Comments are always appreciated...

I am so glad there is a continuation of this story. I like the take on it. Hopefully you will post the next part soon.

Kathy
www.chili-everyway.com

I love your sense of desciption, even if it is disgusting.

This is an interesting continuation. I expected that Taking Down a God was a replacement for, and not a precursor to Vatman. I really liked the story, but I needed a bit more of a transition. Lois seemed to recover from surgery almost immediately, and yet she doesn't make the connection that this Superman may be another clone like the last one.


Elisabeth
who is eagerly awaiting part 3

Yes, this is a re-write of Vatman. Lois's surgery is actually set for the next day - most of this section is a flashback while she, physically, is getting settled into a hospital room. (Maybe I need to make that clearer.)

I understood that it was a flashback and that most of part 2 takes place before part 1, as we get filled in on the backstory to the main drama.

I'm glad that it wasn't Clark who turned evil, and it makes sense that it was Luthor's cloned Superman who went rogue. I'm looking forward to part 3 to see if Clark is really dead (and if Lois has figured out that he was the original Superman) and if we can get some semblance of a happy ending out of this interesting, albeit tragic, scenario.

Kathy

I never saw this coming but it is a great explanation! I would hate for our Superman to turn into Evilman.

How is Clark?

More now please!

Natascha

Wow. I was one FoLC that didn't imagine that your first part was about anyone other than Clark gone insane, but using the Luthor Clone was a great idea.

That was ominous, although inconclusive as to whether the clone killed Clark. Is it wrong to hope that he's somewhere - oh, say in Kansas - recuperating or waiting to see if any other clones appear?

I hope to see more soon.
B

I don't share the title Queen of Evil for nothin'

Oh, great continuation!!! More soon!!

Artemis

I was really happy to see this part because after Part One I was having really bad thoughts about our Clark/Superman.

But "the new improved version" is really scary - it sounds like he really injured Clark. Except doesn't Clark have super-healing?

Now I'm interested in the time between the confrontation on Lois's apartment, and the time that the false Superman is taken down. How long was that? How long was the reign of terror? You said in Part One that over a hundred people had been killed. (At least Lex Luthor was one of them, in poetic justice.)

And does Henderson know that CK=S? Did Clark actually end up going to the hospital? And did the Bizarro Superman keep on coming back and hitting on Lois? Was she assaulted again?

I can't wait for the next part!

Iolanthealias wrote:

I wouldn't be too worried - Dandello has killed Clark before, but only to bring him back again. Now if it was Lois who was seriously injured, though....

Ann

Wonderful. I do hope Clark came through okay but there seems to be a lot of backstory that we still don't know. I have to believe that Lois knows that Clark is Superman now, but what about...

1. What happened to Clark?
2. Does Lois even know what happened to him?
3. What does Henderson know about Clark and/or Superman?
4. If Clark is alive, will anyone ever trust Superman again?
5. What happened to Scardino?

How bad is it that part of me hopes Scardino was taken out by the clone? Oh, well, as I say to my coworkers, "Never mistake me for a nice person." (Although usually that only applies when I am reviewing one of their documents of designs.) With Scardino and Lex, "not nice" certainly applies.

Bob

I'm going to be the party pooper here. This is an interesting, well-written story, and I am curious to see how it ends. But...



I think the original part was stronger as a stand-alone. Especially the poignancy of the last line. Orginally, the implication was that Lois had loved him as well--that's what made it so heart-breakingly tragic. With the addition of the backstory, that implication--and therefore the gut-wrenching punch of Lois being the one to bring Superman down--is lost. The clone Superman is a horrible villain who must be killed, but not a former hero with a tragic flaw who must be destroyed be the one who loves him. Interesting and creative, but not as powerful emotionally.

You do have a potential new tragedy here--either Clark is dead, or he is consigned to forever hide his powers because this world will never accept another superhero. He'll be back to wandering the globe again unless he can harden his heart enough to never use his powers again. (No...he could learn to be better at not getting caught, but that would be a constant tightrope walk.) Still, I found it more powerful as a stand-alone.

