"What would you do if you were the strongest man in the world, the strongest thing in the world, mightier than the machine? He made himself guess answers for that rhetorical query. '...I would be a criminal, I would rip open banks and gut them. I would kill and destroy. I would be a secret invisible blight. I would set out to stamp crime off the earth; I would be a secret detective, following and summarily punishing every criminal until no one dared commit a felony"'---GLADIATOR, Philip Wylie.

GLADIATOR ended with the supposed death of Hugo Danner, around 1922. Superman's first adventure as Superman happened in 1932, even though it wasn't published till 1938. What happened to Hugo Danner/Clark Kent in the decade between? What were the steps that drove "Hugo" to accept his strength by dividing himself into two people, two personas?

When "Hugo" was helping with the labor in South America for Professor Hardin's expedition, he did confide in Hardin---but what he confided was his true origin, not the manufactured one that Wylie invented for him. He told Hardin that he was an alien from another planet, and had never found satisfactory use for his powers.

Some have speculated that "Daniel Hardin" was Wyliese for "Doctor Clark Savage Sr.", Doc Savage's father, who did much exploring in South America, eventually finding a lost Mayan city there. If so, can there be much doubt what "Hardin" would have told him, after devoting his own son to the backbreaking regimen to fight evil? He would have advised "Hugo" to use his abilities to fight evil.

"Hugo" went back to the labor, thinking it over...then the thunderstorm started. Unlike the "Hugo" of the novel, he was not insane enough to shout at God in the midst of a thunderstorm. Instead, one of his co-workers, a huge Indian, was struck by lightning. When "Hugo" approached the Indian's still-sizzling body, he had an idea, and implanted several bits of personal identification--his wristwatch, for instance---on the corpse, so that "Hardin" would think him dead. He wanted to be free to think free of influence. Then, satisfied that most would think this charred body was his, he leaped off.

While leaping around in South America, one of his extended bouts of solitude he's famous for, one of his leaps landed him near the tribe of Xinca indians. Having picked up quite a few Indian languages in addition to Spanish while helping with the labor in Hardin's expedition, he heard there was a white man being held there, treated as a god, but not allowed to leave. Curious, with his speed, he snuck closer...only to be surprised that he recognized the white man being held there.

It was his own cousin-by-adoption, Allard Kent Rassendyl, or Kent Allard, as he preferred to be known. Clark/Hugo had heard he had disappeared in a round-the-world trip over South America. Evidently he had crashed near here. From what he knew about Allard, who was known as the "Dark Eagle" during World War I, the Indians wouldn't be able to keep him long...but getting back to civilization would be something else again.

Clark grinned. The Rassendyls had always regarded the Kents as "poor cousins", which they were comparitively. Kent Allard, though, had always been a good egg....nothing like that bloodthirsty halfbrother of his, Richard.

Clark/Hugo burst in the middle of them all, bowling the Xinca Indians to one side like ten pins. Allard gave a haunting laugh, but looked as puzzled as any when the spears bounced off Clark. In a minute, he was by Allard's side.

"You crashed here, and have no way to get home, right?"

"Yes. Clark??? It's been years, I didn't recognize you at first. Do you have a plane nearby?"

"Not exactly. Hold on. I have the next best thing."

Holding Kent Allard, who would someday be the Shadow, as a grown man might hold a babe, Clark braced himself---

Then leaped high over the jungle canopy. Allard did not scream or shout, but thoughtfully looked at Clark as they came down for a second leap, only to start again...

Then, Allard said thoughtfully,

"We have a lot to discuss...."

That night, they stopped and made camp, already halfway to the coast of South America. Clark told Kent Allard of his origins, and asked Allard the same question he had asked Hardin, what should he do with his powers?

Allard didn't answer directly. Instead he told of his own plans---to use the skills he gained in intelligence work to fight crime, to set up his own organization to fight the thugs who infested society. Of the idea of setting up multiple identities...

That last Clark listened to especially. The idea of using a seperate identity to do his superhuman deeds, and another to live as a normal human being, he had never considered...but it felt right.

