Hereafter Pt 2.

All right, I’m back. And I’m feeling a bit better. And there’s still real screenshots and we’re gonna get this gravy train back on the…potato..rails?

To recap, Supes got blasted by Toyman, everyone thinks he’s dead except Batman who is never ever fooled by anything ever. Lobo shows up, villians are going crazy in Metropolis so he helps the league fight them and we find that Superman is not dead but seems to be somewhere out of this world.

The episode opens on Superman waking up on what he assumes is a different planet. There’s a red sun and he’s powerless, but his communicator is giving off a tracking signal or something. I wonder if he normally has his communicator volume turned waaaaaay down so he doesn’t superhear his ear drums to bits. Though I suppose he would have super strong eardrums too. Is this like in Superman Returns? I never saw that movie, because I knew I would hate it when I saw that commercial and they showed the bullet hitting him in his eye and he’s just like “yeah, eyes of steel.” I turned off my TV and retired to my study so I could write my congressman.

He decides to follow the tracking thingamajigger, but since he’s powerless, he siphons the fuel out of some of the cars that had also been zapped. He fills up their identical gas tanks and grabs some other supplies including an entire box of Light Speed energy bars. He throws this all in the sports car, on the off chance there’s some chicks he needs to impress during the drive.

Later that night, he’s zooming all, contemplating the possibility of a nap and stroking his already full and lush beard. I guess it grows really fast when he doesn’t have laser eyes to shave it with. He starts a campire with a flare and as he’s sitting down to enjoy some fire, a bunch of wolf things start growling at him from a rocky ledge above. He grabs some sticks from the fire and flings them towards the wolves yelling “Git! Git!” and exposing his simple country farmboy nature while also starting a brush fire.

Feeling vulnerable, he grabs some metal from somewhere, probably part of the car or something. He heats it up in the fire and begins pounding on it with a hammer he found in someone’s car next to the rest of their Thor costume. Trusty Mjolnir assist Superman in crafting a very shiny sword and one that seems way sharper than a dude could make overnight next to a fire and still manage to get some sleep before having to drive forever the next day.

His beard, having sprouted 3 inches of hair in a matter of hours, has slowed its furious growth to but a crawl.

He sets off again and hacks into some local plant life with his sword. He chomps right into, unconcerned about the fact that it might be poisonous or fuck, it might not even be a plant, you don’t fucking know.

As he continues to drive, it starts to rain which then turns to snow. He sighs and puts the roof up on his swanky car, sad to lose the breeze on his face and the fun, fun, fun he would have until running out of gas takes his T-Bird away. He sets of walking a bit only to find that the pack of wolves have follwed him, despite him driving pretty fast away from them for the better part of a day. Those are determined fucking wolves.

This time Supes implores the wolves to sit, or stay or down or jesus christ didn’t anyone train these fucking wolves? The wolves go to work on him and his powers must be working at least a little bit because those wolves would rip a dude to shreds and he just gets some scrapes and tooth marks that will likely get horribly infected.

It comes down to Supes versus the leader of the wolves, Captain Wolf. They circle each other and ponder tying their hands together for deadly knife fight. Captain Wolf leaps at Superman, but in the next shot we see Superman wearing Captain Wolf’s beautiful pelt as a tiny cape because he missed his cape.

The other wolves, tricked by Superman’s Captain Wolf disguise are pulling him along a snow sled fashioned from the roof of the sports car, despite the fact that it seemed to be a soft-top earlier. Whatever, we ain’t mechanics here all right. He’s also created a nice woodsman type outfit, and it seems likely that he watches a little Project Runway when the world’s not about to be blown to bits.

Around the fire that night, Superman is telling the wolves ghost stories, while he cooks up the 100 pounds of dead Captain Wolf that he could carry back to the wagon. He feeds the wolves their falling companion, unaware of the Superman in wolf’s clothing as he tricks them into wolf cannibalism.

The next day, god it’s been like a million days, he’s mushing the wolves along until the reach the edge of a cliff. Supes decides to go it on foot for the rest of the way. He makes the wolves leave, and they scamper off, unsure of who their leader since Captain Wolf has apparently shunned them. Wolves are so dumb.

Supes continues on and ho fuck! those are some big fucking bugs.

He sneaks past them, only to find the Watchtower, not in space, but on the ground. The ground, which is the last place an orbiting space base should be located. He is shocked to find this, since, as I stated, it’s the last place an orbiting space base should be located. Though I have to wonder where the homing beacon was leading him. Did he think the rest of the league had managed to get all clumped together somewhere? What if they were all spread out? Do the communicators pick one person to lead everyone else to?

