There’s a case for a queer Superboy, but I have a real problem imagining one. He’s an alien. If he has sex in the missionary position with a human female, he’s queer already. Every kind of sexual behavior he can carry out on Earth, as the lone representative of his species, is going to be odd compared to what would be his behavior on Krypton, and his fellow Kryptonians, if they existed, would consider it bestiality.
But OK, I’ll play along. I can imagine Superboy reaching a very different sort of puberty. Not a queer puberty, though — more of a conventional reproductive puberty with straight desires…for a Kryptonian.
Clark had been feverish for days. His blood boiled, and he felt incomprehensible urges, all frustrated. He’d felt an odd combination of fear and lust triggered by baffling cues: the color purple; a paper wasp nest; the smell of nutmeg; a porcelain teacup. His paired penes were inflamed and uncontrollable, questing sinuously over his abdomen and thighs, seeming to be involuntarily searching for something, while his testis had enlarged to the size of grapefruit, and throbbed unpleasantly. It was unavoidably noticable, and he’d stayed home from school all week, while his parents worried.
He’d recently begun an uncontrollable keening, his back arched, making a shrill warbling cry that carried for miles. It was rhythmic and terrifying to human ears. It was a call that went unanswered.
Eventually, his gonads surrendered. His penes inverted, piercing him deeply. He made no sound, though — he was exhausted. His testis abruptly contracted, and he felt a flush of fluids gurgling over his guts, and his pain ended. He relaxed, he slept, his fever broke.
The next morning, Clark woke up feeling at peace. He looked down at his crotch, and his external genitalia were gone, replaced by a smooth, slick membrane. He was undisturbed by the change, though, and reached down to cup the smooth, warm skin, feeling protective and content. This was good. This was right. This is how he was supposed to be.
Everything returned to normal for the next few weeks. Well, mostly normal. He was less interested in other people, and even Lana Lang could not engage him in a substantial conversation, before his mind drifted off in boredom. He lacked ambition or drive, and seemed lost in a sense of…completion.
Then, one evening after a dinner he’d merely pecked at, he suddenly announced, “Ma. Pa. I love you. I…” and his eyes rolled back, and he slumped in his chair. His skin writhed. There was a disturbing slow movement of something beneath it. His parents carried him to his room. He was burning up, so they undressed him, and it was even more disturbing — it was as if a colony of slugs were roiling in his flesh, twisting within it. What do you do with such an unearthly disease? Ma and Pa Kent were torn — call a doctor and explain that their child was an alien who fell from outer space? Or hope that this was somehow normal for his species, and would resolve itself. They waited in indecision.
The membrane over Clark’s groin dissolved and parted, leaving a gaping, glistening hole, and the first of the embryos tumbled out. They were pale and grublike, white wrinkled sausages laced with a webwork of pulsing capillaries, with four clawed limbs. They had no eyes, but paired disks of feathery sheets, like the antennae of moths; no mouths, but each had a pair of siphon-like tubes for respiration.
It was the Kryptonian haploid dispersal stage.
They scuttled hideously out of Clark’s crotch, peered about, and then rocketed out of the room in random directions, punching through walls with their super-strength, and also, uncaringly, punching through Ma and Pa Kent. They flew off into the distance. Thousands of them. Tens of thousands. They poured out of Superboy, leaving behind an empty husk of skin sagging over bones.
Then, silence. All was quiet in Smallville.
In the skies all around the Earth, the grubs paired off, grappled, and fell to the ground. They dug burrows and nested in the soil. They fused. They began to change.
All was forgotten. The tragic and unexplained triple murder of the Kent family in a small town in the Midwest was a brief mention in the newspaper, and then ignored — there were so many senseless murders. The world spun on.
A year and a half later, in a park in Copenhagen, there is a cry from the bushes. “Why, Jens, someone has abandoned their baby in the park!” On a Nigerian hillside, a baby flails its arms, and a young woman walking along the road runs to its rescue. In Shenzen, a crowd of people points to the baby mewling and crawling through the muck of the shore. In Alberta, a farmer scratches his head and wonders how a baby ended up in the middle of his wheat farm. In Quito, a baby is found in the street, and brought to the doors of the church. And so on. And on. And on. Thousands of times. A mere blip in the fecund proliferation of human beings.
But don’t worry. We have 14 more years of peace and quiet.
Then one pleasant spring evening, a warbling, keening wail pierces the air.
This time, it’s answered.