Kent Allard and Clark Kent talked quite a lot during the long boat ride back to the States. Together, they planned much of their later careers as the Shadow and Superman. Allard taught Clark the rudiments of makeup, so that he could make himself appear like others to a certain extent, although Clark never mastered the art as much as Allard did.

Allard suggested that Clark, who had never finished college, use what was left of his fortune, the part he hadn't spent on Hardin's expedition, to fund a return to college. He also suggested that it was criminal not to find out more about the technology that sent Clark here to Earth, and the biological differences between himself and normal humans.

"There are all sorts of ways of doing good. You hold the keys to several of them. You could advance knowledge by decades, even centuries...but you will have to be careful who you reveal it to, lest they try to keep you as a biological specimen."

Clark thought about going back to college immediately, but Kent Allard's words about his responsibility to the world weighed heavily on him. Clark had never been sick, yet thousands died every day from fever. If he could find some way to impart that knowledge without exposing himself as an alien...

Then there came a knock at his door. He had been staying at the Kents/Danners' old home.

An older man with a mustache was there.

"Clark Kent?"

"Yes."

"I'm Dr. Abraham Erskine. When you were a child, I was a physician at the orphanage you were sent to, as a young intern."

Clark/Hugo invited him in, but decided to say nothing about his alien origins. He would rather that Erskine think he was some sort of mutant, some sort of freak of nature. Maybe Welles' radio panic caused by WAR OF THE WORLDS was decades away, but H.G. Wells' hideous Martians were the first thing that came to mind when someone mentioned "alien beings". Erskine explained what an extraordinary baby he had been, and he had wondered what he had become in later life...

"Well...it got moreso, Doc."

"What? As a child you could lift an entire chest of drawers with one hand."

"First...you have to promise me, as a doctor, that this will be kept secret under a doctor/patient relationship. I do not want my name to appear in medical journals. If you promise that--you can do all the tests you want. If not...you can go right now."

"I promise, I promise!"

"Try to take samples of my blood."

After several exasperating minutes, Erskine said,

"What th--? This is the sixth hypodermic needle I've broken on your skin!"

"Try again, Doc!" said a grinning Clark. "Let's make it a lucky seven."

"Can you...break your skin?"

Pinching his skin with all his strength, he made enough of an opening for Erskine to get a blood sample, which puzzled Erskine even more.

"What??? Your blood doesn't react negatively to any of the blood types? You're a universal donor?"

Clark provided urine, semen, and sweat samples. He submitted to x-ray scans.

Then he started to show Erskine what he could really do. At night, he showed an initially-unbelieving Erskine how far he could jump, how much he could lift. Then he handed Erskine a gun.

"Shoot me."

"What? No, I won't..."

Sighing, Clark held out his hand. "Shoot my hand, then. That wouldn't be fatal."

After much persuading, Erskine did so, only to have the bullet richochet.

Clark told Erskine of his experiences in the war. Of how an "exploding shell" had knocked him out, but that no lesser fire affected him.

Erskine shook his head.

"It's like all your physicial systems are millions of years more evolutionary advanced than ours, more efficient than ours---as a hawk's eye is thousands of times more efficient than the first proto-eye that developed. You must be some kind of mutant---but I've never heard of such a being born with so many coincidental changes, all at once."

He examined Clark's eyes and ears.

"Did you know your dark eyes have flecks of blue in them?"

"No way, Doc! They've been jet black since I was a baby.."

Erskine held up a mirror. Hugo couldn't deny what he saw, swirling blue flecks beginning to encroach on the blackness.

"What does it mean?"

"No way to tell. I wonder if a change is going to happen to your eyes? There are some odd organs attached to your eyes, ears and nose that I can't identify. You seem to have excellent vision---20-10 really, you can read at twenty feet what a normal man can only read at ten....but I wonder if something else is going to happen? Here's something else, that I don't think I ever showed you..."

He brought out an x-ray of Hugo's head. One part of it was a blur of light, just behind the eyes.

