force
behind it to send Jonathan flying backwards and shouting the cutest PG swear “Sweet
Martha Kent!” Jonathan encourages his son and says that he’s sure he can throw
it softer if he tires. Clark clearly treasures this memory, but all Kara sees
is his human parents trying to make him hide, to make him less than he is. She
asks if anyone on that planet cared about the real him, triggering Clark’s
memory of Lois and his fight at the Most Eligible contest. He takes off the
band and goes to put it back. Kara tells him to not look in there, but she’s
too slow to stop him. Clark finds the pictures she took with Jimmy and is
shocked to find out his cousin knows his friend. He rightly deduces that Kara might
have had a little crush on Jimmy, but Kara denies it, saying that she was just
gathering intel on Jimmy Flamebird, leader of Earth, and that she doesn’t even
know what ‘having a crush” means. Clark looks at the other items in Kara’s cache,
she says that they’re all from planets she’s visited. She lists off Euphorix, H’lven, and Thanagar.
An extremely important piece to her is this Thanagarian statue of one of the
Hawk-men of that world. Clark asks why she’s hiding them and Kara says that her
father says her affinity for anything non-Kryptonian is a weakness. Clark asks
her what she wants to do, and Kara says she wants to bring everyone into the
light of the Kryptonian Empire and asks why Clark doesn’t want that for Earth.
Clark asks to see one of these planets in the new Empire. Kara is extremely
excited by that idea and takes the ship towards Thanagar. Brainiac, watching their
flightpath from his ship, notices the change in destination and says that there
will be no more delays as he summons several robot guards.
Clark and Kara are delayed on their
flight by a solid hydrogen state asteroid field. The asteroids are too big for
the ship to maneuver through or around it. They have to clear the asteroids
manually. Clark calls up a helmet and flies outside, and Kara decides to pull a
prank on him. Outside she pretends that her helmet is malfunctioning and that
she’s going to suffocate, only to reveal that Kryptonians don’t need to breathe
and can survive in the vacuum of space. They can also apparently speak in the vacuum…
but Kryptonians have been breaking the laws of the universe since their inception,
so I’ll give them a pass on this. They
have fun having a hydrogen snowball fight in the asteroid field. Kara gets
engulfed by a particularly big asteroid and Clark’s super mode kicks on so he
can race over and shatter the asteroid. Kara noticed the change and ask to know
why his eyes are glowing. Clark says that whenever he’s needed to protect
someone that he gets stronger. This clearly shocks Kara, as she can’t do that.
But they’re distracted by reaching Thanagar.
They arrive on the planet, Kara
telling Clark that he’ll love the Thanagarians, as the Hawk-people can fly too.
She’s shocked and heartbroken when they reach the capital city, though, and
find it utterly deserted and destroyed. Kara searches around, finding a wall
that she can’t quite see. It flickers and flashes like it’s got static over it.
Her eyes go out of focus, and she says something about bringing them into the
new Kryptonian Empire. Clark is clearly disturbed by this, asking if every
planet in the new Kryptonian Empire is a graveyard. Kara is confused, saying that
there were cities and people on Thanagar when she was last here, that this is
supposed to be a thriving part of the empire. She tries to think back and only
sees the city burning and people screaming. Kara says that something is wrong,
just as the Kryptonian drones land around them. Clark prepares to fight, but
Kara tells him that those are her fathers and she’s delayed them from Kandor
too long.
The cousins are taken to Kandor, a
space station orbiting a red planet. They’re brough to the Throne Room and Kara
bows to her ‘father.’ Clark is confused as to why he’d need to kneel before his
uncle, Zor-El, but Kara doesn’t even recognize that name. No, the ‘father’ she’s
been talking about is their emperor, Primus Brainiac. Brainiac introduces
himself to Kal-El. He explains that originally he was the AI that used to run
the Kryptonian Empire. His program ran every ship, city, and defense system in the
empire, he now controls Kandor and is the father of a wayward daughter.
Brainiac chastises Kara for going to Earth alone and taking the detour to
Thanagar, saying that they will deal with her lack of compliance later. He does
congratulate her for bringing Kal-El to him, though. Clark says that he isn’t going to conquer
Earth, but Brainiac tells the Son of Jor-El to be at ease. He says that he
worked with Jor-El on the Kryptonian council before it fell and knew him well,
as he did Clark’s mother, Lara. Brainiac says that he knew every member of the House
of El, and that the Empire he’s trying to build differs from the one his parents
knew. Brainiac dismisses Kara and says they’ll talk later. He offers to show Clark
his Krypton.