Somehow, I don’t think DC will follow my lead and embrace Superman’s inhuman nature, so maybe instead they should do something simpler and more humane and less horrifying. A gay Superboy would be perfectly ordinary and would make for a more engaging story, I would think.
Do it, or there’ll be more stories about Kryptonian maggots taking over the world.
Now do Han/Jabba
Uh,that sounds too much like what Lana Lang might do for Superboy. Blush, snicker
Phew. So there is a branch of fanfic which doesn’t leave me with a hard-on.
Actually, I may have noticed just one or two exceptions before…
See Larry Niven’s essay “Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex” for comparison.
Niven’s essay is silly. Given that Kal El is a fictitious character from a fictitious race you can, within reason, write his sexual function however you want, including being total safe for interaction with Earth people. (I say within reason because he obviously isn’t going to have say 3 penises, since it would be kind of hard to hide that when he was a grade school and high school student in Smallville.) I assume he must have the ability to control things like his invulnerability, or you’d have people regularly injuring themselves bumping into him walking down the street and so on.
Superboy is only half alien, unless there’s something about Lois we don’t know. I think Marcus had some really good ideas:
Two organisms from completely different planets able to interbreed? Not possible. Don’t believe it.
It’s not about Lois. It’s about Superman.
Obviously, he didn’t fertilize her. He implanted a fully alien parasite in her uterus.
Although, I enjoyed your story, PZ!
I guess it’s good that kryptonians don’t need a blood meal to energize their gestation. Supers only get vampiric when they’re pregnant – it’s so much better than ice cream and cucumbers.
When I read the piece above I thought you were going to go down the path of supers having a lifecycle sort of like some kind of wasp. But I suppose ALIEN already hit that note. Still, maybe the infant supers would want to latch onto a full grown human and use it as an ambulatory food supply while they got their bearings and built up their skeleton and initial musculature.
(A friend of mine sent me a picture of the scene from ALIEN with Kane lying on the table with the facehugger on him. The caption read: “Happy father’s day!”)
PZ @ 7;
And now the Xenomorph and Kryptonian symbol mashup in the OP makes terrifying sense.
It adds up if you think about it, especially the way that the Kryptonians are traditionally depicted as being so physically attractive to human eyes – they aren’t just aliens, but rather evolved parasites that exploit human sexual aesthetics to get close enough to implant their parasitic stage. Like the wasps that preys on tarantulas, only rather more sophisticated.
Of steel perhaps, but only superficially human…
There’s a Superboy who is teenage Kal-El. There’s also a Superboy who is a clone of Superman (in some versions, I believe, he is half Kal-El half Lex Luthor).
Then there’s Superman Jr, from non-canon “imaginary stories” in the ’70s who I guess there are bringing back as a resident of a parallel Earth. He would be the half human son of that Earth’s Kal El. He would actually be the easiest one to have be gay, because he has the least back story. I’m not sure he was ever shown in any romantic relationship.
Also, the highly regarded graphic novel Red Son says Kal-El was actually from a far future Earth, so the barriers to breeding with humans, while not nontrivial, are much reduced if you like that idea.
Hep me! Hep me jeeebus!!
When superboy learned to masturbate, he had to remember to use the special kryptonite-imbued gym sock.
Yeah, I went there. Now I am sorry I did.
Marcus Ranum @ 10;
And now I am imaging a lonely hearts add placed by and Alien Facehugger:-
Open minded lover, not from around these parts, seeks a human for committed relationship with a view to children. All physical sexes/gender identities/sexual orientations equally welcome. Must not be arachnophobic, must have a developed appreciation for mucous. Oral fixation advantageous, especially smothering fantasies. Must be open to moderate to severe thorax trauma…
So PZ; what the heck happened to Kara Zor-El, Clark’s Kryptonian cousin? Or don’t we want to know her fate?
…..
… We don’t want to know, do we?
I like where your suspension of disbelief regarding Superman ends, PZ.
Regarding the “Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex” essay, it’s obviously garbage from the standpoint DC canon simply because if Supes had that kind of force behind his bodily discharges, using the bathroom would destroy the building. Seriously, if he went to Taco Bell he’d be a threat to the lives of all of his coworkers at the Planet.
1. Superman is good.
2. Superman is intelligent and aware of the dangers of his involuntary muscles.
3. Have you ever seen Superman in a Taco Bell? No.
Therefore, Superman exists.
