Adapting the chapters five through nine of GLADIATOR in light of the theory that Clark Kent and Hugo Danner are one and the same...

Wylie in GLADIATOR described Clark/Hugo thusly at eighteen. "Extremely dark of hair, of eyes and skin, moderately tall, and shaped with that compact, breathtaking symmetry that the male figure sometimes assumes, a brillantly devised, aggressive head topping his broad shoulders, graceful, a man vehemently alive, a man with the promise of a young God."

Also: "His emotions ran through his eyes lke hot steel in a dark mould. People avoided those eyes; they contained a statement from which ordinary souls shrank.

"His skin glowed and sweated into a shiny red-brown. His voice was deep and alluring."

A better prose description of the Superman of the comics would be hard to find. The physical description of "Hugo Danner" and the drawings of "Clark Kent" as Superman match almost exactly.

He had grown so handsome that the matrons of Smallville/Indian Creek as well as the adolescent girls followed him with wayward glances, when men found him a good and comprehending companion for any sort of sport or adventure. His teachers observed that his intelligence was almost embarassingly acute. He played on three teams and was an officer of his class each year.

I cannot agree with Wylie that this was a "natural" progression, that from the moody and melancholy child that this developement is natural. Yet, if one thinks he finally had contacts with his peers, in the Legion of Super-Heroes---if he had seen the far future, and gotten glimpses of what mankind could become, and gotten the cosmopolitan touch such contact would bring---that would explain a lot. If in the far future he could have finally used his strength to its fullest and palled around with friends whom he had to conceal nothing---that would explain his rather startling socialization in other circumstances such as high school.

He was in love with the girl Wylie called "Anna Blake", and whom Bill Finger (originally) and later Jerry Siegel called "Lana Lang". He had been attracted to her since they were six. Finger heard about Lana (perhaps via Bruce Wayne) although very little of her comic book portrayal was true. She had been blonder as a child, but a "strawberry blonde" whose hair grew "darker" as she grew older---into a true redhead. "Her figure was rounded and tall." "Her eyes were still as blue and her voice, shown of its faltering youngness, was sweet and clear. She was undoubtedly the prettiest girl in high school..."

She had first let him kiss him when they were sixteen. When they got to be eighteen, in a small town like Indian Creek/Smallville, where girls got married at an early age....

One night on a narrow river in a canoe, he saw more. After that night they learned all the "technique of love-making this side of consummation". Finally, one night her parents and brother would not be back till the next day. "Then he took her and loved her."

That night, he realized a certain path of life had been followed to its conclusion. He felt initiated into the adult world, and it seemed so natural, so sweet...he threw a great stone into the river and laughed and walked on.

Through the summer that followed, their affair ran its course, loving each other violently and incessantly, despite the open "humphs" of village gossips and several serious talks with her father. And, despite that I know it is the epitome of geekdom to speculate on Superman's sex life, I'm going to have to...

Larry Niven speculated that Superman could not consummate a normal relationship in "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex". Of course, much of his article was influenced by the strength-scale of the Superman of the late fifties and early sixties, who could move worlds, the Superman who was nine-tenths fictional. Quite frankly, even if his ejaculate came at a hundred times faster than normal men's, it wouldn't be enough to harm a woman, much less blow off the top of her head. The initial spurt of ejaculate, as clocked by Herant Katchadourian and Donald Lunde in "The Fundamentals of Human Sexuality," travel at 28 mph --

Wait a second...

Hmmm.

A hundredfold increase would be 2800 mph.

And the damage done increases with the square of the muzzle velocity...

Let me take that back.......

Nevertheless, "Hugo Danner" never killed or seriously hurt any of the women he slept with. Again, if he is the result of deliberate genetic engineering, if his strength is a result of aliens tinkering with a branch of the human race, wanting to make him a more efficient slave, what good would it do to strengthen the muscles of his reproductive organs to the same extent as his arms or legs?

