Last Son of Krypton Read Online Free PDF Page B

days who did not find themselves joining in the chant and then swelling with territorial pride under their button-down collars.  
    Superman was a public phenomenon without precedent. No other public figure, even in the golden age of monarchy, ever so excited people's imaginations almost from the time of his birth. From the fanciful reports of a flying baby in a red-and-blue playsuit twenty and thirty years ago, to the public appearance of a teenaged Superboy from a lost planet, to the conferring of international citizenship on Superman by the United Nations years ago, this alien had become the most famous man on Earth. If a news show had lots of Superman film, it became popular. If a magazine had him on the cover, it outsold everything else competing for rack space. If he made a public appearance, the locals talked about it for years.
    Children played in imitations of his red cape. He made skin-tight outfits, especially in red and blue, a recurrent fashion among men not generally given to fads. The symbol he wore on his chest, a stylized S in a symmetrical irregular pentagon, was the most widely recognized trademark in the world. His crusade against crime, his awesome feats to minimize natural and man-made disasters, inspired millions of people to enter crime prevention, conservation, medical research, and similar fields. He could fly under his own power, he was strong enough to juggle planetoids, indestructible enough to take a steam bath at the core of a star, and he had the ability to see through most solid objects and to hear for unlimited distances. No other human could do what Superman could do. Every other human aspired to be him. He brought with him the birth of an age of humanitarianism on Earth; he reawakened the hope for peace. There were those who said there was a dark side to his presence, as well.  
    By lunchtime Clark Kent's blackboard in the WGBS newsroom was nearly filled with assignments. Tricia Felins was downtown with an auricon crew filming a piece on the safety of schoolyard playgrounds in the city. Johnny Greene was covering the Mayor's press conference on drug rehabilitation programs. The mayor was bucking for a Senate nomination and Greene was bucking for a post as the new Senator's press secretary. Jimmy Olsen was sixty miles away with a videotape crew at Princeton University's Institute for Advanced Studies, covering the opening of hitherto unseen documents left in a vault nearly thirty years ago by the late Professor Albert Einstein. Being processed in the lab was a three-minute "Plan Sport" feature about how to cope with an indoor coleus that grew big enough to take over the room. Already in the can was a special six-minute film in Cathi Thomas's series on the artists who were living in the converted lofts of an area of Metropolis that was once a crime-ridden eyesore. Three young reporters were running up enormous phone bills double-checking the authenticity of the hard news coming in from around the world via Associated Press and United Press International. Oscar Asherman was on the Galaxy Building roof playing with his barometers and anemometers like a child fascinated with an Erector set. Steve Lombard was in a corner, feigning ignorance of the English language in order to have an excuse to enlist Janet Terry, fresh as peaches out of Columbia School of Journalism, to help him on copy to accompany sports footage. By lunchtime Clark Kent's daily wrestling match with the WGBS 6 O'Clock Evening News was largely won, and Lois Lane was on her way up from the sixth-floor offices of the Daily Planet for their lunch date.  
    The bell rang twice on the Associated Press wire, not enough to cut into programming with a bulletin, but significant enough for the associate producer of the city's major local news show to get up from his typewriter and see what was up. As Clark held up the rolling yellow sheet of paper and watched the story type itself out he saw Lois step out of his office down the hall and he