Origins (2)

Childhood, as I've shared previously, holds some fascinating memories for me that have impacted my eventual D/s & BDSM orientation. Recent web discussions opened a drawer of my mind I hadn't looked into for a long time... comic books. As I gave it some thought, it just exploded in my mind that absolutely hands-down, the most significant is the above edition of Superman comics, Superman #261, titled "Slave of Star Sapphire".

Superman was my favorite superhero as a child. I don't know how often I read this story in my teen years (OK, OK... and later). For many years, I didn't understand its appeal, but later, once I had gained a greater awareness and a better understanding of my feelings for D/s, it clicked... big time. Did it contribute? Or does it explain?

With my gratitude going to Cascadian for his amazing post in Captain Comics, here is a synopsis of the comic book, slightly shortened/edited by me. Links to the cover image are provided below the synopsis.

The cover is absolutely amazing. Star Sapphire hovers several inches over the blacktop of Metropolis. Kneeling before her is Superman as she commands: “I command you to kiss my boot, Superman! Let the whole world see you’ve become my slave!” Behind her, Lois, Jimmy, Perry, and a crowd of Metropolitans look on in shock. The Grand Comics Database doesn’t specify who drew the cover so I presume it is Curt Swan with Murphy Anderson, the same wonder duo who provide the interior art.

The splash page for “Slave of Star Sapphire!” (written by Cary Bates and edited, of course, by Julius Schwartz) gives a very brief description of who Carol Ferris & Star Sapphire are. This is just in case the reader had never read an issue of Green Lantern. Which I hadn’t. At this point, my knowledge of Green Lantern came entirely from the Super Friends cartoon so I had no idea who Carol Ferris, much less Star Sapphire, was.

The story starts with Lois Lane at the Metropolis Museum, interviewing the curator about the Star Sapphire exhibit about to open. The exhibit includes the actual gem that provides Star Sapphire with her power. Lois remembers a couple of headlines about Star Sapphire battling Green Lantern and how she wanted to beat him so she could marry him(!). The curator loans Lois a replica costume for her article and recommends that she model it due to her resemblance to the villainess.

The Metropolis airport must be well outside the city, for Clark Kent is riding a helicopter shuttle from the airport to the city. Also on this short flight: Carol Ferris. Using his telescopic vision, Clark sees trouble on the outskirts of the city at a tavern called the Green Lantern. Inside the tavern is a wanted man, Max Fenton, wearing a vest of high explosives that could wipe the entire neighborhood off the map quite easily.

Clark hits an emergency ejection button that fires his seat out the side of the helicopter and then deploys parachutes for a safe landing, his sleeping seat-mate (an business man whose name is not given) is just along for the ride. As the stewardess on the chopper puts it: “They’re quite safe! One of them must’ve accidentally hit their chute-ejector button, that’s all!” Clark uses his super-breath to aim the falling seat to the roof of a skyscraper so he can change clothes without being seen. As Superman flies away, Clark’s seat-mate finally wakes up.

With the blessing of the police, Superman carefully approaches the Green Lantern tavern (which a footnote says appeared previously, in a 1964 Action Comics story). Watching from the helicopter using a handy pair of binoculars, Carol Ferris watches Superman’s actions. She starts feeling odd when she sees the name of the establishment Superman is walking towards. Superman inhales deeply and then blows just enough air into the building to cause it to collapse.

Fenton stands dumbfounded, scarcely able to believe that the building has fallen apart but left him standing unharmed. He threatens Superman with the nitro in his vest. It can’t hurt Superman, of course, but can still damage all the nearby buildings. Superman whips off his indestructible cape and flings it around Fenton. If the nitro detonates now, only Fenton will be harmed by it. The villain starts to collapse and begs Superman to catch him and prevent the explosives from detonating.

Carol Ferris has been watching all this but her fevered mind doesn’t see what is actually happening. Instead of home grown terrorist Max Fenton, Ferris sees Green Lantern. As far as she is concerned, Superman wrapped GL in his cape and used it to squeeze the life out of him. Although Superman’s real opponent has simply fainted in fear, Ferris believes that the Man of Steel has killed the Emerald Gladiator. This completely subverts the Carol Ferris personality, leaving only Star Sapphire. She swears revenge on Superman, vowing to make him her slave. Although currently lacking the power to do so, she can sense that his power gem is nearby. At the Metropolis Museum, the curator discovers that the gem on display isn’t the real one. He surmises that the actual gem was in the replica costume that he loaned Lois. Lois, meanwhile, is needling Clark about disappearing from an in-flight helicopter just prior to Superman appearing. Clark sees the Star Sapphire costume in the package that Lois is carrying and decides it might be fun to turn the tables on her. He lets her become comfortable in her office and then makes a flimsy excuse to go in and see her. He uses x-ray vision to find the costume in her desk and then heat vision to short circuit the transistors in her electronic desk, causing the drawers to burst open. He can’t help but see the costume now and appears shocked by the idea that Lois might be the infamous alien queen. She truthfully denies it and both are shocked as the “fake” gem rises, spinning from the replica costume’s tiara. It flies out the door and down the hall into the waiting had of its true owner, transforming her physically from Carol Ferris to Star Sapphire!

