Superman: Miracle Monday

by Elliot S. Maggin

There’s a lot of hurting a boy goes through if he wants to be a man. And when a boy wants to be the special kind of man that Clark’ll be – well, that’s a lot of hurting.

He was convinced that all one needs to persuade someone to do what is right is to educate that person to the fact that it is in his interest to do what is right. There was a right and a wrong in the Universe and that distinction was not very difficult to make. If you litter the park, it will not be as clean next time you want to use it. If you hold up a driver when you are hitchhiking, there will be fewer people likely to give you a ride when you really need to get somewhere. If you pepper the atmosphere with radioactive waste, your children and grandchildren’s share of your legacy will be diminished. No one, Superman was convinced, would want to serve the cause of evil once he or she understood the meanings of right and wrong.

Then, suddenly, like a ski racer missing a gate, he spun out into the open sky.

Similar to a story in DC Comics Presents, also written by Maggin.

Luthor smiled, tossed the pad on his cot and said in a clear, loud voice, “Any questions, class?” Somebody hollered, “All right!” and two hundred or more men within earshot whooped and applauded for the greatest criminal mind of all time.

“That’s enough, Curtis. You too, Murphy,” the warden said. “Back to your posts. I’m sorry about this incident, Mr. Olsen. I’m Warden Edmund Haskell.

Years ago, when he was fifteen years old, Clark Kent read The Martian Chronicles. Clark was so impressed that Superboy flew off that afternoon to meet Ray Bradbury, the man who had written the book. What Superboy found was a man who had never flown in an airplane, who wrote stories about rocket ships, a Californian who did not know how to drive a car, a man relatively unconcerned with politics who was, at least that day, obsessed with the idea of convincing Walt Disney to run for mayor of Los Angeles.

“Is the name ‘C. W. Saturn’ in any way familiar to you, Superman?” Max asked him. “Yes, I believe I have heard of that name.”

Clark had assiduously cultivated the capacity to be ignored, even while pursuing the most intriguing of enterprises. There was simply nothing interesting about the way he climbed to the ground from a hovering helicopter.

One hundred thirty miles south of the North pole – from the North Pole every direction is south – there was a hollow, artificially built mountain. The mightiest hands on Earth had gathered and fused together a huge mass of granite blocks which now sat collecting snow and permafrost, hidden from anyone who might be imprudent enough to linger over this forsaken corner of the Earth. From the sky, one could see only a golden arrow the length of two Olympic pools, which pointed north, presumably for the benefit of airline pilots. Only Superman could lift the sixty-ton object, slide it into a camouflaged lock set into the mountain face, and open the door bigger than most medieval cathedrals.

Shortly before four in the afternoon on the third Monday in the month of May, the people of the city of Metropolis learned the meaning of joy. They had no explanation for this feeling, and there were gaps in their knowledge of what had gone on in their lives so far that day. It was as though they were all waking up, or at least opening their eyes, for the first time in an awfully long time. The first thing many of them saw was the red-and-blue figure of Superman drawing a line across their sky, and he became the symbol of their joy. It felt like a miracle, though none could say why.