It appears that Clark/"Hugo"'s lovemaking capabilities, may have been slighter better than most men's, but nothing on the same scale as his other abilities.

However, I bet if he used condoms, more than the normal share burst in the middle of his lovemaking...although it appears that "occasionally he thought he was sterile, with an inclination to be pleased rather than concerned if it was true."

Actual, this relative infertility was due to a human species being genetically altered and seperated for thousands of years from the main human race. Kryptonians and earthly humans weren't seperate species yet, but crossbreeds would be very rare.

The late fifties'/early sixties' Krypton had every form of Kryptonian life develop super-powers, including the ability to travel at translight speeds and stay in the hearts of suns without injury, so Niven figured Kryptonian sperm would have the same qualities. Yet that is a result of later exagerration of other writers, such as Otto Binder. If Superman's strength is the result of actual genetic engineering, there would be no need for such genetic engineering to make the sperm super-strong, nor the muscles of the penis the equivelent of a cannon.

As whether he would be able to keep control of himself enough to keep from crushing or gutting a woman in the middle of the sexual act---which Niven compared to a "pleasurable epileptic attack"....and there's no doubt that Superman could easily crush a woman then....all I can say is that in many ways Clark/Hugo had more control over "involuntary" motions than normal humans. In the second encounter with Luthor, for instance, he showed he could halt his own heartbeat, at will. So I have little doubt, considering the evidence from other sources such as GLADIATOR, that he was able to consummate his lovemaking quite well.

Indeed, the criteria for his physical conduct being vague in his mind, Clark "did not guage it correctly. And he did not realize that the very ardour of his relation with her was abnormal," as Wylie discreetly put it. And considering the "ardour" of a normal eighteen-year-old male, if Clark was abnormal in that respect--- it's small wonder that Lana/Anna "lost weight and became irritable." "Her family decided to send her away, believing the opposite of the truth responsible for her nervousness and weakness."

They quarreled. She departed. They exchanged insincere letters...and then he received a broken, gasping, apologetic letter from her saying that she was going to marry a man she had met and known three weeks. Everyone was outraged at Lana/Anna...and astounded that Clark bore the shock so courageously.

Disgusted a little with himself, certainly with Indian Creek/Smallville, he decided to go to college far away from the scenes of his youth. He chose "Webster University", as Wylie called it, for the greatness of its name. It was eighty miles from New York City, in the East. One September morning he packed his bag...and boarded the train going Eastward.

"Webster University" could be one of many colleges---many universities have "greatness of their name"--although perhaps the three pre-eminent ones of the time were Princeton, Yale, and Harvard. From the clues Wylie gave us, by calling it "Webster University"---Noah Webster himself went to Yale, and whereas Princeton is only fifty miles from NYC, and Harvard over a hundred miles, Yale is exactly eighty miles from NYC. It fits all the requirements, is the sort of Ivy League school so many millionaire's sons, like Lefty Foresman, would go to--- except that in Clark's final game for the university, they played Yale. Is that misdirection on Wylie's part, or is the distance from NYC the misdirection? Patient research continues, but for now, "Webster University"'s true identity must be considered unsolved.

When he arrived at Webster University, a Lefty Foresman asked him,

"Are you strong, freshman?"

For an instant stunned, thinking they had guessed, he found they were just hazing him, making him lug a trunk on his back behind the elder classman. He repeatedly refused a rest. When he was finally told to put the trunk down, he didn't obey. Instead he swung it up on his shoulder with precision and ease, and held it with one hand while he said,

"I'm not tired, honestly. Where do we go from here?"

Lefty felt Clark's biceps and grew pale. "Those muscles in action lost their feel of flesh and became like stone," Wylie wrote. They immediately took Clark to see their coach, Mr. Woodman.

They found one discrepency about Clark---though he looked one hundred and sixty pounds, he weighed two hundred and ten.

