Being a hero is about the shortest lived profession on earth.

Today's title comes from the great Will Rogers, and it's a fitting summation of the comic we're going to go through, Superman: Kal. This Elseworlds book came out in 1995 and was written by Dave Gibbons (yes, the same Dave Gibbons who did the art for Watchmen) with art by Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez.

As you know if you've been following my blog, I have a lot of affinity for the Elseworld books, and this one (with the possible exception of the pirate Batman story I shared on Talk Like a Pirate Day) is my favorite. My poor copy is so worn from all the rereads it has had over the years. I've never been a huge Superman fan, but I love this one because it kind of gives us the better parts of Superman (his origin, the powers) without the not-so-good parts (the Boy Scout, the overwhelming patriotism). So, here we go!

The story is told as a flashback from one character to another after the day's work is done & they are waiting for dinner to finish cooking; we won't find out who these people are until the end. The story opens with a dynamic page showing how Kal came to be on Earth:

Like in our time, the ship lands in a farmer's field except that it lands in medieval England where it's found by John and his wife (alas, poor Martha doesn't get a name in this book). They take the baby in, though John has great reservations. He feels it's all too much like witchcraft, and he buries the ship in his field so no one will find it and burn him at the stake for it.

The couple soon see that the child is not quite of this world as he never gets the common ailments and his skin remains unmarked by pox; not only that, but he's incredibly strong. Still fearful of a fiery death, John tells the boy to hide his powers.

Kal reaches his teenage years with little troubles until one particular Michaelmas Eve when Oll the blacksmith and his son, Jamie (this world's Jimmy Olson), come for their yearly call to shoe John's horse.

The two boys go out into the fields to play when they run into a big problem: the bull has escaped and runs straight for them. Kal uses his vast strength to send the bull up into the tree they're standing by. Oll had been discussing with John taking on Kal as an apprentice, and this clenches it for him. Oddly, Oll finds nothing strange in a young boy being able to put a bull into a tree; he just sees a strong lad who can help with his forge. John protests losing Kal as a farmhand, but Oll promises to make it worth his while and to allow Kal to stay through Yuletide so that the farm can be put into shape.

And so, young Kal comes to live with Oll and his family in the castle town of Lexford. He quickly gets introduced to Baron Luthor's way of ruling when his guards literally (and drunkenly) bump into Kal as he tries to unload wood from the wagon.

But aside from that, Kal soon finds life in Lextown to be pretty pleasant. He fits in well with Oll's family, and his strength is put into good use at the forge. Oh, and the ladies of Lextown find him rather attractive.

The next summer, an emmisary from Baron Luthor decrees that a tournament and joust will be held at Midsummer's Fair in honor of Lady Loisse's sixteenth birthday. Jamie tells Kal that Loisse is the daughter of their murdered protector, Lord Layne, and is being held captive by Luthor. The girls of town and Jamie urge Kal to enter the contests of strength, but he is apprehensive, remembering how his father told him to hide his abilities.

Midsummer comes, and so does Cupid: Kal immediately falls in love with Loisse at first sight. And we finally see Lord Luthor. His guards try to get the crowd to give him three cheers, but they refuse, and he responds, "The rabble don't have to like me. . . they just have to fear me." Oooh. . . We see that Loisse cannot stand Luthor but that he wishes to marry her now that she's of age (you'd think something like that wouldn't matter to a villain like him).

So, the tournement begins. Luthor's men win every event (the only knights in the realm are actually squires; Luthor had all of Lord Layne's men murdered when he took over). Kal and friends enjoy watching the matches, but one little announcement that Lady Loisse will give a prize to the winner of the feats of strength drives Kal forward into the fray.

He easily wins every match, earning Luthor's ire and the crowd's adoration. Luthor sends in Ulf, one of his best men, to wrestle Kal with the orders to stop him. Ulf reveals a hidden spike in his wristband that is poisoned with snake venom and drives it into Kal's chest, but the spike just turns when it hits his flesh, and Kal bests Ulf, winning the tournament. The audience starts to chant Kal's name as he approaches Lady Loisse for his prize (a satchel of money tied with her ribbon), and she seems to fall in love with him, tool. Luthor gets pissed off at the mooney eyes they're making at each other, and Kal seems to grow ill at his approach. Perhaps it's the strange green stone Luthor wears around his neck. Luthor takes the moment of weakness to kick Kal back to the crowd, and Oll and family take Kal back home.

He finds new interest in life post-meeting Loisse. He doesn't even keep his prize money; he splits it between John & Oll and only keeps her ribbon for himself. Life goes on as normal until he receives a message from one of Loisse's ladies to meet him in the woods. This is one of my favorite little scenes, largely because of the art. I've never seen Lois in any universe looking more beautiful than she does here, and I love the little variation on the trope of Superman & Lois flying together.

Meanwhile, Luthor and his men run into a little something unexpected on their hunt: the dogs find the ship that brought Kal to Earth. He orders his men to fetch him the farmer that owns the land, and they bring forth John and Luthor begins questioning him.