Happy, who can't believe she's publicly advocating for the unredeemed WHAM option.

Well, I had seriously considered leaving Part 1 as a stand alone but Lois's potential angst was too good to pass up. What I may do is post 'Taking Down a God' to the archive separately from 'The Rest of the Story'.

Or maybe not...

Happygirl said:

I agree completely. Anyway, this also proves my point: Lois can be made evil - for no particularly good reason, she can be turned into a horrible witch - but Superman's character can't be tampered with. Ever.

It's not that I'm asking for an evil Superman, per se. It's rather that I find it interesting that the complete destruction of Lois Lane's character in Terry's The Cold Shoulder could garner as much acclaim as it did, even if some people were deeply, deeply critical. In response to that story, I wondered if it was possible to destroy Clark Superman Kent's character in a similar way. I guess the preliminary answer is no.

Ann

Dandello, I like this story, whether as one complete whole or with part one as a standalone. You have so much potential here, it's hard to know where to begin. I only wonder if Lois - no, when Lois will remember how fast Clark was moving before the fake Superman threw him across the room.

And people, may I ask that you quit taking shots at me here? This thread is for Dandello's story feedback, okay? Let her know how you feel about her work. I already know how most of you feel about my story.

I tend to agree - it also goes along with DC's underlying theme that heroes (and villains to a lesser extent) are born, not made - while Batman was born of Bruce Wayne's trauma over his parents' death, Bruce Wayne would have become a great benefactor to humanity in any case. He's just made that way. (Does anyone really think he would have pulled the trigger in Batman Begins?)

The same goes for Clark - even without powers he is destined to become a hero. And even in story lines where he appears to become evil or does evil things, it's always due to outside influences - red kryptonite, magic, meddling time traveling aliens, etc. - and he can always be redeemed. It's his inherent nature.

BTW Terry, I personally 'liked' Cold Shoulder very much. As much as I wanted Lois to recover completely I also know it wasn't likely given the set up. I applaud the fact that you stuck to your guns and gave a chilling outcome to Clark's and Lois's short-sightedness in the initial situation.

Well, sigh. Lois can be evil. Clark can not. Lois can die and not be returned, at least not in her own body. If Clark dies, he will be returned as himself and in his own body.

I realize that to most people, Lois Lane is a really minor character compared to Superman. So it's no wonder that Clark will be portrayed as so much nobler, stronger and hardier than Lois. It's just that to me, it's painful to see that Lois can be portrayed as such a morally and physically weak character, while Clark will always remain an unshakable pillar of moral strength.

Woman, thy name is Weakness and Wickedness. So if Lois had been Eve, she would still have picked the forbidden fruit. But if Clark had been Adam, he would carefully have taken the succulent evil from Lois and put it back in the tree. And mankind would have been saved.

It's a good thing, then, that men have learnt their lesson since Adam. Nowadays men do their best to keep women to the straight and narrow, because women are so evil.



Ann

MODERATOR EDIT: Photo has been removed after multiple complaints. Ann, please see your PMs.

"And even in story lines where he appears to become evil or does evil things, it's always due to outside influences - red kryptonite, magic, meddling time traveling aliens, etc. - and he can always be redeemed. It's his inherent nature."

If we take only the first story, the answer to Ann's question is 'Yes.' Superman can go very wrong indeed. But people like happy endings, and Dandello chose to provide one (maybe--we haven't seen the end of hers yet, although she has already exonerated Clark). Terry chose not to. That doesn't make Terry's Lois inherently evil. It makes her damaged. Terry's brain damage of Lois is just as much an outside influence as magic or red K on Clark. The difference is that the brain damage is not reversable, but that's the nature of the injury, not any inherent wickedness in Lois. If Clark weren't invulnerable he'd be liable to the same kind of injury.