One of the best sprinters on the team paced Clark. Yet Clark easily kept pace with him, even when he went all-out, and Clark ended thirty feet in the lead. Woodman had Clark run against time, and without a human runner to guage against, Clark broke the world's record for the track by a second and three-fifths.(Of course, Clark was holding himself back.) He did a running jump of twenty-eight feet and a standing jump of eleven feet. His passing and kicking were equally extraordinary.

Later this afternoon Clark made his room in Thompson Dormitory. He had arranged his classes: trigonometry, English, French, Latin, biology, physics, economics, hygiene.

Mr. Woodman confessed some misgivings to the other players about Clark--

"Wait till tomorrow when you see him in action. It'll terrify you. Because you'll have the same weird feeling I have--that he isn't doing one tenth of what he can do--that he's really just playing with us all."

Yet when Lefty and Chuck questioned Clark, he just replied,

"Ever since I was a kid, I've been stronger than most people. And I probably have a little edge still. Just an accident, that's all. Is that what you were wondering about?"

Clark's college life proceeded in a way that Webster University knew his presence. The Psi Deltas, which had been Lefty's fraternity, saw that he met their entire personnel at Webster. The professors were urbane, brillant, capable of all understanding.

There was a Revolutionary War cannon that the sophmores guarded against the freshmen, who tried continuously to steal it. One night, he emerged in a heavy rain wearing a slicker. Then, when the guards were distracted by a flare he bought, he leaped over the three stories of Webster Hall, landing ten feet from the cannon. When the sophmore guards returned, the cannon had vanished. When dawn came and the clouds lifted, "there, on the roof of Webster Hall, with the numerals of the freshman class painted on its muzzle,was the old weapon."

He made a touchdown in each of the first two games he played. In November they took him to New York to celebrate the entrance of a new chapter to Psi Delta, where his fraternity had hired a private railroad car. They rode a omnibus to a theatre and saw the matinee of a musical show. Then they went to a restaurant and a private dining-room, and for the first time in his life, Clark got drunk. The toastmaster had invited all the girls from the musical to a private party with the fraternity brothers.

One girl, named Bess, took him to her apartment.

When he woke up the next morning, he was sick with nausea. Then he noticed she was missing---as was the fifty dollars that had been in his trousers pocket. That was a huge sum in 1911-1912.

He was seperated from his fraternity brothers, had no money for transportation back to campus, or even a meal. It served him right, he thought--he had been a fool. He could run the distance between there and Webster in under two hours easily, but people would see him and know he was running at an amazing, unnatural pace, so that was out.

A little man with darting eyes asked him for a dime for a cup of coffee. Instead Clark took him to a nearby restaurant. When they dined, Clark in his inexperience, tried to explain to the waiter that he'd mail them the cost of the meal, but the waiter didn't buy it.

"So! One of them guys, eh? Tryin' to get away with it when I'm here, huh? Well, I'll tell you how you're gonna pay. You're gonna pay this check with a bloody mush, see?"

The large waiter's fist came forward, but an arm like stone blocked it. Clark's free hand barely flicked to the waiter's jaw---and the waiter rolled under the table.

The little man inspired by Clark's "boxing", led him several blocks, to a sign that said:

"Battling Ole Swenson will meet all comers in this gynasium at three this afternoon and eight tonight. Fifty dollars will be given to any man, black or white, who can stay three rounds with him, and one hundred cash dollars to the man who knocks out Battling Ole Swenson, the Terror of the Docks."

Swenson was six nine and weighed two hundred and eighty. His manager thought he would "kill" Clark, but Clark insisted.

Oddly enough, when he entered the ring, his keens wabbled andhis hand trembled, feeling weak and human before the huge bruiser. He whispered to himself:

"Quit it, you fool; you know better. You can't even be hurt."

The contrast of the two men was laughable to the crowd, and Clark's reflexes were so fast he could dodge every blow. It was the third round, and Clark hadn't even tried to hit the Swede, when a woman yelled,

"Keep on running, yellow baby!"