"At first I thought it was a smudge, but it shows up every time. It's like that organ behind your eyes is emmitting x-rays. Low levels---it wouldn't cause sterility in anyone...it may be that whatever processes power you are using that to emit x-rays as a by-product, as 'waste'."

"What do you mean---whatever processes power me? I eat like anyone else. When I do these inhuman feats, I need more."

Erskine nodded. "But food in and of itself doesn't have enough energy to power these extraordinary deeds. The human body isn't that efficient, but even if it operated at one hundred percent efficiency converting food a man might triple his power, no more---not do the incredible leaps and casually lift tractors in one hand, as you can. I suspect that your body converts a small portion of the food directly into energy, but I have no idea how. If I knew...I could revolutonize the world. As it is, I'm getting hints every day about how to make the human body more efficient..."

"Do you think you could--make---others like me?"

"No. Not for centuries, probably. But we might make a human being who was much more athletic, resistent to disease, stronger and swifter to at least the levels of an Olympic athelete, with what I'm learning..."

Erskine spent six months examining Clark, and then said,

"I need to bring some others into this. No, wait! I'm not going to identify you by name. Yet for instance, there is a police scientist named Tom Higgins who works for the Department of Justice who would be of use in determining how you get your toughness. A Professor Hughes at Midwestern University is one of the world's experts on biochemical reactions and how it relates to animal speed. Phineas Horton is interested in finding artificial analogues to living systems, and he would be fascinated..."

Reluctant at first, Erskine finally talked Clark into it, and they journeyed together to a more complete laboratory, where he could be examined at length. This lasted into 1924, when Tom Higgins' best friend, J.Edgar Hoover, became head of the FBI. Hoover started pressing for more details, and for the identity of their subject that they were gleaning so many details...

Clark knew he was dangerously close to becoming at best, a lab animal for the rest of his life, at the worst, dissected. If they found he was an alien, they would declare him nonhuman and with no rights whatsoever.

One night he leaped away. He hated to leave. His eyes were getting more and more blue flecks, and every so often, his hearing would seem to "open up" at unpredictable times to where he could hear things said hundreds of yards away. Yet he had no choice. He called Erskine from a phone booth, telling him that if he revealed Clark's identity, Clark would come back and destroy all their findings....and then just adopt a new identity. Relunctantly, Erskine bade Clark goodbye...but the notes he took would become the basis for the Super-Soldier Project which would culminate in a decade and a half, around World War II.

Clark had kept in contact with his cousin, Kent Allard. Allard was building his organization, with an old contact from his war days, called Burbank. Clark and Allard talked long into the night.

"You did well. Now you have an obligation in the other direction. That rocket that brought you here might have technological secrets centuries ahead of ours. There was a Russian scientist I smuggled out during the Revolution. I got him and his sister out, and he's grateful to me. He's an expert on rocketry, along the lines of Goddard. I want you to take the remains of the rocket and go and see him---tell him frankly your origins, but don't give any hint of your abilities. Pretend to be normal. Take this note with you...he's grateful to me."

"Okay. Where are you going?"

Allard looked at the obvious signs of packing, smiling. "To Tibet. I've heard there are some secrets I can learn there that make the stealthiness of the ninja seem clumsy. I will probably be gone several years, but Burbank will always be able to reach me..."

So Clark drove a truck to Zharkov's remote laboratory, and was admitted, when he presented Kent Allard's note. At first Zharkov scoffed at his tale of alien origins...but when he started to examine the remains of Clark's spacecraft, he was convinced. Despite the damage to it, he could glean principles that were centuries ahead of their time.

Unfortunately, by glimpsing scientific principles centuries before their time, Zharkov became more and more unhinged---like trying to teach relativity to Aristotle, there is such a difference in worldview that it would shock anyone.

Nevertheless, Zharkov was getting more and more difficult to work with. He stayed two years with the genuis, but after that, decided enough was enough, and left one night. He had spent two years with Erskine and his crew, and two years with Zharkov. It was now 1926.

