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This is more a plot outline for an Elseworlds miniseries than a full-blown "fan fic", but I really couldn't find anywhere else for it on the site. It's sort of a "Superman-as-archetypal-rock-star" narrative. Hope you like it. Feedback most welcome!
Superman: Space Oddity
An ElseWorlds 'Fan-Fic' by Paolo Jose O. Cruz
In this reality, the escape pod from Krypton lands not in the American Midwest, but in Weeborough, a sleepy British mining town in the north of England, in 1949. The infant Kal-El is found by locals Stuart and Mary Clark, who raise him as their own son, Kent. In spite of their well-intended attempts to bring him up as a good, old-fashioned working class lad (think: protagonist from a 50s 'kitchen sink' drama film), his alien nature attracts him to 'finer' interests: the arts, the Beatles, flower child psychedelia, and latent homosexuality (never explicitly mentioned). Meanwhile, Kent remains blissfully unaware of his meta-human abilities; his talents appear to be limited to an exceptional singing voice and a penchant for writing quirky folk music.
Bored ****less with the drudgery of small-town life, Kent sets off for London in the late 60s. He quickly befriends Lana Lang, a hedonistic art-school girl, with various chemical dependencies, and a latent propensity for careerism, if it leads to more drug money. She aggressively pursues gigs for Kent Clark; he gives her part of his earnings, to support her addictions. Pretty soon, Kent has a record deal, and experiences modest success with a track called "Superman" - reportedly inspired by the tale of lost US astronaut Hal Jordan.
However, true fame eludes Kent, leaving him frustrated and dissatisfied, being the (unknowing) extra-terrestrial perfectionist that he is; he wants no less than to change the world with rock n' roll!
Kent finds the necessary inspiration during a trip back home, when his ailing (foster-) father reveals to him his birthright: the ship that crash-landed in a disused mining shaft more than 20 years before. Contact with the spacecraft opens up a virtual hologram of his home-planet, giving him all the stimulation he could possibly need to create a truly out-of-this-world rock epic.
Kent Clark becomes Zoltar Cosmos, a larger-than-life alien refugee persona, clad in garish blue-and-red sci-fi jumpsuits (complete with a perversion of the familiar insignia as a 'Z'), an alter-ego bedecked in mascara and glitter eye-shadow - the living embodiment of glam rock excess. He forms a new touring band, the Krypton Arachnids, and releases an eponymous LP; it's the global success Kent had always dreamed of!
Kent/Zoltar begins to re-shape public opinion about gender, with his androgynous image and crazy onstage shenanigans (e.g. miming fellatio on Arachnids guitarist Jimmy Olsen, while he's playing his solo). But it's not only shock value that earns him recognition -- listeners are genuinely wowed by his evocative lyrics about dying planets and intergalactic loss.
As expected, fame bears its toll on Kent Clark. Spurred on (perhaps) by habitual uppers abuse, he starts to discover his latent powers (flight, xray vision, eye beams, and so forth), but is forced to keep them secret, incorporating them only into his stage performances, where they can easily be dismissed as high-budget special effects. Meanwhile, the excesses of life on the road put a strain on his relationship with Lana.
During an ill-fated tour of America, Kent meets upstart garage rocker Bruce Wayne a.k.a. Brucie Wank, whose band, Brucie & the Jokers, opens for the Krypton Arachnids in Gotham City. Instead of becoming a wrathful caped vigilante, this world's Bruce has pissed away (quite literally) the inheritance from his parents' murder, in a relentless downward spiral of punk rock nihilism. He gleefuly wastes his family's material resources to fund edgy studio recordings, and destructive (Iggy Pop-style) live performances. (This iteration of Bruce Wayne has a self-inflicted mohawk, crudely styled into the familiar bat-ears, as if the two personas were now physically one and the same.) Brucie influences Kent to either abandon the Zoltar persona, or surrender to it completely, turning himself into another rock cliche in the process.
Kent opts for the former, as he promptly truncates his world tour in the famed club Doomsday, announcing that he is effectively "killing" Zoltar, before he gets out of control. He is quickly dropped by his outraged record label.
Kent and Brucie relocate to West Berlin. Kent flirts with nostalgic Hitler-philia, and the idea of the Nietzchean 'Superman'. Out of this fascination, begins to create a new image, the 'Thin Blue Marquis', an idealized German autocrat. Needless to say, the resulting album is met with disinterest from a confused listening public.
Enter Lex Luthor, a seemingly open-minded and outwardly sympathetic American media mogul (complete with horrid shag toupee), who views Kent as a profitable star, even without his bombastic Zoltar facade. He pays for Kent's rehabilitation, and consciously isolates him from Brucie Wank.
