THE VERY BOREDOM

Do you realise how much of a chore having superspeed would be?

I mean, imagine that you're Superman - you're out there, you have the big S on your chest, you're saving lives. That all makes sense. An engine blows out on the space shuttle while Jimmy Olsen's on board, the thing is plummeting towards the Daily Planet building, you have to evacuate the whole street because of falling, flaming debris. And, you know, it's really no big deal. You can handle it all in the blink of an eye because of your super-swiftness.

Three minutes later, you're in the shirt and tie, you're at the weekly editorial meeting in the Daily Planet as Clark Kent. How dull is this life? Those monthly meetings are bad enough when you don't have superspeed. Add the ability to track the complete life cycle of a single spark from a bonfire in minuscule detail, you're spending a lot of your life waiting for stuff to happen.

This, for me, is the reason Clark Kent shouldn't have married Lois Lane. That's a great relationship when she's falling out of helicopters, getting attacked by giant apes with kryptonite vision and drowning in a submarine at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean while Brainiac changes the orbit of the Moon. There's some fun to be had in those situations. But when she's chatting to her best friend on the phone for twenty minutes and you've paused the DVD in the middle of the film you were watching together... my friend, that's a long twenty minutes when your natural inclination is to see and do everything at superspeed.

Many's the time Clark has left that fateful note "Just popped out for gum" for Lois with no intention of ever coming back. Usually in that situation the husband returns eight years later, with two new kids and a trailer trash wife. In Clark's case, he's fled the stifling old relationship for approximately 16 seconds, comes back, Lois hasn't even read the note. To him, that 16 seconds is an eternity. He's super-refreshed. "Let's go, Lois! I'm ready for another 50 years of marriage, right now!"