Half a decade later, Zharkov would journey in a rocket he constructed of Kryptonian principles to the rogue world Mongo, with Flash Gordon and Dale Arden. It is possible that in his increasingly deranged condition, he shared the secrets with a few other unusual scientists. Sivana, for instance, seemed to have rocket ships far in advance of their time. As did Carson Napier...

Zharkov's nephew, Reed Richards, came across the notes for his uncle's starcraft, and adapted it to his own purposes.

Meanwhile, Clark returned to the farm and retrieved the Legion time bubble from where he had hidden it, and travelled to many possible futures....a tourist in time. Clark may have been the source of several science fiction writers knowing the truth long before they might have. He returned a year and a half later, ready to resume college, more seasoned than he had been, more aware of how man was at a real crossroads.

Clark/Hugo used the last of his money to enroll in college again. It was odd to be back again---and odd, now that he was 32, to be so young-looking that he was immediately accepted by the other students. He had spent a year and a half in college before, and had two and a half more years to go.

He went to Columbia University. There he was taught by a visiting English---or rather, Irish---journalism instructor, one Edward Malone, who had accompanied Professor Challenger in several of his adventures. He met other journalism students who would someday become well-known, such as Lon Cohen and Clyde Burke.

He had been immersed in enough academia, enough real science, to last him a lifetime. Instead he had determined to try to join the journalists. He had found he was most likely to find outlets for his strength---constructive outlets---if he could learn of disasters and crimes promptly. Certainly being a reporter would be the best way to do that....

He also recalled that it had taken Lefty a few minutes to even recognize him in his brightly colored costume as "The Mighty Hogarth". If he could seperate the two identities more, wear an outlandish costume that would draw the eye, and seperate the two identities even more, visually...

It would be the exact opposite of his cousin, the Shadow's approach---but it would be folly to try to pretend he could hide his extraordinary deeds. He needed something to draw the eye...

His father had a pair of reading glasses. He replaced the lenses with clear glass. It gave him a more studious look, a meeker look. His knowledge of disguise and mimicry, which he had learned from the Shadow, helped him to start to build a new persona. In some ways it was almost a burlesque of how he viewed others---somewhat weak, afraid in situations where he was confident in.

He was also trying to cool it with his affairs with women. He saw his constant womanizing as somewhat immature now, and with maturity he yearned for someone a little more---stable.

He thought he found it, in his senior year, in a beautiful crippled girl called Lori Lemaris. It's a mark of how much his sexual self-control evolved that Clark didn't know what was hidden under the blanket that covered her "legs"....

According to a story by Bill Finger, Lori was a mermaid, descended from survivors of lost Atlantis. Despite the seemingly ridiculousness of it, I am not going to throw it out a priori...the traveller James Jorkens also proposed to, and even married, a mermaid, according to his accounts. And those who mocked Jorkens' veracity were inevitably shown to be wrong...

One might also mention the merpeople-human love affairs covered by Theodore Sturgeon in "A Touch of Strange".

Then there are the actual historical accounts: mermaid and merman images go back at least as far as ancient Pheonicia, and recur up to bestiaries of the early middle ages, when even the most educated of men did not doubt their reality.

In 1403 A mermaid was apparently found stranded in the mud after a storm in West Friesland. She was then taken, clothed and fed ordinary food. Some say that she lived for fifteen years in capture, trying to escape constantly; she was also taught to kneel before the crucifix and spin but she was never able to speak.

Raphael Holinshed, in his Chronicles of 1587 wrote that in the reign of either John or Henry II, some fishers of Oreford in Suffolk, caught a man-shaped fish, who would not or could not speak, ate fish be it raw or cooked and finally escaped after two months, back to the sea.

In an attempt to find a Northern passage to the East Indies, Henry Hudson's log reported on June 15, 1608 that two of his company, Thomas Hill and Robert Raynor said that they had seen a mermaid, their descritption read: "From the Navill upward, her backe and breasts were like a womans. . . her skin was very white; and long haire hanging down behinde, of colour blacke; in her going downe they saw her tayle, which was like the tayle of a Porposse, and speckled like a Macrell".

