Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Visibility was poor, and he'd been speeding - just a little - and it was raining cats and dogs, and yeah, he'd had a few too many drinks before leaving the bar, so in all fairness, the accident was his fault. But it was still also the Freak's fault for being in the road in the first place.

At least, that was the justification Alexander used to help him feel better.

If he'd not been intoxicated, though, he probably would have called the police, and things would have turned out much differently. Perhaps the Freak would have been saved, and that would have made a world of difference, because then - most likely - there wouldn't have been the Retaliation, which resulted in so many deaths.

Sometimes Alexander was kept awake by these thoughts and the guilt that came along with them.

Knowing that, inadvertently, he'd been the cause of unimaginable suffering... it could weigh on a guy's conscious.

Mostly, though, he felt rage toward the Freaks. Nobody asked the original Freak to show up in the first place. Nobody asked him to stick around, fighting crime and saving lives and being all heroic. And certainly nobody asked him to be in the middle of the road that night.

But he had been.

And, so it was that Alexander Luthor had hit Superman with hsi car, critically injuring him.

Alexander felt another pang of anger - at Superman - when he thought about it some more. What kind of superhero is able to be killed by a speeding car? Wouldn't it have made more sense if, instead, his car had been crunched, and the Freak had walked - or flown - away unscathed? THat's how the comics and movies had always depicted his abilities.

But as it turned out, the comics and movies got it wrong. In plenty of ways. There was no Kryptonite - the Freaks could be killed by the same means as humans - they just had super-strength, and could fly. Also, "Superman" - the original Freak - was not the last of his kind. Something Earth learned the hard way once Superman's death made the news.