By [ad_1]
In DC’s Halloween Special Are You Afraid of Darkseid, Superman and Lois Lane face a terrifying, power-draining new enemy.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Are You Afraid of Darkseid? #1, now on sale from DC Comics.
While Clark Kent had a particularly wholesome upbringing in Smallville, Kansas, the Midwestern town is home to a few dark secrets, some of which definitely look like a job for Superman to handle. As Clark and his wife Lois Lane return to Smallville to follow up on a troubling mystery just in time for Halloween, a supernatural twist on the classic Superman villain Parasite takes shape and sets its ravenous sights on the Man of Steel, with this villainous variation playing on one of Superman’s more overlooked vulnerabilities.
Lois and Clark return to Smallville when Clark’s old high school friends and classmates Azi and Sheila reach out to him notifying Clark that their twin daughters have gone missing. Visiting an ominous house in a remote corner of Kansas, the two investigative reporters decide to look into the matter further before Superman uses his x-ray vision to find the girls chained together in the basement of the mansion. Even more troubling, the basement is full of skeletons, suggesting that a serial killer has steadily been at work for years adding to a growing body count, with the twins as their intended next victims. And as Superman leaps into action in Are You Afraid of Darkseid? #1’s short story “The Cellar” (by Jeremy Haun, Tony Akins, Moritat and ALW’s Troy Peteri), he discovers he may be in over his head.
The culprit behind the grim scene is the ghost of a woman named Ruthie, who died years ago in a farming accident but had her spirit bond to a strange, egg-shaped relic. In order to maintain this form, Ruthie needs to drain the life force of a regular supply of human victims, leaving them as little more than withered husks as she adds to her power. Ruthie’s husband lures and traps the victims to keep the spectral iteration of his wife alive and Ruthie is prepared for a power source like none other as she ambushes the Man of Steel in the mansion’s basement and begins to feed off of him to sustain herself.
Superman is more helpless against this twist on the Parasite archetype because Ruthie’s supernatural nature plays on his Kryptonian weakness to magic. It is this vulnerability that gives opponents like Silver Banshee and Black Adam an edge over the Man of Tomorrow, with his usual imperviousness unable to protect him from magic. Conversely, his enemy the Parasite is an antagonist created from science; although Superman is certainly weakened by prolonged exposure to the supervillain, he is not naturally at a disadvantage whenever he faces his longtime foe.
Thankfully, Lois’ presence on the scene is what ultimately saves the day. Superman is little more than a walking buffet for Ruthie until the fearless reporter intervenes, cracking the source of Ruthie’s existence and incapacitating her husband all in one fell swoop.
The entire incident is a quietly terrifying reminder that even the Man of Steel is not completely invulnerable to some of the older, more unknowable evils of the DC Universe, and that magic has an edge over him in a pinch. While Ruthie may have been defeated for now, the short story suggests that similar monsters could surface in the future…and Lois might not be around to save him next time.
About The Author
[ad_2]