Off the isle of Yell, 1833, six fishermen reported that their fishing line had become entangled with a mermaid. They said they had kept her on board their boat for three hours, and said that she was about three feet long. She "offered no resistance nor attempted to bite," but she moaned piteously. "A few stiff bristles were on top of the head, extending down to the shoulder, and these she could erect and depress at pleasure, something like a crest." She had neither gill nor fins and there were no scales on her body. The fishermen who were very superstitious threw her overboard eventually and said that she dived "in a perpendicular direction."

The story was heard from the skipper by a Mr Edmondson who in turn told the Professor of Natural History at the University of Edinburgh:

"Not one of the six men dreamed of a doubt of its being a mermaid, and it could not be suggested that they were infulenced by their fears, for the mermaid is not an object of terror to fishermen, it is rather a wecome guest, and danger is apprehended from its experiencing bad treatment. . . . The usual resources of scepticism that the seals and other sea-animals appearing under certain circumstances operating upon an excited imagination and so producing ocular illusion, cannot avail here. It is quite impossible that six Shetland fishermen could commit such a mistake."

Nevertheless, there is no doubt that frauds abound, like P.T. Barnum's Feegee "mermaid".

As far as can be determined, there was no actual continent Atlantis that sank in 10,000 BC, a la Plato's story. Geology permits whole islands to rise and sink within a matter of days, but not whole continents. (The best bet is that the real Atlantis was the island of Santorini which suffered a Krakatoa=like explosion that must have rocked the ancientworld, and must have destroyed most of whom lived there and sank part of the remains.

Nevertheless, we know of many intelligent underwater races. I suspect many of them were developed by Cthulhu and his agents. We know of the froglike waterbreathing beings (who nevertheless could crossbreed with humans, and thus must be human derived) who once lived in Innsmouth and live underwater in the city of R'yleh. In addition, there are the blue-skinned beings who could also intermarry with humans, and whose hybrid was Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner. (They were compared to whales and dolphins returning to the deep from land-creatures, but it's a false analogy. Whales and dolphins cannot breathe underwater, whereas Namor's race can.) There seem to be even more humanlike inhabitants of the deep, if some of Aquaman's tales are right.

Perhaps inhabitants of Santorini crossbred with some of Namor's race...?

Superman himself was later to meet a fish-tailed race that tried to invade the surface world in a Siegel story in the early forties'. (Unless that was a fictionalization of a battle Superman had with Namor's race.)

One might also wonder if there is any truth to the events of the movie SPLASH!...

Certainly these undersea races are not numerous, otherwise science would have discovered them beyond reasonable doubt by now. Yet the oceans cover three-fourths of the Earth, and there would be numerous places for them to hide from man...

Of course, it's also possible that Lori was just a crippled girl, who felt that Clark wanted to marry her out of pity, and the story of her being a mermaid was entirely fictional.

For purposes of this article, since Siegel later used Lori in numerous stories, I'm going to assume Finger is more-or-less telling the truth. I'm not going to ask how Finger knew, save that he might have heard it from Bruce Wayne, who he and Bob Kane did the life story of.

Clark was walking across campus when he saw a girl in a wheelchair careening down a hill. He used his superior speed to catch her---he had no heat vision as yet. A lovely face looked up at him gratefully and he stared into eyes as blue and mysterious as the sea. When she spoke, she had the faintest trace of a foreign accent...

"Thank you. You see, I cannot walk. It is a problem, but I decided not to let it prevent me from leaving my native country to enter your college."

That afternoon he attended the college "ark", a floating aquarium, for his biology class. A boiler exploded and the floating aquarium nearly split in two. The students swam to shore, while Clark secretely kept the more dangerous fish, like the sharks, from reaching the students. Clark then saw Lori in the grip of a giant octopus. Octopi are generally timid creatures, and it probably clutched Lori in panic. Lori was using her telepathic powers to clam it, but Clark saw them. He swam furiously to rescue her---when the octopus swam placidly away.

After saving her twice, Clark was intrigued and started dating her, but he couldn't figure out why she always had to be home by eight.

One morning Lori had some bad news for Clark.