BTW, if you want to see an evil Kal-El, check out the Long, Strange Journey. There a few stories with evil Lord Kal Els. The premise there being that heroes aren't born; they're raised by peolpe like Martha and Jonathan Kent.

I don't think I've ever seen a story in which Lois is a minor character. Lois and Clark are both indispensible to each other--not that the other couldn't survive alone, but it would be a lesser life than it would have been with the two of them together. Ad Astra Per Aspera is an example of the two of them surviving, but not really thriving, seperately.

Dandello, I am really enjoying your take on this story. Like Happygirl said, I feel that some of the impact of the original is lost, knowing that it was the clone that Lois helped destroy. I personally prefer to think of this as an "alternate ending/continuation", so I would be very happy to see you post it on the archive separately from Taking Down a God.

In any case, like everyone else, I need to know what has happened to Clark. Is he recovering somewhere? Does Lois know the secret? And if Clark is still alive, how will he suppress his need to help, since Superman would remain an unwanted figure?

And although I'm wandering off-topic here, I have to comment to this:
Ann, we all know of your strong opinions about Lois' role in the entirety of the Superman universe. But remember that here you are preaching to people who love this incarnation of the Superman mythos, not the general public at large. Although some - maybe even many, but certainly not all - of those in Lois & Clarkdom may cite Clark as their favorite character, do any of us regard Lois as a "really minor character"? Truly - maybe we should ask for a show of hands...

Kathy

I never saw this coming. I don't know, the stand-alone piece never felt like this could be an option. The 'I love you. - I know.' through me completely off. Great save, though, anyway.

Wonder if this is going to be the second story within a month that costs Lois a hand.

I'm sure Clark's still alive and kicking, or Lois wouldn't have responded like this:
Michael

Um, I had a good and logical reason for that - 1. The New Kryptonians would have had no reason to clone Lois, 2. Lois herself chose to transmigrate into that body. 3. Lois and Clark can now be on equal terms in life span.

Also, just in general - Lois is a character that grows and learns and changes. She starts out as a hard-bitten reporter, transforms into a smitten fan-girl when Superman shows up and after time (depending on the writer at DC) morphs into a suitable partner for Superman.

Clark doesn't really change. Once he figures out how to be Superman, he doesn't really grow and maybe that's one of the reasons the show didn't go into the fifth season - Lois had already grown into being capable of being a mother - Clark could not be allowed to grown into a father.

Just my 2 cents.

Everyone here is probably a Superman fan, but I don't think you can love LnC without also being a Lois fan. After all, whose name comes first? On a less facetious note, the defining difference between the Superman character in LnC and the other incarnations of Superman is his humanity, expressed in part by his deep love for Lois. You can view it either as a strength or as a "fatal flaw," but he wouldn't exist without Lois and he can't survive without her. That doesn't explain why so many of us are willing to see Superman destroyed in Dandello's story (because I agree that the standalone story was more powerful but I like the continuation too). Maybe the answer is that in spite of being a murderer and evil, he never lost his love for Lois?

I agree with HappyGirl and think that you should post both versions. One would be only Chapter One ("Taking Down A God") and the other would be Chapter One (again) plus the subsequent chapters. That way people could get the full benefit of the WHAM in the short story as HG described in her well-reasoned comment.

Besides, I love your writing and I want two stories for the price of one!

I found the original story to be very sad. As can be seen from my post on that story, I took it to be our real, original Clark that was insane. Either he always had been or something had driven him that way.

Since I tend to overreact to these types of stories, I have to be very careful and I almost didn’t read it. Once I did I found that I could both tolerate and appreciate the story.

For me, the difference was that even though Clark had gone insane, his love for Lois was still there, even if it were in a very twisted form. Then, when Lois participated in Superman’s demise, it was not an act of callousness, but was instead also an act of love in the only way possible in the situation.

I would almost think that an alternate prequel might be in order. We have the mad-clone story, which I like and want to see the rest. However, I suspect that the tragedy version of the story could be very good also.

