I think Clark's journals were a good move. I had been thinking some of the same things that Clark expressed about him taking the stand: he would be in the same room with Lex, who would try to manipulate him and get in his head. I'll admit that I hadn't actually considered that Nigel or Mrs. Cox might be in the audience with Kryptonite. That actually sounds pretty likely.

One thing Clark doesn't seem to have realized is that him coming forward at all means that the authorities will need to know who he is. He does have a birth certificate and legal identity, even if he wants to distance himself from it. (He could always legally change his name once the trial is over.) Him being Kal Luthor is integral to how Lex manipulated and abused him.

Lex giving him the name "Clark Kent" is kind of weird all around, since he didn't let Clark interact with anyone, except that it serves to distance Kal from Lex as his brother, but Clark doesn't seem to have noticed that.

All in all, "Kal Luthor" will need to be the one to come forward and testify, and then he can be declared legally alive. I can see why Clark would want Lois' contacts to make him a new identity from scratch to try to distance himself from his past, but he doesn't actually need to do that in order to have a legal (alive) identity.


"It is a remarkable dichotomy. In many ways, Clark is the most human of us all. Then...he shoots fire from the skies, and it is difficult not to think of him as a god. And how fortunate we all are that it does not occur to him." -Batman (in Superman/Batman #3 by Jeph Loeb)