And Sometimes I Despair

So I'm watching a Superman cartoon on netflix online. This is about the time when Superman dies, but, like soap operas, no one in comic books ever really dies. So don't get all weepy.

There are more absurdities than you might expect.

We start out with Lex Luther (bald white guy who's the standard villian) set up as a philanthropist. Don't worry, comic books don't bother with multi-dimensional characters. We quickly learn that Lex is a bad guy when he randomly kills subordinates, is rude to old people, kicks puppies, etc.

Superman's been busy since the last time I saw him. He's dating Lois Lane, a mini-skirt wearing reporter. I mentioned the mini-skirt right? I'm kind of uncomfortable with how much I liked that on a cartoon. She either has or hasn't figured out that Superman is actually Clark Kent. The story meanders around that point. While Superman and Lois are vacationing in Antarctica with Superman's gay robot pal, Lex is busy tunneling down to the center of the earth. To be perfectly clear, he's got a full company of no-name flunkies drilling for him, and we all know what happens to no-name flunkies performing esoteric tasks while the hero of the story relaxes...yeah.

So they're drilling away, complaining about the heat, when DUN DUN DUN, they find something. Being flunkies, they establish the dramatic video link to Lex, then promptly decide to shoot the big scary looking thing with a fucking laser. So it starts spraying some strange gas and a goofy hologram movie of an alien pops up. It's screaming gibberish at them, which everyone but the flunkies are smart enough to figure out means, "You dumb fucks. Why the hell did you shoot this thing? You idiots are screwed now."

Sure enough a big spiky thing punches its way out of what we now know was a prison and kills all of the flunkies in the exact same way. Seriously, like 20 flunkies get done in with punch after punch. Seems like we could have expressed that more concisely. It's like making brownies. The instructions say, "Stir until evenly mixed." They don't say, "Stir. Stir. Stir. Stir. Stir..."

Anyway, flunkies are dead, and Lex's view screen has dramatically gone to static. The big bad thing 'Doomsday' wanders out of the cave and starts killing everything.

I can't emphasize this point enough.

It kills everything. It stops to kill a deer for Christs's sake. Now here's the first big absurdity. This thing is literally trying to kill every living thing it see's, and it's doing it with its signature punch to the head.

I figure it could have kept itself busy in the forest for months. Rabbits, squirrels, beetles, worms. He's an unstoppable killing machine, but he has no ability to prioritize.

In spite of that, Doomsday somehow makes it to the city overnight. Somehow or other the army has decided to stop him with a whole bunch of tanks even though no one else seems to know he's coming. Right about now Superman should be getting nooky, which you can only assume he has to realllllllllllllllly careful about, but his robot friend interrupts them to let them know that the city's being a little messed up. Here's absurdity number 2. We learn that in addition to basic butler and sex-interruption skills, the robot knows everything about everything. He tells Superman all about Doomsday.

Doomsday was created as a super-weapon as an alien race, but it turns out that he couldn't tell friend from foe. Can you imagine being on the engineering team that developed this guy?
Project Sponsor, "Hey I hear you've got some good news on that teleportation system you've been working on."
Engineer, "Well, we went another way. We actually created a weapon."
"Like a teleportation gun? That'd be cool."
Engineer, "More like a guy."
"I don't really..."
"Here, just take a look. It's really great."
Sponsor, "Wow, he's big... and blue...and he's a little spiky. He's supposed to be spiky?"
"Oh yeah, we calculated that it makes him look 14% scarier."
"So he carries the teleporter? I'm still a little confused on that."
"Oh no, he's the weapon. He's completely unstoppable and he punches really, really hard."
Sponsor, "That's ... well that's ... you know that we as a society evolved past the need for war like, 10,000 years ago right? What are we supposed to do with this thing?"
Engineer, "Oh god, you can't 'DO' anything with it. The thing's crazy. See, it can't tell friend from foe, so it will just kill everything it sees."
Sponsor, "There has never been someone more fired than you are right now."

Back to the robot who knows all this. Somehow he decided not to let Superman know. They've been roommates for who knows how long and he never mentions that the one thing in the galaxy that can kill Superman is buried under a farm in Jersey?

To be continued...