Clark had run down the hall after the flying gem and is the first to see the returned villainess. She blasts him through elevator doors while shouting, “I shall permit nothing to interfere with my hunt for Green Lantern’s killer!” The metal elevator doors would have stopped (and likely killed) a normal man but the Metropolis Marvel goes right through them. He’s unable to stop his fall in the shaft in time and the great force of his impact on the elevator car causes the cable to snap. Grabbing the broken cable, he flies back up and ties the two broken ends together while the terrified passengers escape out onto a safe floor.

As he changes into costume, Superman wonders how Green Lantern could be dead without his fellow Justice League members knowing about it. Already outside the Galaxy Broadcasting building, Star Sapphire has started a reign of terror to draw out her love’s “killer.” Sure enough, Superman finds the destruction on the street and is ambushed by Star Sapphire. “Your hour of judgment has come, super-murderer! Green Lantern’s brutal death will now be avenged!” she yells. Superman holds back because his personal code doesn’t let him strike a woman. Star Sapphire drops down on him from above, placing a chain with the gem of power around his neck. Even off of her body, the gem is still under her power and now Superman’s will is subverted by the gem.

She forbids him to remove the gem or to open his mouth and plead for help. Superman uses super-ventriloquism to call to Lois who is still inside the building. Lois looks out and sees a scene very similar to that on the cover of this issue: Superman kissing the boot of Star Sapphire! The Astral Queen’s next order is for Superman to “Destroy the Galaxy Building and everyone in it!” Superman literally can’t help himself and starts racing to fulfill his dreadful task but emerging from the building is…Star Sapphire?!? This Star Sapphire and the true one start giving Superman contradicting orders. When the second Star Sapphire orders the Man of Tomorrow to fly straight into the air, the real one orders him to fly straight back down. This causes the chain and gem to fall off of Superman’s neck and he regains his freedom. Star Sapphire catches the falling gem and teleports away, vowing vengeance once again.

The second Star Sapphire was Lois. She gambled that the similarity between her and the real McCoy would confuse Superman. It allowed her desperate ploy of having him fly up, only to be ordered down by the woman enslaving him. Lois worries about what Clark will say if he finds out about her being in costume. Superman assures her, “I promise, Lois…he’ll never hear it from me!”

The next day, Carol Ferris is going about her business in Metropolis. She sees the Daily Planet headline proclaiming that Green Lantern has saved an alien world from disaster and feels oddly relieved…although she doesn’t know why...

http://www.comicbookdb.com/graphics/comic_graphics/1/103/55464_20060801174835_large.jpg

http://www.rtsunlimited.com/CoverPages/superman%23261.htm

Origins (1)

8 years old. Third grade. Small kid. Youngest in the class. Exceedingly shy. A favorite target of bullies.

During rec break, most of us in the class, boys and girls, were involved in a major snowball fight. Forts... prisoners... snowballs stockpiled in advance... the whole thing. One clean shot made you a POW... until members of your team overwhelmed the fort where you were held and rescued you.

For some reason that I wasn't really conscious of, in the middle of the action, I started daydreaming that two cute girls from the opposing camp, P and S, would be the ones to capture me. After nailing me with a snowball that would make a satisfying WHAP! against my snowsuit, they would call me out, and subdued, I would be marched over to their fort. Imagining myself held captive by them, I felt a warm feeling inside of me, a sense of relief that I was no longer on the run from other assaillants, I wouldn't get hit in the face by a snowball, or bullied by the class meanies as a sideshow to the actual snowball war. At the same time, I would be in the company of two pretty young girls that I evidently liked, without knowing or understanding why, and I would not have to go through the incredibly challenging task (and without doubt, embarassing task) of having to ask them to be their friend.

Some time later, maybe weeks, but more likely months, on a family trip, I found myself extending the daydream/fantasy when playing in the back of the car. Probably because my father braked suddenly, I rolled off the backseat and I was awkwardly trapped on the floor between the front seat and the backseat of the car. I stayed there for a while. I found my mind straying to a different place, again with an unexplicable warm feeling inside of me, as I found myself captured once more by P and S. I had been bound by rope, in that Cowboys & Indians type binding, with the rope coiled two dozen times around my upper body, in a cartoony kind of way. I was lying on the floor before the backseat of the car, at their feet, and they placed their feet over me to keep me still, looking down smiling in satisfaction at the captive they had in their possession.

This vision/fantasy was a re-occuring one for me over the course of the next 6 years or so. I remember that it often came back when on long car trips, or when a freshly-made bed had had the covers tucked tightly under the mattress, either because I slipped into it while it was like that, which happened occasionally at home, or because, during a stay at a hospital for a rather late incidence of a childhood disease (11 years old), the nurse would tuck us into bed each evening and create nearly immobilizing bondage by placing the sheets so far under the mattress.

The "captured" vision/fantasy took a back seat to other ones when, in my mid-teens, I came across my first novel about a dominant woman teacher forcibly seducing one of her young male students... in a strict but non-abusive way. This book led me to the discovery of a whole variety literature dealing with dominant women and their shy, younger male objects of passion...

Freud, anyone?