Young Clark Kent

Before the legend, before the icon, there was a teenager named Clark Kent. Someday, he'll master his powers and understand his true calling. For now, he just has to get through adolescence. These are the stories between the boy he thought he was and the man he is destined to become.

Name: Clark Joseph Kent (Earth name), Kal-El (Kryptonian name)
Occupation: Student, farm boy
Place of birth: Krypton
Legal status: U.S. citizen with no criminal record
Known Relatives: Jor-El (father; deceased), Lara Lor-Van (mother; deceased), Jonathan Kent (adoptive father), Martha Clark Kent (adoptive mother)
Hometown: Smallvile, Kansas

History: Long ago, a planet named Krypton orbited the distant red dwarf star Rao. The planetary mass closest to its sun, Krypton was once a modest-sized planet, roughly the mass and volume of Earth. Over the eons, plant and animal life evolved on Krypton, and a race of sentient humanoids virtually indistinguishable from Earth humans became the dominant life form. It is only at the cellular level that the real differences between the people of Earth and native Kryptonians could be determined. Evolving under the intense radiation of their red dwarf sun, Kryptonians developed unique cellular chemicals that enabled them to absorb energy from their sun. Although they derived most of their nourishment from the consumption of animal and vegetable matter, solar energy supplemented their diets. They were, in effect, living solar batteries.

It was on the planet Krypton that the scientist Jor-El and his wife, Lara Lor-Van were born and died. As a member of the Science Council, Krypton's ruling body, Jor-El discovered the Phantom Zone and many other worlds. He also found out something horrifying: Krypton was in great danger. He predicted that due to internal eruptions, Krypton would soon explode. When he produced his findings, however, he was laughed to scorn. Jor-El was determined to find a way off the planet, and he began to research ways of getting off Krypton.

Jor-El had only one thing to do. He began work on a spacecraft that he hoped could carry his son, Kal-El, through an artificial wormhole to the planet Earth, which he had recently been observing. Jor-El had just enough time to build one small rocket. No sooner than he finished the ship, the time of Krypton's death came. The ground began to shake and Jor-El knew he had to act quickly. Lara and him placed their son, still a toddler, in the ship and targeted it for Earth.

Jor-El ordered them inside while he made the final calculations. There was room in the ship for both Lara and Kal-El. But Lara flatly refused. She told him that their son would have a better chance without her weight. Through his studies, Jor-El also knew that their son would grow strong and powerful on Earth as his cellular structure absorbed the solar radiation of Earth's sun. He told Lara that this would give their son the advantage he would need to survive on Earth. Jor-El then launched the rocked and Lara stepped into his arms. They embraced, watching the ship get smaller and smaller. Then, the world of Krypton exploded after the pressure grew to much for the planet's mantle to contain, transmuting the sum and substance of the dying world into an ore with a radiation that is lethal to Kryptonian physiology.

The tiny spaceship generated a wormhole and traveled through it, covering the fifty light-years that separated Krypton and Earth in a matter of moments. However, hundreds of pieces of Krypton's debris also traveled through the wormhole. The ship crash landed in a wheat field in the rural Kansas town of Smallville as a meteor shower of Krypton's debris rained destruction on the unsuspecting citizens of the town.

While in their farmhouse, Jonathan and Martha Kent heard the ship crash. Intrigued by the chance of being able to find an actual meteorite, the Kents jumped into their truck and drove out to the backfield, where the object had seemed to hit. What they found was a shallow crater and an object that appeared to be a tiny spacecraft. Approaching the craft, Martha thought she saw something moving inside. When Jonathan gingerly reached out to the craft to touch the smooth, egg-like upper section of the craft, it seemed to melt away, revealing a three-year old boy inside. On the ride back to the house, the childless couple discusses what to do with the boy. Martha argued that they should keep him, and Jonathan was hard pressed to think of a reason why they shouldn't. By the time they got home, they had already decided to name him Clark, Martha's maiden name, and raise him as their own son.

As a young child, Clark Kent picked up good values from his loving hard-working parents, learning responsibility in helping with chores around the farm. He also acquired the Kents' love of reading and often derived as much pleasure from sitting under a tree with a book as he did from a fast game of softball. For all intents and purposes, Clark appeared to be just another normal, healthy American boy.

But he was not normal. Just as his genetic father, Jor-El, had calculated, Clark's Kryptonian cells began storing and processing the radiation of Earth's sun. As he grew older, Clark became increasingly stronger and more powerful. The first noticeable consequence of his power came when Clark was 8 years old. Taking a short cut across a pasture, he was trampled by an angry bull, but he sustained no injuries. A few months later, Martha Kent was astounded to see her son casually lift the back end of their pick-up truck to retrieve a ball that had rolled out of reach.

As he entered puberty, Clark discovered that he could see farther and in increasingly greater detail than any of his friends and that he could see through solid objects if he concentrated and he also developed the ability to emit heat from his eyes. At the age of 13 Clark began wearing eyeglasses to help control his vision powers, so he didn't accidentally look somewhere he shouldn't or set something on fire. Even after having learned to control his supervision, he continues to wear the glasses as they make him feel normal, flawed...human.

