Shortly Before the Discovery of Kryptonite
(A Silver Age poem, inspired by a dream, which was in turn inspired
 by an offhand comment in Jules Feiffer's _The Great Comic Book
 Heroes_.)

I wish so much that I could be as they.
My fathers (both my fathers) say I should.
That I should fully understand their ways
To better judge the evil and the good.

Their Joy and Love, their Laughter, these I know,
I feel their quickness heat my heart as well
Their Sorrow at a failure, grieving's Woe,
I have myself endured these, truth to tell.

But all this time, though I have struggled much,
Though I have tried, both far away and near,
One aspect still denies the human touch:
For I have never known the taste of Fear.

At first, I thought, my 'peers' might give me Fright,
Ths schoolchildren of my adoptive home.
I did all that I could to make them fight,
Became a 'brain'; they always beat such ones.

The brutish children, as I planned, attacked.
I made the sounds of pain and injury.
Yet all was mockery, a hollow act.
I knew they couldn't harm a boy like me.

Since children could not fright me, I turned next
To search for Fear amongst the gangsters tall.
I foiled all their plans, I made them vexed,
But they could not teach me of Fear at all.

I searched for foes yet greater, stronger still,
I battled monsters, giants, juggernauts,
But yet, for all of this, it came to nil:
They could not teach what needed to be taught.

But now a new thought comes into my head,
That all along I've had the wrong approach.
I am the strongest, that need not be said,
My skin too tough for bursting shell to broach,

Brute strength alone will never cause me harm,
So in another field I must fight,
That I may, for the first time, feel alarm,
That I may truly know the taste of Fright.

I think back now to my first feeble tries,
The schoolchildren I lured to batter me.
The simple answer in their action lies:
The greatest threat, intelligence must be.

I seek now one whose plans can rival mine,
To best my strength with twisted cunning plan,
Someone whose threat to me is in his mind,
And think, perhaps, I know the very man.

He has come new to town, he is my friend,
And I his only one, for he, like me,
Is held a 'brain' and tortured without end.
He must know very well what Fear must be.

It grieves me, but I know that it is right.
Our friendship, now, a sacrifice must be.
To be a man, I must now learn of Fright:
I must change Luthor to my enemy.

  December 3, 1997.