Play Date update

Lois had once killed a story about the concierge of the Hotel Metro. She never would’ve published it anyway; it wasn’t news, just embarrassing gossip. But still, he was grateful, and when Lois was in New York, he let her have access to a penthouse apartment, no questions asked.

It was a good spot for interviews. Private and cozy, but neither seedy nor intimidatingly luxurious. Instead, like the Hotel Metro itself, it had seen better days, but still offered a classical elegance that could put anyone at ease. Even a superhero.

Spinneret—or rather, Mary Jane Watson, not that Lois knew for sure and not that she’d let herself know for sure—actually pulled off wearing spandex among the timeless Art Deco furnishings. She ate, savoringly but with appetite, from the light meal Lois had prepared. Since becoming a mother, Lois’s homemaking skills had become enough to make her pre-Superman self cringe.

“I don’t suppose you’ve given an interview before,” Lois began by noting, placing the recorder a discreet distance away so it wouldn’t pick up Mary Jane’s chewing. “I’ve looked through the archives and you’re not much of a publicity hound, which I always find surprising for someone in a brightly colored costume.”

Mary Jane wiped her mouth with a napkin. “Well, you never know. Without the mask, I might be the Pope.”

“At any rate, thanks for talking to me.”

“My pleasure. After the help Superman gave us, I suppose talking to ‘Superman’s girlfriend’ is the least I can do. And I am a little more experienced at talking to the press than others in my family.”

Lois had heard enough about J. Jonah Jameson’s mishaps over the years to believe she’d lucked out. Still: “I’m not Superman’s girlfriend. I’m married.”

“Yeah, and Superman must have someone too. That Superkid had to come from somewhere.”

An uneasy silence settled over the room. Mary Jane—if it was her, which it was—picked up a carrot stick, swiped up some spinach dip, and bit into it. Lois drank from her cup of iced tea.

Well, at least she didn’t have to worry about being unbearably attracted to this costumed adventurer.

“You know, no one ever calls Superman ‘Lois Lane’s boyfriend,’” Lois noted. “And he has so many nicknames. Man of Steel, Man of Tomorrow, Last Son of Krypton…”

“Big Blue Boy Scout,” Mary Jane agreed, nodding along. “Which isn’t fair. My Spider-Man is a real Boy Scout himself. And he wears blue.”

“Maybe he’s not big enough,” Lois ventured.

Mary Jane smiled condescendingly at her. “No comment. I trust you’ve been at this too long to ask any silly questions about where I was born, how I got my powers, how they work, what my secret weaknesses are—any of that stuff?”

“I’d never make my word count. Why don’t we just talk about what happened the other day?”

“Gladly.” Mary Jane stole another bite of carrot stick—chewed and quickly swallowed. “This is great, by the way.”

“Thanks. Found the recipe online. It’s the one that comes with the sob story about Coast City. Now, not to pry too much, but I assume you and Spider-Man and Spiderling all… cohabit?”

“If Spider-Man spends his nights elsewhere, it’d be news to me. And yes, we do take the masks off sometimes. We’re good at taking things off.”

Mary Jane winked saucily, then stilled—almost freezing on the cocky insouciance.

“Not that it was like that. I’m sure you wouldn’t understand,” she said, eying Lois with meaning in her voice. “But when you only have so much time together, it makes the moments you do get much more meaningful. Spidey was holding me when we both woke up and he stroked my arm—when I looked at him, he had this sorta glint in his eye—I asked him what he was thinking and…” Mary Jane stopped, her eyes going to the recorder suddenly. “I just remembered I was talking to you and to the Daily Planet’s circulation numbers.”

“We both know that’s not true,” Lois responded immediately. “If it’s not newsworthy, it won’t see print. If you just want to talk…”

Mary Jane gestured for the recorder. Lois slid it across the tabletop to her. Mary Jane hit pause on it.

“He said that… it shocked him a little that there was a time when he would’ve looked at me, not knowing me, and only felt lust… we met when we were both really young… and uh, well… not what you’d think of as parental role models… but now, I hadn’t gotten any less attractive to him, but he thought about how good it was to be near me, to have me with him, to be able to just lie there and… experience me.”

“And you felt the same way?” Lois asked, not feeling much like a reporter, but more like a woman sympathizing with another woman.

“Well, no, I was lusting after him like crazy.” Mary Jane smirked and although Lois still wasn’t dealing with an unbearable attraction, she could see how good the redhead had been at not being a parental role model. “But I did like having him experience me. Whatever form that took. I suppose you’re familiar with that. Being married.”

