Hey. It's me again. The author. The person who is writing this story instead of sleeping, instead of eating regular meals, instead of maintaining anything resembling a healthy work-life balance, because this story has taken up residence in my brain and is refusing to pay rent.
I need to talk about two comic books.
I know, I know. "Here he goes again." You came here for the fanfiction. You came here for Superman helping people and making villains question their life choices and being aggressively kind at a world that doesn't know what to do with aggressive kindness. And I promise we'll get back to that. Chapter six is coming. It's going to be great. Superman is going to help a woman move furniture and ignore the most powerful regulatory body in the country to do it, and it's going to be the most Superman thing that has ever been written, and I am not even slightly exaggerating.
But first, I need to talk about Kingdom Come and All-Star Superman.
Because I realized something while writing this fic, something that crystallized in my brain like ice forming on a window, and once I saw it, I couldn't unsee it, and now I need you to see it too, because it explains everything. It explains why I'm writing this story. It explains why Superman is in MHA. It explains why it matters.
Bear with me. This is going to be long. If you've read both books, you'll understand why. If you haven't read both books, stop reading this author's note right now and go read them. I'm serious. Close this tab. Open a new one. Find them. Read them. They will change your life. I am not being hyperbolic. I am being as literal as I have ever been about anything.
Okay. For those of you who are still here—either because you've read the books or because you're stubborn—let's go.
KINGDOM COME
Let me tell you about Kingdom Come.
Kingdom Come was written by Mark Waid and painted—painted, not drawn, Alex Ross painted every single page in gouache, and every single page looks like a Renaissance masterpiece depicting gods in spandex—by Alex Ross. It was published in 1996. It is, in my opinion, the single most important superhero story of the modern era, and I will die on that hill, and my ghost will continue to die on that hill, and my ghost's ghost will die on that hill, because Kingdom Come is the story that explains why superheroes matter, and it does it by showing you a world where they've stopped mattering.
Here's the premise. It's the future. Superman has retired. He's retreated to his farm in Kansas because the world—the world he spent his entire life saving—rejected him. Not because he failed. Because he succeeded too well. Because a new generation of "heroes" emerged—violent, brutal, amoral, more interested in fighting than saving, more interested in spectacle than substance—and the public preferred them. The public looked at Superman's restraint and his mercy and his refusal to kill and said, "That's old-fashioned. That's naive. That's not what we want anymore." And the new heroes—the ones who punched first and didn't ask questions ever, the ones who treated villainy as a problem to be eliminated rather than a symptom to be understood—took over. And the world got worse.
Because here's the thing that Kingdom Come understands, the thing that I need you to understand, the thing that is the entire thematic foundation of this fanfiction:
When heroes stop being heroes—when they become performers, celebrities, brands, content—the world doesn't get saved. It gets worse.
Does that sound familiar?
Does that sound like a world you've seen before?
Does that sound like, oh, I don't know, My Hero Academia?
Because that's what MHA is. That's what the world of MHA is. It's Kingdom Come. It's the world that Kingdom Come warned about. It's a world where heroism has been professionalized, commercialized, ranked, branded, and monetized to the point where the actual act of heroism—the simple, fundamental, human act of helping someone who needs help—has been buried under so many layers of bureaucracy and capitalism and spectacle that it's barely recognizable.
Think about it. Really think about it.
In MHA, heroes are ranked. They have popularity polls. They have merchandise lines. They have corporate sponsors. They compete for screen time. They build brands. They have agencies that function like talent management firms, handling their public appearances and media relations and endorsement deals. The Number One Hero is determined not by who saves the most people or who does the most good, but by a combination of villain apprehension statistics and public approval ratings.
Public approval ratings.
Heroism, in MHA, is a popularity contest.
And the result—the inevitable, predictable, Kingdom Come-warned-you-about-this result—is that the heroes have stopped being heroes. They've become performers. They fight villains because fighting villains is their job, and they do their job because their job pays well and comes with fame and prestige and a ranking on a chart that tells the world how important they are. And the things that don't contribute to the ranking—the small things, the invisible things, the carrying-groceries and finding-lost-dogs and sitting-with-lonely-people things—don't get done. Because nobody's watching. Because there's no camera. Because it doesn't move the needle.
