Super-Menace

Super-Menace

An unearthly manifestation of "force" in the exact image of Superman that came into being completely by chance, many years ago, when the rocket ship carrying the infant Superman away from the exploding planet Krypton glanced against "the nose-cone of a giant space ship from another universe," accidentally jarring into operation one of its many "weird scientific devices" and, by so doing, bringing about the creation of "a duplicate of the rocket and everything inside it, including the tiny infant," except that the duplicate infant, destined to become known as Super-Menace, was merely "an unearthly force manifested into human form," devoid of either bones, arteries, or blood, but possessing physical features and super-powers identical to Superman's.

Arriving on Earth near the United States town of Brentstock, the infant Super-Menace was found and taken in by onetime "public enemy" "Wolf" Derek and his wife Bonnie, much as the infant Superman was found and adopted by Jonathan and Martha Kent, except that whereas the Kents raised Superman to be an implacable foe of evil and enemy of injustice, the Dereks raised Super-Menace "to admire crime, and to hate all that is decent in life," in the hope that one day, when he reached manhood, he would use his mighty super-powers to annihilate Superman and help his evil foster father become "the crime king of Earth."

Grown finally to manhood under the baleful influence of the Dereks, Super-Menace—an exact double of Superman except for his narrow black eyemask—is easily “the world’s mightiest criminal,” a ruthless “super-outlaw” who represents “the most dangerous menace to law-and-order the world has ever known!”

Sent forth finally by Derek to seek out and annihilate Superman—after Derek has won the agreement of the “crime syndicate” to install him as its president as soon as his foster son has eliminated Superman—Super-Menace happens to overhear his evil foster father referring to him as a “freak” and gloating that he and Bonnie have only “pretended to love” him so that they could manipulate him into becoming their instrument for attaining power in the underworld.

Nevertheless, in the titanic battle with Superman that follows, Super-Menace finally emerges triumphant by trapping Superman amidst a swarm of deadly Kryptonite meteors. It is then, however, with Superman completely helpless and his life ebbing away beneath the baleful rays of the Kryptonite, that Super-Menace, recalling what he has recently learned about “Wolf” Derek’s secret contempt for him, makes a sudden, fateful decision. After first rescuing Superman from the death-dealing Kryptonite by driving it far beneath the ground with mighty puffs of super-breath, Super-Menace races to the Derek’s hideout for a final, dramatic confrontation.

“I know everything, Wolf!” he cries, “I know how you twisted my mind into ways of crime…I know you secretly loathed me, while pretending fatherly love….”

“My life could have been a blessing,” he continues moments later, “but you, with your rotten cunning, twisted it into…something terrible….” And then, “suddenly, Super-Menace’s form begins to glow and expand, as it turn into pure energy….”

“I’ll abandon this ‘human’ form,” cries Super-Menace, “and return to…pure force! And take you two with me!”

Instants later, as Superman arrives on the scene, all he sees is Super-Menace vanishing into nothingness in a blaze of incandescent light, and the Dereks perishing with him in an unearthly explosion of energy, shrieking vainly for mercy.

“He’s vanishing!” thinks Superman aloud. “There’s…a pathetic quality about…’it’…” (S No. 137, May 1960: chs. I-III—”The Super-Brat from Krypton”; “The Young Super-Bully”; “Superman vs. Super-Menace!”). (TGSB)