Issue #1
Superman Red, Part I: Imaginary Stories
by Giallo Martino

When I was a child, I caught a fleeting glimpse
out of the corner of my eye.
I turned to look but it was gone,
I cannot put my finger on it now.
The child is grown, the Dream is gone.

* * *

"Wake up, sir. We're HERE."

"Already? I must have dozed off..."

Clark Kent swallowed the last of the drink in the lampshade-shaped plastic cup the airline had provided. By now it was mostly melted ice only slightly tinted with Crown Royal. The two drinks the stewardess limited him to hadn't been enough to put him in as deep a sleep as he'd hoped for, but chasing them with Vicodin and Valium had helped. Thank Rao his Kryptonian physiology wasn't completely immune to pharmaceuticals. Poisoning him never seemed to work, but the attempts were always made with complicated designer chemicals -- no one had ever tried enormous doses of arsenic, or something simple like that.

It didn't matter right now. His mind was foggy, that's all. He'd been deep asleep, but not deep enough to avoid dreaming, and the dreams had been weird again. They'd been weird for a long time now. He'd been fat in this one. Enormously fat. "Instead of converting yellow solar energy into the dense tissues responsible for your strength and invulnerability, Superman, your body is just turning it into more mass!" That's what Starro Labs had told him, or the dream Starro Labs, rather. It was getting harder and harder, when he woke up, to sort out what was real and what had only been the dream -- that was probably because of the liquor. He should stop drinking so much.

Superman, that's what people kept calling him in the dreams. Not Clark or Supermage, but Superman. He dressed outlandishly, too. And the other night, he dreamed he married that Lane woman from the Gazette! Not a bad body on her, but what a dimwit, if a pair of bright blue sunglasses and a red trenchcoat were enough to keep her from noticing that Clark Kent and Supermage were the same man.

He took the cab to the Chinese laundry with the secret entrance into the Justice Society's San Francisco headquarters, donning the coat and glasses en route, and gave the new Green Lantern, Zatanna, a pat on the rear when he snuck in behind her, and a grin when she pretended to be annoyed. Now that one, ending up with that one made a lot more sense than the Lane girl. For a night or two, if nothing else. What in Rao's name had his subconscious been thinking?

The Bat, Dr Jones, the Amazon, the Phantom Stranger, and Baron Blur were all there already. He ignored the Bat's annoyed glance -- Clark had had the furthest to travel, and had lost his power of flight when he'd inhaled the vaporized particles of the Phantom Zone last October. Besides, Bruce, not all of us have private jets.

"I can't hear what you're thinking, Supermage," the Bat said.

"Then how do you know I was thinking anything at you?" Clark shot back.

"World's greatest detective."

"Anyway," the Amazon said. "Now that we're all here. Our little respite doesn't seem to have lasted long. Dr Psycho and his Psycho-Pirates have invaded Baghdad, looking for some ancient Babylonian artifact. We have reports that Lord Arthur of Atlantis has been possessed by a Bizarro entity, and the National Weather Service tells us that the world's sea levels have been dropping at an inch an hour for the last seven hours, which must be his doing. And Felix Faust has been trying to summon the Spectre again."

"I'll deal with Faust," the Stranger said.

"Fine. Z and I will come with you. Baghdad?"

"I can take care of Baghdad," Clark said.

"You and the Bat," the Amazon said, "and that'll leave John and Barry for Atlantis. Sound good, everyone?"

Clark scowled, but Bruce offered, "After all, Clark, I DO have a private jet."

* * *

"Wake up, sir. We're HERE."

"Already? I must have dozed off."

Clark shook his head. It was so comfortable napping in Jimmy Olsen's pocket, he'd just been dead to the world. What a crazy dream, though! A world where he was some kind of super-mystic with magic powers! Wow, it was like the stories Pa used to read him from Weird Tales. Well -- the stories Pa used to tell Full-Sized Clark Kent. THIS Clark was just the miniature Superman who'd emerged from the original's finger in a manifestation of a new Kryptonian power. But his memories up to that moment were all the same -- he sure felt like Clark Kent! Clark Kent and Superman both.

Thing was, he could never be Clark again. No, because if anyone saw a miniature Clark Kent, they'd put two and two together, and the world would know that Clark Kent was really Superman! And so he was doomed to be --

SUPERMAN FOREVER!

The truth was, Full-Sized Superman had grown a little jealous of him, since he had all the same powers but was small and cute and novel, to boot. Clark was increasingly worried that the next time he went back into the original Clark's finger, he'd never be summoned again -- never again wake up and emerge into the world. The thought terrified him, but Full-Sized Clark didn't take it seriously, didn't understand that he was a person all his own ... sort of.

Jimmy Olsen, who'd been through a transformation or two of his own over the years, had taken pity on him and agreed to smuggle him out of the country. A little nosing around in the Daily Planet archives, and judicious use of Super-Postcognition, had presented a solution: the hidden land in the rainforest that the Atom had discovered last October, the land where evolution had taken a queer turn and produced tiny mini-men! The hidden land of --

MINIATURIA, THE TOWN OF TINY TITANS!

* * *

"Wake up, sir. We're HERE."