There is a lot of potential for a back-story where our real Clark is driven insane by… I don’t know, Pink Kryptonite, and Lois had to take him down with full knowledge of who he had been. Then had to face moving on understanding both what she lost and the idea that she had no choice.

I probably couldn’t read it, (way too ) but I can see the tragic beauty of such a story.

Bob

As for the Long, Strange Journey (I seem to remember it as Long, Strange Trip), it wasn't "our" Clark who was evil. It was another version of him.

Bottom line (or more specifically, the point I want to make): Terry gets accolades for posting a story where Lois remains hopelessly corrupted. Dandello gets accolades for posting a story where Clark is redeemed. Lois can be hopelessly corrupted, but Clark is incorruptible. That's what makes me so depressed.

My real problem, of course, is that I have spent so many years reading Superman comics and watching Superman movies, and I have come across many stories where I think Superman made a choice that was morally wrong. And yet, Superman is never regarded as evil or acknowledged as evil.

In spite of how I hate the movie "Superman II", where Superman zapped Lois's mind into oblivion to cover up the fact that he had made love to her and to remove her knowledge of his secret identity, I wouldn't go so far as to describe his actions in that movie as "evil". I do find them cowardly and contemptible and extremely un-heroic, but not downright evil. Interestingly, though, there is a fic posted here on these boards where I think Superman crosses the line into evilness, and that is, also interestingly, a fic by Terry. I mention his name only because Terry is also the person who wrote the fic about the evil Lois.

In the fic where I think Terry's Superman crosses the line into evilness he actually rips open the chest of a criminal, Bill Church, and rips out the heart from his chest, thus killing him. It is a very graphic, horrible and hate-filled way of killing a person. And yet, a major point of Terry's fic is to prove that Superman did nothing illegal when he killed Bill Church like that, and therefore he should not be punished by the law. (The question of whether or not Superman did something evil when he ripped out Bill Church's heart is not really discussed.) A major point of that fic is to exonerate Superman and say that Superman can be Superman even if he has literally ripped a bad person's heart out of his chest.

Clark is not condemned as evil in the fic where he kills a man by ripping out his heart. But Lois was definitely portrayed as morally corrupt and, in the words of Star Wars-speak, lost to the other side in The Cold Shoulder. I only read parts of TCS, so I don't know exactly what Lois did or didn't do in that fic, but it is my impression that she didn't kill anyone. And yet we all "know" that she became evil there. Clark, on the other hand, ripped out a criminal's heart in that other fic, but there were no major complaints about the fact that Clark was allowed to commit murder in such a gruesome way and still be regarded as at least basically himself afterwards. (Well, there were strong complaints from one person, namely from me. What I disliked the most was not that Clark ripped out Bill Church's heart, although I certainly disliked it. In my opinion it was worse that the fic didn't really censor Clark for his actions and that in the end, we were still asked to accept Clark Kent as a good person, and the general public of the LnC universe were asked to regard Superman as a trustworthy hero.)

So Clark can do horrible things and still be good, but Lois can become hopelessly evil even if she hasn't done anything comparable to ripping a person's heart out of his chest. Because Lois's moral compass can be made to point the wrong way, due to the fact that she is Lois, but Clark is morally infallible almost regardless of what he does, because he is Clark. And therefore there is always some excuse or explanation that takes the sting out of his seemingly horrible transgressions. Because he is Clark, and he is Superman.

Ann

One more thing about the movie, Superman II. Superman's actions in that movie have been criticized by many people on these boards, for example by Terry. The way I remember the general reception of the movie when it arrived in 1980, however, people generally seemed to like it. There were some complaints about the fact that Superman had had sex with Lois, but none, as far as I'm aware, about the fact that he had found a way of getting himself out of trouble by giving Lois amnesia.

The latest Superman movie was roundly critized, however. I came across many posts on a Superman site where people were very angry about the fact that the Man of Steel unexpectedly turned out to have a son. The Superman fans were angry that their hero had to suffer the consequences of his actions. Never mind that he had done something wrong in the first place, but the fact that he was made to suffer for it was really a bad thing.