"Clark, I'm afraid our date later will be our last one. I must return to my parents tonight."

He knew then that he could not stand the thought of never seeing her again. He realized he loved her, something different in a lifetime of passing affairs---that she was the kind of girl he'd always dreamed of marrying---a girl of rare beauty and courage. He would ask her to be his wife.

Even then, he had intimations of his future career. If he was going to make as many enemies as he thought he was, a wife would be a liability. The only way to make sure Lori wouldn't be endangered would be to give up his plans.

Later he took Lori to a romantic spot---and proposed.

"Lori--I love you---will you marry me? Before you give me your answer, I msut tell you the truth about myself..."

"You don't have to tell me, Clark---I've known from the very beginning that you are a...super-man."

"Y-you knew? But how?"

"That's not important. What is important is that although I love you, I can never marry you."

"But...if it's because of your legs..."

"Please, don't question me anymore. Now I really have to go. I must be home by eight."

Clark, wondering if she was meeting another man, let his jealousy get the better of him. She had a trailer off campus. Under cover of darkness, he leaped, atop the trailer, and then put his ear against it. He heard the woman he loved say to a static-laden radio,

"Lori reporting. I leave for home tonight. My mission to America is complete."

Clark wondered if the love of his life...was a spy. Could someone have gotten wind of the biochemical researches he did with Erskine, the advanced starcraft's remains he left with Zharkov? Had he been played by a sap, fallen in love with a woman just out to cajole secrets from him? He searched her room for evidence the next day, and found no secret documents---instead he found a large tank of salt water and no bed....and a fantastic suspicion dawned on him.

After her dinner, he confronted Lori, but before he could say anything, she looked at him with those eyes that seemed to look right into his mind.

"So. You've guessed the truth about me, haven't you?"

"Yes, but how---?"

Both of them heard a thunderous roar, and they found out a state dam had burst.

"Wait! I can be of use. I want to do what I can to repay the people here who have been so kind to me."

"I understand. All right, Lori."

Carrying her wheelchair, he leaped in the way of the flood. Together they saved lives, a perfect rescue team, but none whom they saved would dare breathe a word to the newspapers. A man who could leap enormous distances and lift large sandbags like they were teabags, was bad enough...but a mermaid too?

Back at Lori's trailer home, Lori explained her origins and said,

"Every hundred years, one of us is chosen to return to the upper world to learn of the surface world's progress. This time I was chosen, and though I love you, I must now return to my people."

Soon, under the sea, they kissed....and there never was, or ever will be, such a strange kiss again---the farewell kiss between a Superman and a mermaid...later, he stood on the cliff alone, overlooking the sea, looking for what he though was the last time---at the only woman he'd (so far) ever asked to marry him.

(If the timing was just the beginning of the decade, rather than the end, it would be oh so tempting to identify Clark with Leonard McKenzie, Lori with Princess Fen, and wonder if a super-strong hybrid of a surface man and a water-breathing woman like Prince Namor might have had somewhat different parents...but that is not the case.)

In 1930, just after he graduated from the university, Clark encountered the most puzzling incident of his entire life so far---

His entire life story---told as fiction!

He was amazed to hear of the novel GLADIATOR by Philip Wylie, incensed at the liberties taken, and relieved---if puzzled---that no one recognized themselves despite the differing and disguising names of the characters. He was especially intrigued by the different origin. He knew the source of the story had to be Hardin, with possibly some backup by Coach Woodson.

He almost visited Wylie, to threaten and bully him, but he knew---rightly---that unless he killed Wylie, such would be likely to bring more information about himself to light, not less. When Wylie came out with WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE and AFTER WORLDS COLLIDE, loosely inspired by the end of Krypton and Jor-El's rocket saving Kal-El,it showed that Wylie was told the full story by Hardin, and that both Hardin and Wylie suspected something suspicious in his "death" and feared the consequences if Wylie was too frank.

As well they should. Hugo/Clark was not squeamish about taking the law in his own hands.