Kent's next album, Kryptonite Kats, is a certified hit, despite its high concept. Inspired by Nabokov's Bend Sinister, the record tells the story of resistance and cooption inside a fascist police state, the allegorical Bottle City of Kandor. However, music critics begin to accuse Kent of "selling out", remarking the slicker production values and radio-friendly pop hooks.
Supported by Luthor's image-makers (a precision team of market researchers/tastemakers known collectively as "Brainiac"), Kent's comeback is unstoppable. He becomes a veritable commercial juggernaut, releasing two LPs full of very straightforward pop hits, as well as numerous collaborations with mainstream performers, including "Tension", a single recorded with fey rocker Oliver Queen (sorry, I just couldn't resist!)
However, what Kent doesn't realize is that Luthor and Brainiac are manipulating his fans, broadcasting subliminal messages in his releases and during his heavily-sponsored concerts, building up Luthor's growing corporate empire.
By 1985, Kent has relocated to Metropolis. By night, he's an aerobicized, family-approved pop icon. When not on tour, he spends his days holed up in the partial reclusion of his home recording studio, affectionately called the "Fortress of Solitude". Kent becomes the subject of an extensive feature in Planet Rock, a quasi-respected music journal in the vein of NME or Rolling Stone. The reporter assigned to cover Kent's story is, of course, headstrong and cynical veteran Lois Lane, who has sharp radar for bull****, immune to undue hype. A fan of Kent during his Zoltar years, Lois is visibly disappointed with his blatant watering-down in the present day. Finding himself increasingly attracted to the spunky and independent Lois, Kent is unreasonably hurt by her dismissal of him as just another pre-fabricated rock star. Disillusioned, he commits suicide by injecting himself with liquid kryptonite, backstage at the massive Rock Aid festival in Wembley stadium. In the process, he foils Luthor's scheme to brainwash the attendees of the mega-concert, by way of ultrasonic frequencies, triggered by Kent's voice.
However, Kent died while still under contract to Luthor. Accordingly, the Brainiac collective salvages his body, reanimating it with nanotechnology. Kent becomes Tin Machine, the ultimate post-millennial cyborg rock star!
However, Tin Machine eventually develops a sentience that mimics Kent's otherworldly sense of ethics. His superhuman intellect allows him to usurp control over Luthor Corp, 'reengineering' it as a utopian conglomerate, manufacturing artistic little wonders. He revolutionizes the system of distributing music and video, though file-sharing, digital reproduction, and so forth... essentially, he converts the media industry into a more truthful, just, and democratic space.
Superman: Space Oddity
An ElseWorlds 'Fan-Fic' by Paolo Jose O. Cruz
In this reality, the escape pod from Krypton lands not in the American Midwest, but in Weeborough, a sleepy British mining town in the north of England, in 1949. The infant Kal-El is found by locals Stuart and Mary Clark, who raise him as their own son, Kent. In spite of their well-intended attempts to bring him up as a good, old-fashioned working class lad (think: protagonist from a 50s 'kitchen sink' drama film), his alien nature attracts him to 'finer' interests: the arts, the Beatles, flower child psychedelia, and latent homosexuality (never explicitly mentioned). Meanwhile, Kent remains blissfully unaware of his meta-human abilities; his talents appear to be limited to an exceptional singing voice and a penchant for writing quirky folk music.
Bored ****less with the drudgery of small-town life, Kent sets off for London in the late 60s. He quickly befriends Lana Lang, a hedonistic art-school girl, with various chemical dependencies, and a latent propensity for careerism, if it leads to more drug money. She aggressively pursues gigs for Kent Clark; he gives her part of his earnings, to support her addictions. Pretty soon, Kent has a record deal, and experiences modest success with a track called "Superman" - reportedly inspired by the tale of lost US astronaut Hal Jordan.
However, true fame eludes Kent, leaving him frustrated and dissatisfied, being the (unknowing) extra-terrestrial perfectionist that he is; he wants no less than to change the world with rock n' roll!
Kent finds the necessary inspiration during a trip back home, when his ailing (foster-) father reveals to him his birthright: the ship that crash-landed in a disused mining shaft more than 20 years before. Contact with the spacecraft opens up a virtual hologram of his home-planet, giving him all the stimulation he could possibly need to create a truly out-of-this-world rock epic.
Kent Clark becomes Zoltar Cosmos, a larger-than-life alien refugee persona, clad in garish blue-and-red sci-fi jumpsuits (complete with a perversion of the familiar insignia as a 'Z'), an alter-ego bedecked in mascara and glitter eye-shadow - the living embodiment of glam rock excess. He forms a new touring band, the Krypton Arachnids, and releases an eponymous LP; it's the global success Kent had always dreamed of!
