That's One Spicy Green Rock

 

 

In the city of impossible headlines, where men in capes flew above taxicabs and mad prophets sold newspapers made of cabbage leaves, there wandered one man armed with nothing but a cigar, a violin case full of unpaid bills, and the most dangerous weapon in existence: ridicule.

 

That man was Groucho Marx.

 

And high above him, cutting through the clouds like a judgment from Heaven itself, flew Superman.

 

The people adored Superman.

 

They trusted him.

 

Worshipped him.

 

Feared him a little.

 

Every day he stopped trains, caught meteors, rescued kittens from trees, and smiled with the terrifying confidence of a man who knew bullets bounced off his chest. Statues were built in his honor. Children wore his crest. Politicians shook his hand like medieval peasants touching a saint’s robe.

 

Groucho hated him immediately.

 

“Any man who wears underwear outside the pants,” Groucho announced while boarding a bus backward, “is either a tyrant or a percussionist.”

 

Nobody laughed.

 

Because by then, laughter itself had become suspicious.

 

Superman had made the world too perfect.

 

Crime vanished. Wars ended. Banks no longer failed. Fires no longer spread. Humanity sat quietly beneath the shadow of a benevolent god in blue tights.

 

And like all gods, Superman had accidentally become unbearable.

 

One evening Groucho sat inside a ruined theater drinking cold coffee from a flower vase when a trembling scientist burst through the door.

 

The scientist had wild white hair and the exhausted eyes of a man who had calculated something he regretted.

 

“You must stop him,” he whispered.

 

“I can barely stop heartburn.”

 

“You don’t understand. Superman’s hearing reaches around the globe. His vision sees through walls. His mind processes thought faster than nations can speak. Humanity no longer governs itself. He does.”

 

Groucho lit another cigar.

 

“So the eagle has landed,” he muttered.

 

The scientist revealed a green stone wrapped in lead.

 

“Kryptonite.”

 

Groucho examined it.

 

“Looks like something you’d win at a carnival.”

 

“It weakens him.”

 

“Yes, but does it weaken him enough to sit through modern radio comedy?”

 

The scientist stared blankly.

 

For three weeks Groucho prepared.

 

Not physically.

 

Psychologically.

 

He studied Superman the way hunters study wolves. Not the muscles. Not the powers.

 

The vanity.

 

The fatal flaw of every immortal creature.

 

Superman needed to be loved.

 

And Groucho intended to kill him with that need.

 

The trap was set atop the Daily Planet building during a grand ceremony celebrating “One Thousand Consecutive Days Without Human Suffering.”

 

Banners waved across the skyline.

 

Children sang.

 

The mayor wept openly.

 

Then Groucho Marx took the podium uninvited.

 

“I’d like to thank Superman,” he began, “for proving mankind can accomplish absolutely nothing without outside help.”

 

The crowd gasped.

 

Superman descended from the sky gracefully.

 

“Sir,” Superman said calmly, “this is neither the time nor place.”

 

“That’s what they told Nero.”

 

“I only want peace.”

 

“Of course you do. So does a zoo keeper.”

 

Superman’s eyes narrowed slightly.

 

Groucho paced the stage.

 

“Tell me, Superboy, if humanity cannot fail, cannot struggle, cannot suffer, then what exactly are we besides houseplants with taxes?”

 

“You’d prefer war? Starvation?”

 

“I’d prefer mankind with its dignity intact.”

 

The crowd began murmuring uneasily.

 

Superman folded his arms.

 

“You’re trying to turn them against me.”

 

“No,” said Groucho quietly. “You already did that yourself the moment they stopped looking at each other and started looking only at you.”

 

For the first time in years, Superman looked uncertain.

 

And then Groucho struck.

 

He opened the violin case.

 

Inside was not a violin.

 

Inside was Kryptonite.

 

The color drained from Superman’s face instantly.

 

The crowd screamed.

 

Superman staggered backward.

 

But even weakened, he remained terrifying.

 

Steel bent beneath his feet. Windows shattered from the force of his breathing.

 

“You think,” Superman growled, “you can kill me?”

 

Groucho stepped forward slowly.

 

“No,” he said. “I think you’ll do something much more embarrassing.”

 

Superman lunged.

 

Groucho sidestepped him with absurd elegance.

 

The Kryptonite burned through Superman’s strength like acid through paper.

 

He collapsed onto one knee.

 

The crowd watched in horror as their invincible savior trembled before a skinny comedian with greasepaint eyebrows.

 

Groucho crouched beside him.

 

“You know what your problem is, Superman?”

 

Superman tried to rise.

 

“You never learned how to be human.”

 

Then Groucho did something nobody expected.

 

He put the cigar into Superman’s hand.

 

The Kryptonite rested against Superman’s chest.

 

And Groucho began telling jokes.

 

Relentlessly.

 

Cruelly.

 

Endlessly.

 

Jokes about gods.

 

About heroes.

 

About men who needed applause so badly they’d save planets just to hear clapping.

 

The crowd began laughing.

 

Not at Groucho.

 

At Superman.

 

And the laughter spread like wildfire.

 

The mighty alien looked around in horror as humanity rediscovered the one thing stronger than fear:

 

mockery.

 

His face crumpled.

 

His strength vanished.

 

The world no longer worshipped him.

 

And without that worship, something inside him broke.

 

Superman fell backward.

 

Dead before he struck the pavement.

 

Silence consumed the city.

 

Groucho adjusted his cigar.

 

“Well,” he sighed, “there goes the neighborhood.”

 

Then he walked away into the crowd while above the Earth the empty cape of Superman fluttered like the final page of a forgotten gospel.