(There is some well-founded speculation that Professor Daniel Hardin was Wyliese for Dr. Clark Savage Sr., Doc Savage's father, who explored extensively in South America. If so, Hardin/Savage would only live a year longer anyway, being killed in the first Doc Savage adventure in 1931. I expect that Clark admired both Hardin/Savage and his son, and there are indications that they even shared one adventure, later in Superman's career, as I will explain in another article. As I wrote elsewhere, I believe that after Doc disappeared in the late forties, Superman took over the protection of the devices in Doc's Fortress of Solitude, and remodeled that polar edifice so it would be harder to detect.)

Nevertheless, Clark had respect for Wylie's storytelling prowess, although he was a little incensed at his making his foster-father such a bullied weakling, and his foster-mother such a domineering religious fanatic. Wylie had multiplied slight character traits beyond all recognition. He later enjoyed the 1938 farce by Joe E. Brown, THE GLADIATOR, based very loosely on Wylie's book, in which a "Hugo Kipp" drank a serum in college that gave him super-strength and became a football phenomenom, and who was despised by a college jock whose last name was...Kent.

Yet, for right now, though he graduated in 1930, he thought it might be best if he left the country for a little while, and give time for the memory of GLADIATOR to die away.

He first journeyed to England, and there met Edward Malone again. Though him he was introduced to the narrator of ODD JOHN, the faithful journalist who was the "dog" to a superhuman mind, Odd John Wainwright. (Olaf Stapledon edited the manuscript for book publication.) Odd John had already started his colony of superhuman mutants on an isolated island by 1927, so Clark never met him---and one wonders what the two so-different supernormals would have said to each other. Unfortunately, Odd John's island colony was destroyed in 1933. Yet it gave Clark hope that he would not be the only "superman" in a world of "normals".

He spent two years in Europe, Asia, and Africa, travelling, getting a feel for the world...supporting himself occasionally by posing as a "strong man" of travelling circuses, a job easy to get, and easy to leave. He wore tights and costumes similar to his earlier garb as the "Mighty Hogarth". He watched acrobats often using capes to aid them in gliding and angling their falls.

When he returned to America, he met his cousin, Kent Allard, after leaving a message with Burbank. Allard met him in his Shadow garb, and Clark was very impressed by the functionality of the Shadow's garb. "I really like the cape," looking at the black cape with scarlet lining. Then he remembered watching acrobats who used capes to "angle" their fall, giving them some control and gliding ability. He bet that such a cape, added to a costume similar to the "Mighty Hogarth"'s, might give him more control over his leaps, enabling him to glide in mid-leap if need be and angle his descent.

He went back to his parents' graves. He remembered when he had lied to Jonathan Abedengo Kent and told him he had single-handedly ended World War I. He remembered how Martha had sent out missionaries with the money given him by Shayne---not just simple minded bible-thumpers, but medical missionaries, people who could actually do some good around the world, regardless of one's spiritual state, made to minister to the physical as well as the spiritual.

The only time he felt he was living up to his potential was when he helped others. When he tried to make up for the death of a football player and quit college, he had saved quite a few lives, and only that seemed...right. When he had gone to Washington and stopped a corrupt politician, who was intent on getting us into war again--that had felt right. It's true more will take his place. It would be a never-ending, futile battle, a battle that would never be won...but had to be fought.

Going to journalism school had opened his eyes to the never-ending battle against corruption that reporters engage in. They didn't assume that they could remake humanity. Like his cousin-by-adoption, the Shadow, he would pretend to be someone else part of the time. He was used to concealing his strength, but he would create a persona that none would associate with a champion of the oppressed. He would use the journalism taught him and become a reporter, hearing of disasters and crimes, and then adopt another, costumed persona, to do something about it.

He had been, more than anything, a gladiator with ---himself. His greatest battle had always been with himself, with his own disappointments and expectations. Now he was no longer a gladiator. Now he was a superman.

PARTIAL LIST OF SOURCES:

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

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

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Speculations Copyright © Al Schroeder. "The Hulk", of course, is currently owned by Marvel Comics Group. All other characters copyrighted by their respective owners.