Kent/Zoltar begins to re-shape public opinion about gender, with his androgynous image and crazy onstage shenanigans (e.g. miming fellatio on Arachnids guitarist Jimmy Olsen, while he's playing his solo). But it's not only shock value that earns him recognition -- listeners are genuinely wowed by his evocative lyrics about dying planets and intergalactic loss.
As expected, fame bears its toll on Kent Clark. Spurred on (perhaps) by habitual uppers abuse, he starts to discover his latent powers (flight, xray vision, eye beams, and so forth), but is forced to keep them secret, incorporating them only into his stage performances, where they can easily be dismissed as high-budget special effects. Meanwhile, the excesses of life on the road put a strain on his relationship with Lana.
During an ill-fated tour of America, Kent meets upstart garage rocker Bruce Wayne a.k.a. Brucie Wank, whose band, Brucie & the Jokers, opens for the Krypton Arachnids in Gotham City. Instead of becoming a wrathful caped vigilante, this world's Bruce has pissed away (quite literally) the inheritance from his parents' murder, in a relentless downward spiral of punk rock nihilism. He gleefuly wastes his family's material resources to fund edgy studio recordings, and destructive (Iggy Pop-style) live performances. (This iteration of Bruce Wayne has a self-inflicted mohawk, crudely styled into the familiar bat-ears, as if the two personas were now physically one and the same.) Brucie influences Kent to either abandon the Zoltar persona, or surrender to it completely, turning himself into another rock cliche in the process.
Kent opts for the former, as he promptly truncates his world tour in the famed club Doomsday, announcing that he is effectively "killing" Zoltar, before he gets out of control. He is quickly dropped by his outraged record label.
Kent and Brucie relocate to West Berlin. Kent flirts with nostalgic Hitler-philia, and the idea of the Nietzchean 'Superman'. Out of this fascination, begins to create a new image, the 'Thin Blue Marquis', an idealized German autocrat. Needless to say, the resulting album is met with disinterest from a confused listening public.
Enter Lex Luthor, a seemingly open-minded and outwardly sympathetic American media mogul (complete with horrid shag toupee), who views Kent as a profitable star, even without his bombastic Zoltar facade. He pays for Kent's rehabilitation, and consciously isolates him from Brucie Wank.
Kent's next album, Kryptonite Kats, is a certified hit, despite its high concept. Inspired by Nabokov's Bend Sinister, the record tells the story of resistance and cooption inside a fascist police state, the allegorical Bottle City of Kandor. However, music critics begin to accuse Kent of "selling out", remarking the slicker production values and radio-friendly pop hooks.
Supported by Luthor's image-makers (a precision team of market researchers/tastemakers known collectively as "Brainiac"), Kent's comeback is unstoppable. He becomes a veritable commercial juggernaut, releasing two LPs full of very straightforward pop hits, as well as numerous collaborations with mainstream performers, including "Tension", a single recorded with fey rocker Oliver Queen (sorry, I just couldn't resist!)
However, what Kent doesn't realize is that Luthor and Brainiac are manipulating his fans, broadcasting subliminal messages in his releases and during his heavily-sponsored concerts, building up Luthor's growing corporate empire.
By 1985, Kent has relocated to Metropolis. By night, he's an aerobicized, family-approved pop icon. When not on tour, he spends his days holed up in the partial reclusion of his home recording studio, affectionately called the "Fortress of Solitude". Kent becomes the subject of an extensive feature in Planet Rock, a quasi-respected music journal in the vein of NME or Rolling Stone. The reporter assigned to cover Kent's story is, of course, headstrong and cynical veteran Lois Lane, who has sharp radar for bull****, immune to undue hype. A fan of Kent during his Zoltar years, Lois is visibly disappointed with his blatant watering-down in the present day. Finding himself increasingly attracted to the spunky and independent Lois, Kent is unreasonably hurt by her dismissal of him as just another pre-fabricated rock star. Disillusioned, he commits suicide by injecting himself with liquid kryptonite, backstage at the massive Rock Aid festival in Wembley stadium. In the process, he foils Luthor's scheme to brainwash the attendees of the mega-concert, by way of ultrasonic frequencies, triggered by Kent's voice.
However, Kent died while still under contract to Luthor. Accordingly, the Brainiac collective salvages his body, reanimating it with nanotechnology. Kent becomes Tin Machine, the ultimate post-millennial cyborg rock star!
However, Tin Machine eventually develops a sentience that mimics Kent's otherworldly sense of ethics. His superhuman intellect allows him to usurp control over Luthor Corp, 'reengineering' it as a utopian conglomerate, manufacturing artistic little wonders. He revolutionizes the system of distributing music and video, though file-sharing, digital reproduction, and so forth... essentially, he converts the media industry into a more truthful, just, and democratic space.
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