Ann

With apologies yet again for straying into territory not directly pertaining to this story...

Ann, in my opinion, your "bottom line" is based on a misconception. Terry did not receive accolades because Lois remained corrupted. Dandello's accolades were not because Clark is redeemed - if you read the first part of the story, you'll know that it was not clearly stated who the evil Superman was. I was one who never even thought of the clone, but automatically assumed that something unimaginable had happened to change *our* Clark. Although I am definitely enjoying the continuation of Dandello's story, I thought that first part was incredibly powerful, trying to fathom what had turned Clark to the dark side and how horrible it was that Lois was having to destroy the man she loved. Just as I thought Terry's story was very powerful in describing the fall-out from the agreement to freeze Lois and how it changed everyone's lives irrevocably.

I appreciated reading the journey that these characters travelled. I do appreciate that not everyone feels the same way, since everyone has different feelings and responses to what they read. So how can you so easily state *the* bottom line?

Kathy

I didn't actually say "the" bottom line. But let me change it, then, into "my" bottom line.

In my opinion, though, you don't really want to understand what my complaint is. I specifically asked, after Terry's fic was posted, if it was possible to post a story where Clark became evil in the same way that Lois became evil in The Cold Shoulder. Dandello answered the challenge by posting this fic. But now she has actually said that, no, Clark can't be made to be evil in the same way that Lois was made to be evil in TCS. And that's what I feel bad about, particularly since I think there is plenty of evidence that Clark's behaviour hasn't always been exemplary.

Ann

One more thing. I have absolutely no objections to the idea that an evil clone of Superman would terrorize Metropolis, until Lois took him down. I also have no problem whatsoever with the idea that the real Clark is on ice somewhere because he has been seriously injured, but after a while he will return as his uncorrupted, strong and noble self again.

No, I have absolutely no problem with that idea. My problem is that I see this fic as an answer to my challenge, which was to write a story where "our" Clark gets corrupted for real. Now Dandello tells me that she, at least, can't write such a story, so she is posting this one instead, which proves the opposite of what I asked for in my challenge. I asked for a story where Clark gets corrupted and get one where I'm told that he can't be corrupted.

Ann

You're right, Ann, the emphasis on *the* bottom line was mine. I apologize for stressing that so strongly.

And I do understand how you could be disappointed that this story is not answering the challenge as stated. But Dandello did respond that she was twisting things - something along the lines that she can never respond to a challenge exactly as issued. Also, I haven't seen any reference to Dandello saying that Clark can't be corrupted, although obviously that isn't going to happen in this particular story.

If you regard the first part as a stand-alone, certainly one could infer that this was in fact *our* evil Clark. (As a number of us did.) Or perhaps someone else will write such a story. Maybe you could, since you feel strongly about it.

Kathy

Well, considering most people think Clark would never be induced to commit suicide...

One of the best 'Lois deals with a deranged Clark' is (in my opinion) Yellow Fever .

It's just that Clark is harder to corrupt. (The Superman movies not withstanding.)

In many ways I feel like we're digging up a dead horse again. This conversation has been discussed and argued in many different forms over the years.

I did want to make one more note that actually pertains to the writing of this story. I had some extra time today so I reread it again. I realized that Dandello had made it quite clear that she was dealing with a flashback. If I hadn't chosen to copy that line, open a new window, start a feedback file, and paste it there I probably would have noticed it. As it was, I glossed over some important words in the process.

I still think it's a great story and look forward to part 3.


Elisabeth

Well, brava, Dandello. Great story.

Terry asked us to concentrate on Dandello's story and quit commenting on his.

And, yes, I agree that much of this feedback is s rehash of things that have been discussed repeatedly on this board.

Ann, have you ever watched the LnC shows? The shows for which this ficdom is named for? And if you want a story about a very evil Superman then try writing it yourself. I'm sure you could do it justice.