Stung, he fought back. "Like hail they began to land on the Swede. Bewilderingly, everywhere. No hope of guarding. Every blow smashed, stung, ached. No chance to swing back. Cover up. His arms went over his face. He felt rivets drive into his kidneys. He reached out and clenched." The crowd thought the battle was over, that Ole would break the comparatively little man's back. They saw Clark's arms spring into knots and then Clark's fist shot between their chests and Ole was thrown violently backwards. The Swede lunged back, crimson to kill, one arm guarding his jaw. Clark said to himself,

"Easy now, for the love of God, easy."

Clark's gloves went out to the hand on the chin, lifting him when it connected. The Sweded left the floor--and then crumpled slowly, with a series of bumping sounds.

Clark knew nothing of fighting. He didn't need to.

With the money he won, he returned to Webster. Two decades from now, Superman would help Larry Trent regain the championship by posing as the expert boxer. Memories of this first match would constantly recur.

Peter Parker, fifty years later, would similarly face a wrestler in a contest for money, and prove his new powers against him.

After that, college life returned to normal. He had a short affair with a cousin of Lefty's, named Iris...on condition that he win in football that night. The dark-haired willowy woman met him in a translucent kimono of pale-coloured silk at her hotel room. "She taught him a great many things that night. And Iris learned something too, that she never came back to "Hugo", and kept the long for him as a sort of memory which she made hallowed in a shown soul. It was, for her, a single asceticism in a rather selfish life."

She didn't answer his letters. He realized his subdued fierceness was a vehement fire to women, and that his fiercer appetite was the cause of his early growth in a knowledge of them. Whereas other men his age were fumbling around in the secrets of sex, he learned well--and abnormally. It was another difference between him and his fellows.

In March, he had a sort-of relationship with Janice, the golden-haired brown-eyed daughter of his French professor. He contemplated even proposing to her, but found he couldn't do that, nor seduce her. He slowly seperated himself from her.

He attended his classes, played on the basketball team (what a temptation to show how he could really leap!) and tried tentatively to write for the campus newspaper, his first try at journalism, which would serve him well later in life.

A day or two before the end of school, he received a letter from his father. The upshot of it was that college was proving much more expensive than the Kents had thought. Jonathan had gambled what was left of the original college fund in a stock---which later proved worthless. Jonathan wrote,

"You might prefer to remain in the East to earn what you can."

Clark was aghast. Despite having a frame capable of smashing into banks and taking the needed money without fear of punishment--Clark began to wonder dismally if he was able even to support himself. Clark was frightened. Then he calmed down. He did have some money in the bank--he had learned that after the experience with Bessie...and was sure he could get a job using physical labor somewhere. He hated the idea of being a working student during the year, though, feeling the others in his fraternity would look down at him, or worse still, offer him money.

He wrote a letter back, apologizing for the condition he unknowingly created, and in which he expressed "every confidence that he could take care of himself in the future".

(BTW, does anyone believe a college professor, no matter how unworldly, would so badly underestimate the cost of a college education for an Ivy League university? But if "Abednego Danner" is really the farmer Jonathan Kent, that makes perfect sense...)

He first looked for Bessie, the girl who had stolen fifty dollars from him, but couldn't find her, although he had heard she went to Coney Island. He heard the roar of the pitchman above the merry-go-round's whir and a band's strident march, the smell of stale beer and frying food.

"The strongest man in the world, ladies and gentlemen, come and see Thorndyke, the great professor of physical culture from Munich, Germany. He can bend a spike in his bare hands, an elephant can pass over his body without harming him, he can lift a weight of one ton..."

Clark laughed. Clark wondered what kind of strong man he would make. He saw himself pictured in gaudy reds and yellows, holding up an enormous weight...

Then he saw a girl, sitting alone---not Bessie, and yet...

"Hello tough."

"Hello."

"Wanna buy me a beer?"

Her hair was black and straight, her mouth was straight and painted scarlet, her eyes were hard and dark, but her body was a series of soft curves that fitted exquisitely into her black silk dress. "He tortured himself looking at her."