“I wish that was all it took, but yeah. Although I’d like to think I’ve had my fair share of non-parental role model moments.”

“Well, one kid.” Mary Jane affected a Texan accent. “’You’ve gotta pump those numbers up, those are rookie numbers.’”

Lois laughed and smiled. “Maybe we should get back to the interview.”

“Yeah. Wouldn’t want to get your readers too interested,” Mary Jane said with raised eyebrow. She turned the recorder back on. “Anyway, Spidey and I were enjoying a quiet morning, trying to decide which of us would do the least bad job of making breakfast for our clan, when we heard the explosions.”

Even she couldn’t keep up her jubilant air as the subject changed to that. Her face darkened, along with her charisma. Journalistic instincts intact, Lois still felt herself being pulled into Mary Jane’s woe, sympathizing with her in a way she cautioned herself against. Much as she wanted to comfort her, it was just a story. Lois couldn’t turn off all her objectivity, much as she knew Mary Jane was a trustworthy source.

“Well, we got into costume—went to find… our daughter and she was already dressed.” Mary Jane smiled with sadness. “You know how it is with kids. Either they’re ready an hour ahead of time and don’t understand why you can’t go already or you can’t get them out the door for love or money.”

“And that’s when you found Bizarro attacking the city?”

“Yes. This Bizarro.” Mary Jane reached for her empty glass and poured into it from a carafe of water. “You’d never get a good interview out of him, but this is where you should be talking to my husband. People only see the goof, but the superhero stuff is where he’s in his element. If it weren’t his job, you’d think he was obsessed.”

“Then he had some insight into ‘this Bizarro’?” Lois prodded as Mary Jane drank.

Mary Jane finished her sip of water. “Yes. I’m sure you know by now from what the alphabet soup people have let out, but he knew instantly. All Bizarros are imperfect clones of Superman. It’s not the usual supervillain—one guy who keeps busting out of jail again and again and again, maybe sometimes someone else dresses up like him and uses the name.”

“I know. ‘A Bizarro’ is the nickname applied to any lifeform created from an attempt to clone Superman with our level of technology. But what was so special about this Bizarro?”

“He sure wasn’t perfect, that’s for sure. But the scientist who’d cloned him this time had found a way to specifically… imperfect his senses. He couldn’t control them the way Superman can, the way every Bizarro we’ve seen up until now could. So every noise, every smell, everything he saw—it was driving him crazy. Poor… dumb animal.” Mary Jane shook her head.

“You feel sorry for him?”

“Not then, but now… yeah. He didn’t ask to be made. And I know Superman would never agree to letting such a dangerous creature be made from his DNA. But none of that mattered then. He was hurting people. Wrecking cars, tearing chunks out of buildings—it’s a miracle he hadn’t collapsed any skyscrapers by the time we got there.”

“And that’s when you called Superman for help?”

“Yes.” Mary Jane appeared slightly patronizing now, having to tell Lois something she already knew for the sake of the interview. “He had met with my family beforehand and given us a way to contact them. And my husband knew right away that this was too much for us. Even if the Bizarro wasn’t as powerful as the real thing… Spider-Man prefers to handle things by himself or with us, but he doesn’t have nearly enough ego to put his family in danger in the name of self-sufficiency.”

“I understand Superman was able to make it there very quickly?”

“Yes—almost before I realized that my husband had used the signal and remembered what it was for, Superman had come in and… rammed Bizarro out of the city and into some wilderness upstate. I don’t know if he was lucky or if he assessed the situation as fast as Spidey did, but he got Bizarro to someplace that was much less of an assault on his senses. Then all he had to do was hold Bizarro in place until he calmed down.”

“Superman is an expert in klurkor, a Kryptonian martial art, so he was able to grapple Bizarro into submission, since the creature didn’t have the skill to break free.”

“Yeah. Exactly what Spider-Man was hoping for.” Mary Jane sighed and took a quick sip of water. “And then the second Bizarro showed up.”

“What’d you do then?”

“Spider-Man couldn’t even attack a Kryptonian, even an imperfect one, without hurting himself—he’d break every bone in his hand if he tried to punch the Bizarro. All he could do was use his webbing to slow it down, and I don’t think it’s a state secret that he doesn’t have an infinite supply of that. I used my signal, but obviously Superman was too busy with the first Bizarro to come back. So that he sent that… Superboy on his own. Can you imagine? We’re hoping that Superman had somehow subdued his Bizarro and could come back to deal with this one, then this little sprite shows up, throwing a salute at us: ‘What can I do to help, sir?’”