Aware that their son is possessed of awesome powers far beyond those of mortal men, Jonathan and Martha have raised Clark in virtual isolation, prohibiting him from participating in contact sports. As a result, Clark has the reputation of a gawky nerd, and is extremely self-conscious and full of trepidation about his place in the world. Because of his otherworldly origins, Clark often feels truly alone in the world, like an outsider looking in. Even his best friends Chloe Sullivan - the intrepid investigative reporter for the Smallville High Torch - and straight-talking Pete Ross have long been in the dark about Clark's powers.

Also, Clark struggles with his feelings for the beautiful girl next door, Lana Lang; the girl he worships from afar. Although she feels a strange kinship to Clark, Lana doesn't know much about him, especially that he blames himself for her parents' tragic death in the meteor shower so many years ago. A true beauty and one of the most popular girls in school, Lana dates Smallville's resident heartthrob and high school quarterback, all-around golden boy Whitney Fordman. Clark's yearning to talk to Lana is complicated by the meteor rock that she wears around her neck. Whenever he gets near her, the green stone causes him to become literally weak in the knees.

Clark has also forged a remarkable new friendship with Lex Luthor. Inexplicably bald from exposure to the meteor shower when he was a child, Lex returned to Smallville after college to help turn around the family company's struggling fertilizer plant. After Clark saved Lex's life in a death-defying rescue, the two became friends. Clark looks up to Lex as the big brother he never had, and Lex is surprised that this small-town boy is someone he can actually trust. But the friendship causes tension in the close-knit Kent family, as Jonathan fears Lex may take after his ruthless tycoon father, Lionel Luthor.

Meanwhile, the intervening years since the meteor shower have left Smallville's inhabitants with scars and secrets; some even with unusual traits inherited as a direct result of exposure to the meteor rocks. From the ashes of the tragedy, Clark Kent has grown into an awkward teen. While adolescence always brings its challenges, Clark's transition from boyhood to adulthood is particularly difficult. He must struggle to come to grips with his emerging superpowers, and the effects of the meteor rocks, while battling the strange things that have plagued the idyllic Midwest hamlet that is Smallville since the meteor shower.

Height: 6'1"
Weight: 175
Hair: Black
Eyes: Blue

Powers: Clark Kent's basic cellular anatomy is similar to that of humans. However, certain chemical compositions in his cells absorb solar energy and store it. Once these intracellular fluids achieve saturation levels of this radiation, they begin to re-radiate the energy in the form of a bio-electrogravitational forcefield that permeates Clark's entire body. The electrogravitational field's connection to his brain endows him with the ability to both consciously and unconsciously manipulate electromagnetism and gravity within his own personal physical space in the form of very specific manifestations.

One specific manifestation is invulnerability to physical harm by Clark unconsciously augmenting the integrity of the molecular and atomic binding processes of his body's entire cellular structure to a degree that almost nothing can puncture or damage his body. In addition, his ability to control his body's electromagnetic forces enables him to project focused beams of high-temperature electromagnetic energy from his body, specifically through the optic nerves of his eyes.

Clark's 'super-strength' is the result of his having absolute control over gravitational forces within and immediately around himself. When in physical contact with an object, through sheer physical exertion he can partially nullify any outside gravitational influences on that object and exert his own gravitational field on the object in a manner that effectively emulates superhuman strength; Clark appears to push, hold and lift kilotons of weights.

He can also generate a gravity lens on the surface of his eyes, allowing him to magnify an image a virtually countless number of times to the point of being able to see through a solid object by seeing through the atomic structure of the object and focus past it, as a camera focuses beyond the dust on a lens. Certain dense materials, notably lead, obstruct this ability.

As a consequence of Clark's cells being permeated by an electrogravitational field, they are reinforced in such a way that they are not only protected from external harm, but internal forces as well and therefore operate at levels of efficiency that would destroy normal humanoid cells. That has lead to an enhancing effect to all of his bodily systems...muscular, metabolic, nervous, and so forth.

The enhanced structure of Clark's sensory organs combined with the increased capacity of his nervous system provides for greatly enhanced senses. His enhanced metabolic rate, muscular speed, and nervous system grant him incredible speed and rapid perceptions. Clark's visual reception range even covers the entirety of the electromagnetic spectrum. He is also capable of displaying an augmented lung capacity to the point of being able to release gale-force winds from his breath.

Clark's immune system deals with most normal poisons and diseases quickly and with no ill effect. With the exception of Kryptonian meteorite emissions, radiation and similar harmful energies are similarly neutralized.

Weaknesses: The fatal flaw in Clark's cellular physiology is the unique radiation given off by the meteor rocks that arrived with him in Smallville. In the most minute amounts, the radiation waveforms and high-energy particles emitted by meteorites can react catastrophically with the very cellular chemicals that grants Clarks his powers. The briefest contact can inhibit the force of the bio-electrogravitational field, stripping Clark of his incredible powers, and further begin a fatal poisoning that totally shuts down cellular activity in the affected areas. Prolonged exposure to the meteorites' radiation would eventually kill him. However, the rate of recovery once removed from the emissions is as rapid as the rate of damage, and Clark will be back to normal in under an hour after exposure in optimal conditions. The emissions of the meteorites can be blocked by lead and other super-dense materials.