"You can buy me a sandwich, if you want. I ain't eaten today."

She ate ravenously, and then she rose and said,

"You can come with me if you wanna."

"Have you had enough to eat?"

"It'll do."

They went down a side street, entered a dingy frame house, entered her apartment.

"I didn't mean to rush."

"Well, I did. Gotta make some more. It'll be--two bucks."

Then she wept.

"Aw hell. I guess I'm gonna make a lousy tart. I was in a show, an' I got busted out for not bein' nice to the manager. I says to myself, 'Well, what am I goin' to do?' An' I starts to get hungry this morning. So I says to myself,'Well, there ain't but one thing to do, Charlotte but to get you a room,' I says, an' here I am, so help me God."

She removed her dress with a sweeping motion. Clark looked at her with pity and remorse.

"Listen. I have a roll in my pocket. I'm damn glad I came here first. I haven't got a job, but I'll get one in the morning. And I'll get you a decent room and stake you till you get work. God knows, I picked you up for what I thought you were, Charlotte, and God knows too that I haven't any noble nature. But I'm not going to let you go on the street simply because you're broke. Not when you hate it so much. Let's go out and get a decent dinner."

"You mean--you mean you want me to go out and eat--now?"

"Sure. Why not?"

"But you ain't--?"

"Forget it. Come on."

He ordered a huge meal for her, and pie and cheese and beer for himself. She told him of her life in Brooklyn, how her father took to drink, and her French mother left with "a gent from Astoria" and how she kept house for the old man "until he got funny with me"...of a life in burlesque.

They went out and saw the attractions, including the strong man act,which Clark watched with a critical eye. They danced and a "tough" tried to cut in.

"You can't refuse me, see? I guess you got me wrong."

"Beat it," Clark said. "Before I take a poke at you."

The intruder's swinging fist missed Clark by a large margin, and Clark dropped him with a single clean blow. Charlotte was clearly smitten. She didn't want to let him go,let him out of her sight. When she found out he didn't have a hotel room yet,

"Then---come up an' stay with me. Honest. I'm all right. I can prove it to you. It'll be doin' me a favor."

"I ought not to, Charlotte."

She kissed him. "You gotta, kid. You're all I ever had. Please, please."

That night he watched her disrobe again, but what a difference--so willingly, so eagerly. "It ain't much of a dump, baby, but I'll make you like it."

Much later, in the darkness, she asked, "Say, mister, what's your name?"

The next morning, they both went to the manager of one of the largest side shows. Clark introduced himself as "Hogarth Smith" and Charlotte as his wife, and as a helpmate in his act. The manager asked what kind of act?

"A strong-man act."

"I'd like to have a good strong man, yes. The show needs one. But you're not the bird. You haven't the beef."

Clark bent down and without evidence of effort he lifted the manager and his chair high over his head with one hand.

"Let me down!"

Swinging him through the air in a wide arc, Clark said,

"I say, mister, that I'm three times stronger than that German strongman. I want your job. If I don't look strong enough, I'll wear padded tights. And I'll give you a show that'll be worth the admission. But I want a slice of the entrance price---and maybe a seperate tent, see? You'll never be sorry you took me on. I can bend a railroad rail---not a spike. I can lift a full-grown horse with one shoulder. I can chin myself with my little finger. I can set a bear trap with my teeth--I can push up just twice as much weight as anyone else in the game and you can print a challenge on my tent. I can pull a boa constrictor straight..."

Three o'clock that afternoon, he gave "an exhibition of strength the like of which had never been seen in any museum of human abnormalities." Of course he got the job---fifty a week (a large sum for the time) and ten per cent of the gate receipts.

He also made a friend...Valentine Mitchel, a small man with water-pale eyes and a white skin, also a college man, who studies at the School of Design in the winter, and during the summer did signs and portraits for the shows. Their common academic background drew them together.