Lois chortled slightly. ‘Sir.’ Trust Jon to respect his elders at the weirdest times. She cleared her throat. “So your husband, Spider-Man, gave him orders?”

“I know, it sounds like… Leave It To Beaver with capes, but Spider-Man is a genius. If Captain America, Cyclops, and my husband were giving orders—I know who I’d be listening to, and it wouldn’t be because of the ring on my finger.”

“So what were the orders?”

“He wanted Superboy and Spiderling to keep the second Bizarro distracted until Superman got back, while he triangulated the source of the Bizarros and hopefully found a way to shut them down from there.”

It was unfair, given Lois knew how worried she was to have ‘Superboy’ out in those circumstances, but she had to ask: “You weren’t worried, pitting your daughter against a cloned Kryptonian?”

“I was terrified,” Mary Jane admitted readily. “But Spidey was absolutely clear: he didn’t want them to engage it, didn’t want them to try and take it down, they just had to keep it away from people. He actually wanted me to go with them, but I knew that the kids could handle themselves.” She grinned. “At least, my daughter could. And he might need me if there was a third Bizarro.”

“And Spider-Man agreed with you?”

“There wasn’t time to argue. And I wasn’t arguing. Besides, I wanted to be there when whoever had let these things out got a punch in the face.”

“But how’d you find him?”

Mary Jane shrugged. “The Bizarros weren’t subtle. A Pulitzer prize winner like you probably wouldn’t use a cliché like ‘trail of destruction,’ but that’s what it was. Spider-Man started at where Superman had taken down the first Bizarro, while I worked my way back from where the second Bizarro was rampaging. When we ran into each other, we knew we must’ve found the right spot.”

“And then?”

“Like I said, I married a genius. All while we’d been fighting and dodging and running around, he’d been looking at the big picture. Working out who could’ve done this. Since we knew we were on the guy’s doorstep, Spidey found this video billboard, reprogrammed it, and—“ Mary Jane hesitated. “Made it display a picture of Gwen Stacy.”

“The woman who was killed by the Green Goblin.”

“Yes.”

“Why did he do that?”

“The man responsible for the cloning, Miles Warren—the Jackal—he was obsessed with Gwen. Nuts about her. The whole reason he’d cloned the Bizarros was hoping to piggyback on… what was the name of that research outfit, the guys who made Superboy?”

“Cadmus,” Lois said. She found it hard to keep track of all the mad science boys herself.

Mary Jane snapped her fingers. “Cadmus. Apparently—and this is what I pieced together from what he was ranting while trying to kill us—he’d been hoping to experiment with their procedures to stabilize his own formulas, maybe make a Gwen Stacy clone with superpowers… who knows? He dresses up like the Grinch, this guy is not a well man. But his experiments didn’t work, he got frustrated, and decided to just… send them on a rampage.”

“So he told you this.”

“The billboard got a reaction from him. He could’ve stayed hidden, in his weirdo James Bond lair, but he just had to come out and fight us. Luckily, he was out of Bizarros. The rest I’m sure all the news choppers hanging around got on video.”

“What were your impressions of the fight, though.”

“Punching.” Mary Jane smiled. “Mostly by us.”

“And after he was beaten, you found he had a way to shut down the Bizarros.”

“Even the Jackal isn’t crazy enough to make a Kryptonian without an off button. Maybe we’d be better off if he was. He’d be making aluminum hats in some homeless shelter instead of cooking up clones in a secret lair.”

“Obviously Superman, Superboy, Spiderling—they’d all managed to hold on until you shut off the Bizarros.”

“Yes. My daughter told me that the Boy of Steel was really conscientious about making sure Bizarro was focused on him, not her. Not that she needed his help at dodging, but—she appreciates the thought.”

“I’ll bet. One last question: you said that Spider-Man was able to hack into an electronic billboard and display a picture of Gwen Stacy in order to draw the Jackal out. We all know what a whiz Spider-Man is with electronics, but how did he happen to have a picture of Gwen Stacy on him?”

Before, Lois would’ve pegged ‘Spinneret’ as a woman in her mid-twenties, easily, if she didn’t suspect she was really in her late thirties. The woman was so full of life, energy, a beauty that Lois had always associated with youth. But just then, Mary Jane seemed very old and very tired. And just a bit wistful. Just a little in love, in a way that made Lois ashamed for asking. It was too private, too intimate, to ever be reduced to newsprint.

“No comment.”