Brainiac takes Clark to a hologram
chamber. Inside are three aliens. One is a Parademon, a large insect like creature
that normally serves Darkseid of Apokolips. Another appears to be a monk in a
toga like robe, he’s credited as a Bolivaxian. And the final member is a
Thanagarian, a human-like alien with large bird wings. Brainiac says that they’re
here to measure Kal-El’s potential. He explains that warriors were all made
from Kryptonian memory scanning technology. The scans copied their victims mind
and are now the only things left of the peoples that did not comply with the old
Kryptonian empire. He says their hatred and anguish are perfect for training
warriors. The Monk attacks Clark, revealing that he has a Green Lantern Ring and
the ability to make Hard Light constructs. He strikes Clark in the chest hard twice
and throws energy blasts at him. Clark notices the Green Lantern is crying as
he prepares to attack Clark again. Clark says this is too Cruel, and Brainiac
counters cruel is a word created by the weak. Clark uses his freezing breath on
the Green Lantern, freezing him in place and locking out the program. The
hologram vanishes and we see a Brainiac drone on ice for a moment before the
Parademon charges Clark. The monster bug throws him around a bit. Clark says that
Kara promised that they were trying to bring back the science of Krypton, to
which Brainiac asks how Clark thought those advancements happened? He claims
that war was the engine that fueled the empire, HIS Empire. Clark heat visions
the Parademon, destroying it and says that Brainiac was the one to destroy
Thanagar. Brainiac says that Clark doesn’t understand anything as the
Thanagarian attacks him, bashing Clark’s skull into the ground. Brainiac says
that he doesn’t need Clark’s mind, though, just his body. The Thanagarian beats
his skull a few more times before Clark’s super mode activates and he shatters
it. Brainiac says that he’s been waiting for Clark and that with him he’ll rebuild
the empire. Clark refuses to be a weapon and tries to fight Brainiac but he
throws more drones at him. Brainiac says that he’ll rebuild the Empire starting
with Earth. Clark tries to stop him but Brainiac activates a red sun omega
field to strip him of his powers. The drones grab him. Brainiac says that
Jor-El was weak and that his dreams were small. Clark says he’ll stop Brainiac
and take Kara away from him. Brainiac says that he doesn’t need Clark’s
compliance, he just needs him to kneel.
Kara comes in after Clark has been
knocked out. Brainiac immediately berates her for disobeying orders and acting
willfully. He calls her a disappointment. Kara asks what’s going on and says
she needs to know. Brainiac says she doesn’t, she needs to comply. The three
connected circles that is Brainiac’s crest starts to glow and Kara’s eyes go
out of focus. She wakes up sometime
later in the throne room. She finds Kal-El in another container, asleep. She says
she doesn’t remember bringing him here. Brainiac comes in and says she did so
well bringing here cousin home. Kara is confused but agrees with him. Brainiac
says she’ll be venerated by all and that all will be model citizens of the
empire. Kara goes back to her ship and prepares to take off, but then notices
she’s holding the statue from Thanagar and Jimmy’s photo. She snaps out of the
mind control she’s under and flies to the planets she mentioned earlier,
finding all three in ruins. On Thanagar she returns to the wall and focuses hard
until she can see the mural on the wall. It depicts her laying waste to Thanagar,
brutally murdering its citizens with her heat vision. She drops to her knees
and starts sobbing, saying she couldn’t have done this, she doesn’t remember.
She flies into space, crying, asking Kal-El, no Clark, what she can do now. A
moment later the Amazo Jump Ship that was mentioned in the second episode comes
out of hyperspace. Inside are Jimmy and Lois… but also Monsieur Malla and The
Brain. How odd.
This episode was
another rollercoaster emotionally speaking. One half is a sort of lighthearted
story about Kara and Clark bonding as Kara shows him a few things about what it’s
like to be a Kryptonian. And the other half reveals the devastation that Kara
and Brainiac have wrought across at minimum three planets. I appreciate the
first half, as it shows Clark and Kara bonding. The two are fast friends, as
they bond over being biological relatives and from the mutual loneliness they’ve
felt over the years. The snowball fight in space was just so sweet. Which made
the sinister foreshadowing on the destroyed Thanagar all the more disturbing.
At this point, I’m sure we all knew that Kara either destroyed the planet
herself or that Brainiac had while Kara was still in training. It was still crazy
to see the destruction and the mural of it. Really makes me question what
happened to the Thanagarians. Like… are they all dead? Does Brainiac have they
working as slave labor somewhere? Are Hawkman and Hawkwoman lost in space somewhere?
Some many questions. And then there’s the Parademon and Green Lantern we see
later. The Parademon is simple enough to explain, in my humble opinion. I’m
about 75% certain at this point that the force that destroyed Krypton was Apokolips.
Kryptonians picked a fight with Darkseid and lost. As Parademons are his infantry,
it’d be relatively easy to get a brain scan of one once you’ve fought a few
hundred thousand. The more interesting one to me is the Green Lantern. The GLs
are an intergalactic peace keeping organization that uses the Green Light of Will
to spread peace and defend the innocent. And at some point, Kryptonians killed
one and scanned his brain to make an endlessly re-creatable clone. That’s screwed
up. And makes me wonder if an Earth GL arrives anytime soon if they won’t have
a kill on sight order for any Kryptonian survivors. Something to think about
for season 3. I liked how Brainiac is characterized here. Much like in Superman:
The Animated Series (1996-00, they’ve combined Brainiac (a superman villain
from a wholly different alien species in the comics and holder of the bottled city
of Kandor) and the Eradicator, the AI system that ran Krypton. Combining the
two makes sense as Brainiac has a more memorable name and his own origins are
largely unimportant so long as he’s conquering worlds and stealing their
knowledge. It was interesting to see him with Kara, as even when he was putting
on a more caring façade, it seemed clear that he was a very stern ‘parent’ and
I’m honestly shocked Kara had enough autonomy to disobey him in the first
place. But I suppose whatever sort of implant or hypnotic suggestion he used on
her makes her less effective, so he uses it sparingly. I’m going to bet right
now that we’ll learn that he views Kara more as like a pet than anything else,
and that he’s most disappointed that the only other Kryptonian they could find is
her close kin. Since that makes breeding more Kryptonians difficult, which I
can guarantee you was part of Brainiac’s plan at some point before realizing only
two got off Krypton in time. The tease for the next episode, Jimmy and Lois
arriving with Malla and the Brain was nice too. It’ll be curious to see what
shenanigans they got up to when they were stealing that space ship. More on
that next time, have a good night.
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Twitter: @BasicsSuperhero
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