The gala opening of Hogarth's Studio of Strength a few days later proved even more successful that Smoots, the manager, hoped. Charlotte was there in a short black dress and red sash. Pamphlets were given away, supposedly giving away "Hogarth's" secret for phenomenal muscle power. His muscular efforts he "assumed a slow painful motion that exaggerated its difficulty".

The next two months were full, leaving in his memory a sense of completeness. Yet when it got to be August, he became acutely aware of how little Charlotte would fit into his life at Webster, and, unknown to him, she also realized that in any place other than Coney Island, she would be a liability to him. Charlotte instead slowly hinted to Valentine Mitchel how lonely she would be when Clark left.

Then, on a night in early September, Clark was lifting the horse on one shoulder (they used a special harness so as not to let the horse be hurt) when some college kids came in, and then in surprise, called out his real name...in Lefty's voice.

It was Lefty, Chuck, Iris, and some other college kids. He and Charlotte went out with the others afterwards, and Lefty listened to the tale of Clark's financial woes.

"Why didn't you tell us? My father is an alumnus and he'd put up five thousand a year, if necessary, to see you kept on the football team."

Clark laughed.

"You don't think I'd take it, Lefty?"

"Why not? No, I suppose you'd be just the Goddamned kind of fool that wouldn't."

Iris remarked icily about Charlotte, and it was obvious that Charlotte was painfully out-of-place with the others. He went to work that morning concerned with receipts, refurbishings, and cleaning. He came back from lunch to tell her the truth about his life and its requirements and let her decide.

She was gone. There were two messages left. One was from Valentine Mitchel.

"Charlotte and I have fallen in love with each other and I've run away with her. I almost wish you'd come after us and kill me. I hate myself for betraying you. But I love her, so I cannot help it. I've learned to see in her what you first saw in her. Goodbye, good luck."

Charlotte's was much shorter and more poignant, written under Valentine's eyes.

"Goodbye, ddarling. I do not love you any more. C."

He sobbed, though he had known for some time a parting of some sort would be inevitable. He withdrew the money he saved, nearly eight hundred dollars. It took him a while on the trip to Webster, but he walked in its gates feeling a great pride in Charlotte and in his love for her.

The second year of college was less satisfying than the first. The captain of the team, Jerry Painter, cursed in open jealousy of Clark, vying hopeless with a man who was a god. He had to pretend to pant, to feign physical distress, but other players were jackstraws against a giant. There was no glory in this. He loved Webster, wanted to give it his best--

"He wanted passionately to be able to give that---to cover the earth, making men glad and bringing a revolution into their lives, to work himself with a fury and to fatique his incredible sinews, to end with the feeling of a race well run, a task nobly executed." Yet he couldn't do that in mere sports---the muscles of men couldn't oppose him.

He had a talk with the coach, Mr. Woodman. He wanted to be let off on the last game of the season, the one against Yale. Wylie did a fictionalized version of the talk, based on his premise that "Hugo Danner" was a biological experiment.

"Lefty says you want us to start without you next week. What's the big idea?"

"I don't know. I thought the other birds would like a shot at Yale without me. They can do it."

"That's pretty generous of you, Clark. Is there any other reason?"

"Not--that I can explain."

"Listen, Clark. I want to ask you a question. But, first, I want you to promise you'll give me a plain answer."

"I'll try."

"That won't do."

"Well---I can't promise."

"I'll ask it anyway. You can answer or not---just as you wish. I'll have to tell you something first, Clark. When you went away last summer, I took a trip to Colorado. To Smallville. I met your father and your mother. I told them I knew you. I did my best to gain their confidence. You see, Clark, I've watched you with a more skillful eye than most people. I've seen you do things, a few little things, that weren't---well--that weren't--"

"Natural?"

"That's the best word, I guess. You were never like my other boys in any case. So I thought I'd find out what I could. I must admit my efforts were a failure. But I did find out some things. Do you want me to stop?"

"No."