John tells Luthor that the craft fell from the sky, and, of course, Luthor doesn't really believe him, but one of his men points out that the gem Luthor wears around his neck fell from the sky, too. The men marvel over how hard the metal is, and John's wife manages to save the day by mentioning that her son works as a blacksmith and they could make Luthor a suit of armor from the metal. Luthor orders John to clean the object up and have it ready for them to collect at dawn.

The next morning, Luthor and his men bring the object to Oll's blacksmith shop and order him to make a suit of armor from it.

Oll has no luck in even putting a scratch on the ship. Kal recovers from his weakness and attempts to break apart the metal. Oll and Jamie have to get the forge blazing hot for Kal to work on it, but the heat doesn't seem to affect him; in fact, heat almost seems to come out of his eyes, and the metal begins to bend under his hammer.

After a number of days, Oll and his young apprentice appear before Luthor with the suit of armor, and Luthor immediately orders the suit to be placed upon him. Once armored up, he orders one of his guards to strike him, but his sword shatters upon impact.

He then tosses Kal an ax and orders him to take a turn at attacking him, but the weakness has hit Kal once more. Loisse pleads on his behalf, telling Luthor that Oll & Kal deserve rewards, not blows. Luthor tells Oll to name his price, but Oll demurs, insisting that Kal did all the work, so Luthor asks him what he wishes. He replies that the only thing he desires is the hand of Loisse in marriage. Luthor rages, but Loisse rushes forward and accepts. Since this all happened in front of the court, Luthor cannot go back on his word, so the pair are married.

The celebrations are bright and cheerful. John and his wife rejoice at their son's fortune, Jamie parties with a couple of young ladies, and Oll and his wife dance, his wife telling him to be happy for Kal (Oll's a little depressed that he lost a great apprentice). However, the celebrations are brief: at midnight, the bells toll and Luthor appears on the scene.

Luthor invokes the droit de seigneur, the right that a manor lord has to take any new bride to his bed on her wedding night. Kal tries to protect Loisse, but the gemstone affects him once more, and Luthor sweeps Loisse onto his horse and heads back to his castle.

The next scene is one of the most heartbreaking I've ever seen in any book. Luthor tries to force himself on Loisse, insisting that all her protestations hide the love she feels for him, but she tries to fight him off, bloodying his face in the process. That goes too far for him, and he replies in kind. Just a heads up that these panels are rough and triggering but also very powerful, which is why I'm sharing them.

Back at Oll's home, Kal has begun to come out of his stupor, and his first thought is for Loisse. Just as he begins to rise to go searching for her, the door is kicked in by a group of Luthor's men. They have come to arrest Kal. He fights back, asking repeatedly where Loisse is. Alas, he soon receives his answer, but not from them. One of her ladies-in-waiting has arrived to tell Kal of Loisse's murder. We get one little cliched panel:

And so Kal begins a one-man war against Luthor. Well, not completely one-manned as the villagers have had enough and join in to revolt against Luthor. His men try to hold the castle, but Kal makes easy work of the drawbridge and portcullis. He no longer holds back his inhuman strength.

The men feel that their fighting against witchcraft, and some of them flee, but a group of those who remain pour down a pot of molten lead onto Kal. Other than burning off his clothing, it has no effect on him, and he flies up into Luthor's tower.

The few remaining guards scatter at this sight, and Luthor is left alone to deal with Kal. Kal initially gets the upper hand, but the strange stone around Luthor's neck begins to impact him, and Luthor quickly realizes that. He dives at Kal, driving the stone into his chest, but Kal's sword manages to penetrate Luthor's impenetrable armor.

And so we see that the narrator has been Jamie. He wraps up the story by telling us that Kal wasn't dead when they reached him, but his wound was mortal. He survived long enough for one of Loisse's ladies-in-waiting to tell him that they had recovered her body and buried it in Lake Lexford properly. His final request was to be buried aside of her in the lake, and so they buried him in the strange armor there.

In the final pages, we see that the story has been told to a young boy. He asks what happened to the sword, and Jamie tells him that Kal put it somewhere safe, in the hopes that it might serve someone else in need one day. Jamie tells the lad to finish his dinner:

When I reread this today, I was actually a little surprised by the final pages because when I saw the boy, I was expecting the boy to be Arthur. Gibbons nicely subverted that trope with his use of Merlin instead.

Okay, gotta take care of a little business here before we go: you've noticed I've not been real regular with my posting, and I apologize for that. Things have been a little crazy and stressful for me in real life, and I was finding myself getting stressed out by feeling I had to make a post every day here, and that's not what this blog is for. I'm still going to try and make a post every day (at least Mon-Fri), but I may not stick to the planned schedule. For instance, it's kind of limiting having Wednesday be Deadpool day. I mean, you know I love that crazy man, but being honest, there's not a ton of Deadpool material out there, and I haven't read all of it that is there.

So, I may deviate from the Mutant Monday, Wacky Wade Wednesday & Fables Friday set up in order to bring you a post every day. I'll still try to bring you something from those areas at least once a month, but you're going to see a little more variety here, hopefully. I'd like to do a little Bone soon, some Astro City, maybe even (if I feel daring enough) a smidgeon of Lost Girls. Hopefully, this will expose you guys to some books you haven't heard of and shine a little light on some lost gems.