1. Superman is good.
2. Superman is intelligent and aware of the dangers of his involuntary muscles.
3. Have you ever seen Superman in a Taco Bell? No.
Therefore, Superman exists.
Your use of the Science Of Logic is impressive! I am overawed!!!
14 years to mature and a deafening wail as a mating call. Superman a cosmic cicada. I like it.
WHY ISN’T THIS CANON?
OK, so DC has to erase 85 years of continuity. Like they’ve never done THAT before.
Kryptonians are clearly just an offshoot subspecies of H. magi that’s shifted from metabolising ambient magical energy to solar radiation. Probably remnants from a pre-Atlantean space colonization effort. Or possibly time-travel.
Kryptonian puberty would be weird anyway, depending on whether or not the Birthing Matrix is still canon.
Per John Byrne’s post crisis reboot some 30 years ago, Kryptonians are all basically ace and reproduce only to sustain the species using elaborate technological devices that recombine DNA. there have been allusions to it in recent stuff, but it’s kind of a mixed bag as to how canon it is.
The point of that exercise was so that, in fact it was not a baby swaddled in a blanket shot to earth, but in fact an elaborate device holding a test tube embryo that matured and birthed in Kansas, thus Superman would be an American Citizen since he was born on American soil.
Comics are fucking stupid. and I say this as someone who loves comics and Superman specifically.
@17 microraptor
He’d make a lot more sense if he was somehow super-naturally tough and had the ability to project “force fields” instead of super-strength. Then he could distribute the impact of his powers more usefully, and it would also explain why he doesn’t devastate the plumbing whenever he pees – he’s only “strong” when he consciously uses his powers.
@ PZ Myers
That was freaking awesome. I’m trying to imagine what that type of reproductive cycle would do to a civilization of such intelligent beings. They’d have some really different theology.
Karpad @23: Seems a bit of an elaborate ret-con, when he could just apply for a green card like any other immigrant. Though I guess, technically, he’s an illegal immigrant?
NelC:
it is, it really is. It seems for the most part canon has kept that Kryptonians use birthing matrixes to recombine DNA artificially, but that a live baby was sent to Earth since it’s otherwise needlessly elaborate, it doesn’t really make him “An American Citizen” since he’s still a non-human, and the general tone is that Superman is a citizen of Earth more than any one nation.
But it does contribute to the idea that Krypton was not really a thriving civilization, but one in decline. The sort of people who would ignore their best scientists saying the world is doomed if we don’t take action. That’s the sort that would use this eugenic birth chambers instead of live birth, right? This is of course a species chauvinism, where we assume our way is best, but it’s a good visceral reaction generator.
Very apropos:
http://imgur.com/gallery/RCPYB14
That would never happen here, amirite?
BTW, I have a hard time believing in a sentient species with a fatal reproductive cycle. How would they pass on their civilization? Do the kids all get raised by their sterile aunts and uncles? This is what bugged me about “Why Must I Be a Crustacean in Love?”.
Wtf did I just read? Oh, dear FSM, why?
*Reads the tag “Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal” under the site name*
Never mind, carry on :D. It’s written by a biologist, you guys are ok. Somehow, I think this comic is fitting:
https://xkcd.com/877/
I love the story. I love how Superboy tried to get the mate so he can reproduce sexually with a different member of his species, but, when that failed, he sort of self pollinated, like a lonely tree. Once there were more members of the species, no need for self polination, enter normal sexual reproduction, with male and female parts. And that explains all those Kryptonians on New Krypton nicely :D
Somehow, I find this comic page fitting too: http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1936
Ever thinking of trying career as sci-fi writer?
Yikes! I wouldn’t normally advocate incest, but Kara needs to alleviate this boy’s urges, and fast! For the sake of humanity!
This reminded me of a filk song, Mutant Generations, although that is about the Star Trek universe.
“BTW, I have a hard time believing in a sentient species with a fatal reproductive cycle. How would they pass on their civilization? Do the kids all get raised by their sterile aunts and uncles?”
Unless the Kryptonians have engineered a parasitic reproductive stage that mimics the life form of the planet they intend to conquer. In which case we have a twist on the plot of Frank Wyndham’s “Midwich Cuckoos” where the alien life form is raised by and taught by its hosts and learns to function in its new environment.
Superman as the advance guard of a race of interstellar cuckoos. Beats my cicacda hypothesis anytime.
I read the Niven essay years ago. The line “gut her like a trout” has never faded from memory.