"I talked to lots of people. I found out you were an orphan. I talked to the doctor who had been at the orphan asylum, Dr. Erskine, and the nurses. About a baby who could lift a chest of drawers over his head. There was also talk of a big shooting star---that fell near there---the night before you were left at the orphanage. It looked like it went down in your father's land."

"You know, then."

"I don't know, Clark. I merely guessed. I was going to ask. Now I shall not. Perhaps I do know. But I had another question, son--"

"Yes?"

"Well, I wondered if you thought it was worth while to talk to doctors, to scientists, and discover---"

"How I can do what I do?"

"Right. You ought to know by this time what it means. I've been watching you. I don't want your head to swell, but you're a great boy, Clark. Not only in beef. You have a brain and an imagination, and a sense of moral responsibility. You'll come out better than the rest---you would even without your---your particular talent. And I thought you might think that the rest of humanity would profit---"

"No. A thousand times no. For the love of Christ---no! You don't know or understand, you can't conceive, Woodie, what it means to have it. You don't have the faintest idea of its amount---what it tempts me with---what they did to me and I did to myself to beat it---if I have beaten it. Listen, Woodie. Anything I want is mine. Anything I desire I can take. No one can hinder. And sometimes I sweat all night for fear some day I shall lose my temper. There's a desire in me to break and destroy and wreck that---oh hell---"

"You're sure, Clark, that the desire to be the only one like that---has nothing to do with it?"

Clark's sole response was to look into Woodson's eyes, with a look to tortured and humble, that the coach swore softly. "Well, Clark, that's all. You've been damn swell about it. The way I hoped you would be. And I think my answer is plain. One thing. As long as I live, I promise on my oath I'll never give you away or support any rumour that hurts your secret."

On the bench on the last game of the season, Clark watched while there was no score by the end of the first half, but in the third quarter, there were two touchdowns---by Yale. Mr. Woodman sat down next to him. (The coach on the opposite side was Arthur Howe of Yale.)

"They can't do it---and I don't altogether blame them. They've depended on you too much. It's too bad. We all have."

"Shall I go in?"

"I guess you better."

Next play, Clark scored a touchdown. After the new kick-off, he held off Yale almost single-handedly.

Clark was glad until he saw Jerry Painter's face, pale with rage, blood trickling across it from a small cut.

"I'll take it over, Jerry, if you say so."

"God damn you, Kent, you come out here in the last few minutes, all fresh and make us look like a lot of fools. I tell you, my team and I will take that ball across and not you with your bastard tricks."

Pale and profane, Jerry drove his men like slaves, without giving the ball to Clark. They got the ball back with just a few minutes to go. Clark renewed his offer to Jerry.

"You go to hell."

But Lefty disobeyed Painter, and threw the ball into Clark's arms. He ran smoothly, and then saw a dark shadow--Jerry Painter hit Clark on the jaw with all his strength. It didn't hurt Clark, but it shocked him, and he felt betrayed. "He was momentarily berserk. He ran into the line raging and upset it like a row of ten-pins. He raced into the open. A single man, thirty yards away, stood between him and the goal. The man drew near in an instant..."

Clark doubled his arm to slug him, felt the arm straighten, relented too late, "and heard, above the chaos that was loose,a sudden dreadful snap. The man's head flew backwards and he dropped." Clark made the touchdown, but Clark saw his victim lying motionless in the field. In the midst of the celebration, Woodman came up to him...and told him the worst. He had...

"Killed him?"

The earth spun and rocked slowly. He was paying his first price for losing his temper.

"His neck was broken--in three places."

Others told him not to take it too hard, but he knew he was guilty of a sort of murder...in his own eyes, it was murder. He had given away for one red moment, to the leaping, lusting urge to smash the world---and had killed a man.

Woodman came to him that night.

"There isn't much to say, Clark. I'm sorry, you're sorry, we're all sorry. But it occured to me that you might do something foolish--tell these people all about it, for instance."

"I was going to."