The Watchtower recognizes him and the doors open up. He sits at a monitor looking at the locations of the other leaguers all listed as “unknown” except for his which says “right here dummy.” It’s nice that despite being dead, they left him the database. Aquaman is also listed, which is a fact that is entirely too focused on in the JL Wikipedia.

My desire to edit is quelled by the knowledge that once I started, I would never stop. Like with drinking.

As Superman mopes, a voice is heard in the dark and Vandal Savage approaches him. I fucking love Vandal. Vandal tells Superman what he already knows: it’s the goddamn future and everyone’s dead. Hurray!

Superman asks Vandal how he got to the future, because the red sun has also taking away his super brain power, and Vandal explains for like the millionth fucking time that he’s immortal and that doesn’t mean just for a little while it means fucking immortal jesus christ.

Vandal invites Superman over to his house because he’s making cookies and they can play Nintendo and build a fort in the living room. As they walk there, Vandal leads them through the wreckage of Metropolis and you just know that Daily Planet globe is the most wrecked part of the entire city. Vandal explains that he destroyed the world and fucked up the gravity and killed everyone. He manages to piss Superman off, but Superman decides not to try to kill him because it wouldn’t work. I still say it would take some stress off, so why not? It wouldn’t work!

Inside, they’re enjoying a delightful lunch and Superman is eyeing Vandal’s self-help books.

I guess he’d have to cope with himself. Who else is he going to cope with?

oh. ho. ho.

He shows off his fancy fucking house and garden that would make the editor of House & Garden weep. Superman is sleeping on the couch that night, because why would Vandal have a guest bedroom. Superman can’t sleep, because despite being a future Savage brand couch, it still ain’t that comfy. He wanders around Vandal’s house until stumbling upon a giant room containing the huge time machine from The Savage Time.

Superman runs to remind Vandal that he owns the keys to a wicked time machine and Vandal explains that he lost interest since he can’t travel to a time he already existed, he can just send laptops around, and that’s not as much fun as you might imagine. Superman explains that he could go back in time, and tells Vandal to get up! Because they’ve got work to do! And there’s not a lot of time for them to work on their time machine because he needs to get to the past right now before it moves, and it’s best to work when you haven’t had a good night’s rest. I learned that in college.

Unfortunately they can’t manage to power the machine long enough for Superman to travel back. Vandal suggests stealing back the power source the roaches had stolen a while ago, in an elaborate roach raid as they broke into his house in the still of night wearing black clothes and nylons over their heads so as to not reveal themselves as giant roaches.

Superman and Vandal ride some giant bugs to the roaches’ hang out and the roaches are all over those delicious giant bugs. Supes and Vandal hide behind a rock and those roaches are so dumb they don’t even notice. The two of them head into the elaborate roach lair. It isn’t long before even the dumbest roach is aware of the presence. They fight them off as they make their way to the power source and as Superman falls into a pit containing it, he regains his powers as the thing is basically a miniature sun. He shows those roaches what’s what and heads with Vandal back to his house. Vandal tells him how to stop him from destroying the world and killing everyone, and Superman leaps into the time warp.

Back on earth, we see the earlier scene of a Lobo playing car pile on Kalibak and as the league gets all sad for a bit, Deadshot takes aim at Batman from a nearby rooftop. He fires and Superman pops in to catch the bullet/rocket thing. Batman, with the speed of a cheetah on crack, flings a batarang right into Deadshot’s arm rocket/bullet launcherkajigger.

Flash is tearing up and Superman tries to explain what happens and why he’s wearing a wolf skin and a seatbelt for a belt and carrying a hammer, and you’d think Vandal would’ve hooked him up with some new threads.

Wonder Woman asks if he’s gonna keep a beard, like that totally wouldn’t give away his secret identity. Next she’ll be suggesting he grow a fucking mullet or something.

Superman kicks Lobo out of the league and he flies off on his bike telling them not to ask him the next time they need help, and J’onn says one of my favorite J’onn lines ever.

“We didn’t ask you this time!”

I love his martian logic, it’s so sexy.

Back in the future, Vandal sees the wreckage around him slowly disappear and future-y people show up as he fades away. It’s rather touching. And Vandal is awesome.

Wednesday! Maybe Superman? Maybe Batman? I don’t know! Maybe a crossover maybe!