"Already? I must have dozed off. What a weird dream!" said President Superman --

-- said Clara Kent, the Lady of Steel --

-- said an ant-headed Superman, using a Thanagarian translation mask --

-- said Clarr Knt, Astral Lord of the Beast-Men --

-- Jordan Elliott, night watchman --

-- the Outlaw of the Sherwood Galaxy --

-- husband of Lana Lang --

-- Lex Luthor's adopted brother --

-- King of Atlantis --

-- movie star! --

-- giant radioactive chimp --

-- father of the super-triplets --

-- hero of the 5th dimension --

-- Protector of Gotham --

-- husband of Princess Diana --

-- husband of Lois Lane --

-- husband of Margo Lane --

-- husband of the mystery woman --

-- husband of Lexi Luthor, the princess of crime!

"Sorry," Supermage said, holding his head in his hands as he came to after a blow from the Babylonian Golem knocked him out for a couple brief seconds. "I don't know -- I don't know what came over me for a minute there." Can you hear me, Bruce? Could you hear any of that?

"Lexi Luthor, eh?" the Bat asked sardonically. To Clark's suspicious look, he offered, "You were mumbling to yourself. I keep telling you I'm not psychic."

"The Shadow was. You trained with him for years."

"The Shadow wasn't, that was his whole trick. He got more mileage out of the mistakes people would make because of thinking he could read their minds. You'd be surprised."

"Sure," Clark said.

"Come on, let's finish this one. I can sneak up on Dr Psycho. You go after the Pirates, because they'll be expecting the Golem to distract you. We might have time to help with a dig in Syria, if we hurry. Between your super-strength and my deductive abilities, we could do three years' work in --"

I swear, Bruce, you're the nerdiest ninja I know.

* * *

"Sir, we're here. We're all here."

Dream lifted his head from the contemplative position he'd held while pondering the alterations in the current of the Dreaming. He could feel them the way you would feel someone tugging at your bedcovers in your sleep -- feel them but not yet feel, for certain, in which way they were tugged or by what. Being positive would mean sitting up in bed -- and disrupting the covers even more in the process. Sometimes the most effective course was to wait and pay attention.

"Lucien," Dream said. "Matthew." There were six score other dreams with the librarian and the raven, and Dream named each of them in turn, nodding to them as thanks for their service. "What have you found?"

"I'm afraid your suspicions are correct, sir," Lucien said.

"You may leave," Dream told the six score dreams, and they bowed, curtsied, and did such other movements as was appropriate to his station and their form. When only he and his closest companions remained in the throne room, he nodded. "Another dream vortex. So soon."

"Looks like it, pal," Matthew said. "I hadn't been your raven long when we had the last one, and I remember the signs pretty well. It's like looking at water at the edge of the bathtub as it starts to get pulled towards the drain."

"It's been less than twenty years," Lucien said. "Could there not be some other explanation?"

Dream smiled despite himself. "Have you been in my service so long that the unknown is easier for you to stomach than the merely unlikely? We should accept that it's a dream vortex, and seek out any evidence that we could be wrong, short of consulting my siblings."

The last dream vortex had been a descendant of his sibling Desire, used in an attempt to manipulate him into killing a family member. He was a different Dream then, and the Dream he was now was slightly intimidated by his siblings. Unfamiliar with them, despite his memories of them. He preferred to avoid them if possible, save perhaps Delirium.

Left alone, a dream vortex would rearrange the Dreaming to make itself the center, like a black hole warping spacetime. The Dreaming was not meant to have a center, any center, and would not hold with one. It would collapse eventually, and then --

Dream did not know "and then." His province was that of possibility, fugue, unformed partialities. He had no conception of the end of possibility. But there was no danger. Desire had tried to trick him last time, but wouldn't have tried the same trick so soon -- indeed, ever. He would dispatch the vortex before it became dangerous. In the meantime, it was -- interesting. The last vortex had occurred when there were four errant dreams to track down, all of whom wound up being drawn to her. The Dreaming had been -- in something of a shambles, following his long imprisonment.

He supposed, even then, he had been arranging for his own death. For the events which destroyed him when he was Morpheus, and transformed him from Daniel. It was in the course of the vortex's destruction that Morpheus had discovered Daniel as an infant, some years before Daniel replaced Morpheus as Dream. Was that coincidence? Did it -- in fact, could it -- have anything to do with the occurrence of another vortex in such a short span? It would not be unheard of for millions of years to pass between vortices. Eighteen ... eighteen was nothing.

Eighteen was the span from birth to putative manhood.

But nothing more than that.

"How do you want to handle it?" Matthew asked.

"Find the vortex," Dream said. "Observe it, or her, or him -- whatever it may be. Find out anything pertinent we may need to watch for in the Dreaming. Some vortices can have a ... pleasant effect on the Dreaming, in their time. We could be in for interesting weather."

* * *

"Me have surprise for you, Superman!" Bizarro said, grinning a fleshy, toothy grin that was immensely disturbing on the creature. "Me shoot whole Bizarro world with Bizarro Red Kryptonite rays! Now Bizarros all ugly like you!"

"Ha ha!" Lois laughed, or was it Bizarro Lois? Rao knows, she looked the same as his Lois, with none of the gray skin or faceted features the Bizarros had always had. "Me am marry Superman!"

"No!" Lana said. "Me am marry Superman!"

One tackled the other, and they wrestled until they fell out of the Planet's window. He couldn't turn his super-hearing off to avoid the sound of their impact on the pavement, and wouldn't have needed it for the screams of passers-by that followed.

"It am okay, Superman! We no need you no more! Bizarros better!" Bizarro held something up, a disc of some kind.

"Bizarro," he said, though he thought he knew the answer. "What is that? What is that?"

"It am Bizarro Phantom Ray Projector," Bizarro said, as Clark felt himself sucked into the faceted glass surface of the thing, right before waking up in cold damp sweat. "Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha!"