"Don't. They'd never understand. You'd be involved in a legal war that would undoubtedly involve your acquital. But it would drag in all your friends---and your mother and father, who sheltered an orphan from---another place. The papers would go wild. You might, on the other hand, be executed as a menace. A thing from another planet. You can't tell."

"It might be a good thing."

"Don't let me hear you say that, you fool! I tell you, Clark, if you go into that business, I'll get up on the stand and say I knew it all the time and I let a man play on my team when I was pretty sure that sooner or later he'd kill someone. Then I'd go to jail surely."

Then he told Clark to stay at Webster, to live it down.

"Live it down! Do you know what that means--in a college?"

"Yes, I think I do, Clark."

"You can live down almost anything, except that one thing---murder. It's too ugly, Woodie."

Woodman offered him as an alternative---a place in his brother-in-law's ranch in Alberta. They sat alone, and then finally said goodbye. Woodman didn't know it would be for the final time.

That night Clark crossed Webster campus as swiftly as a spectre. All night he ran remorselessly on country roads. Just before dawn, he returned, and packed two suitcases. He looked back at Webster Hall, at the cannon he had stolen and the initials of the freshman class he had put there.

"Goodbye, Webster."

In a few minutes, the campus was twenty miles behind him, as he used his full speed. Then, seeing the first caravan of produce headed toward the market, he slowed to a walk...and Clark Kent had fled beyond the gates of Webster.

Two decades later, in a story relayed in Action #4, Clark/Superman assumed the role and identity of Tommy Burke, a mere sub on the team for "Cordell University". That is to prevent "Coach Randall" who worked for "Dale University" from sabotaging the last football game.

The pseudonyms seem pretty obvious---Cordell for the real Cornell University, Dale for Yale University. If that's so, then Oliver Stanley, the coach for "Cordell", was really Siegelese for Gil Dobie, Cornell's head football coach in 1932, if my chronology is right. Probably "Coach Randall", the crooked coach of "Dale" was not Marvin Stevens, the head coach of Yale at the time, and who had been head coach since at least 1928. Stevens seemed to have been a very honest man. Probably Randall was an assistant coach who sabotaged the game for his own purposes and glory. It is noteworthy that Marvin Stevens did retire after 1932, though. He may have felt some responsibility for Randall's crooked ways, which he hadn't noticed.

One wonders how Superman would have felt playing Yale again. Did he remember the youth who lost his life to Clark's temper? Did he feel a secret shame at for once, losing control? Was he glad to purge Yale of a viper in its midst like Randall, and hope it might even the score of killing one of its players, two decades before?

However, all that is waaay too simple. Unfortunately, in the twenties through the mid-thirties, Cornell did not play Yale. Cornell did play Yale in 1936 and 1937, which would have been in time for Siegel to write it up---but in neither game did Cornell score a single point against Yale, and the story specifically says that Superman, as Burke, scored two touchdowns. It wasn't until 1940, two years after this story was released, that Cordell won against Yale.

Evidently Siegel's too-obvious pseudonyms, "Cordell" and "Dale", cover at least one university who is not the obvious one you might think of. Either Cordell is not Cornell, or Dale is not Yale.

Maybe both.

Yet you can be sure whoever the universities really were, Clark felt odd to be wearing a football uniform again---which was what he wore when he made his greatest mistake---and took a man's life without meaning to.

PARTIAL LIST OF SOURCES:

Of course, TARZAN ALIVE and DOC SAVAGE: HIS APOCALYPTIC LIFE by Philip Jose Farmer.

GLADIATOR, Philip Wylie.

Those interested with comments, suggestions, things I have forgotten, things I messed up, contact me at...
E-Mail:al.schroeder@nashville.com

Return to SCHROEDER'S SPECULATIONS.

Return to NOVA NOTES

Return to AL'S COSMIC COMIC HOME PAGE

Speculations Copyright © Al Schroeder. Superman is owned by DC Comics, Warner Communications, and the Siegels. All other characters copyrighted by their respective owners.