In Kingdom Come, Superman comes back. He comes back because the world is falling apart without him—not because the world needs his power, but because the world needs his example. The world needs someone who does the right thing not because it's profitable or popular or strategically optimal, but because it's right. The world needs someone who reminds the other heroes—the violent ones, the performative ones, the ones who have forgotten what the cape is supposed to mean—what heroism actually looks like.
That's what Superman is doing in MHA. That's what this fic is. It's Kingdom Come, except instead of returning to a world he left, Superman is arriving in a world he's never been. And instead of confronting fallen heroes with force, he's confronting a broken system with kindness.
He's not fighting the heroes of MHA. He's not challenging their rankings or threatening their positions or competing for their spotlight. He's showing them—by example, quietly, one person at a time—what they've forgotten. What the system has taught them to forget. What it means to actually, genuinely, without agenda or compensation or a camera crew, help.
And that's terrifying.
Not for Superman. Nothing is terrifying for Superman. That's kind of the point.
It's terrifying for them. For the heroes of MHA. For the system. Because Superman's existence in their world is a mirror, and the reflection is unflattering. Every time Superman carries groceries for an old woman or finds a lost dog or talks a villain into putting down a weapon, he is implicitly, unavoidably, devastatingly demonstrating that the professional hero system has failed. Not because it can't fight villains—it can, sometimes, when the right hero with the right quirk shows up at the right time and the paperwork is in order. It fails because it has defined heroism so narrowly, so exclusively, so commercially, that an entire universe of human need exists outside its field of vision.
The old man with the cat in the tree called the hero hotline. They said it wasn't a priority.
The homeless man with the lost dog didn't even bother calling. He knew no one would come.
The young man in the pharmacy had been drowning for months, and the system that was supposed to protect him had done nothing—worse than nothing, it had created the conditions that drove him to desperation.
In Kingdom Come, Superman's return forces the other heroes to confront what they've become. In this fic, Superman's presence forces the heroes of MHA to confront what they've always been. And what they've always been—even the best of them, even All Might, even the ones with good hearts and genuine intentions—is incomplete. They are heroes within the system. They are heroes as the system defines heroism. And the system's definition is broken.
Superman doesn't operate within the system. Superman operates within his conscience. And his conscience doesn't distinguish between a villain attack and a flat tire. His conscience doesn't rank human suffering by spectacle value. His conscience says: someone needs help. Help them. That's it. That's the whole algorithm. That's the whole ranking system. One criterion. One metric. One question:
Does someone need help?
If yes: help.
If no: listen harder. Someone always needs help.
That's Kingdom Come. That's the lesson. That's the warning and the promise and the hope, all wrapped up in Alex Ross's gorgeous, luminous, heartbreaking paint.
Heroes aren't rankings. Heroes aren't brands. Heroes aren't performers.
Heroes are people who help.
Full stop.
ALL-STAR SUPERMAN
Now let me tell you about All-Star Superman.
And I want you to understand that what I'm about to write is not literary criticism. It's not analysis. It's not a review. What I'm about to write is closer to a testimony. Because All-Star Superman is not just a comic book to me. It is not just a story. It is the single most important piece of fiction I have ever encountered in my life, and I include in that category every novel, every film, every television show, every play, every poem, every song, every story told around every campfire since the invention of fire. All-Star Superman is the best story ever told. About anything. By anyone.
I understand that's a big claim. I'm going to back it up. Stay with me.
All-Star Superman was written by Grant Morrison and drawn by Frank Quitely with colors by Jamie Grant. It was published as a twelve-issue limited series from 2005 to 2008. The premise is simple and devastating: Superman is dying.
He's dying because Lex Luthor, in a plan of characteristic brilliance and pettiness, tricked Superman into flying too close to the sun, overloading his cells with solar radiation. The radiation is killing him. He has approximately one year to live. The story is about what Superman does with that year.
And what he does—what he does—
He helps people.
That's it. That's the book. Superman, dying, spends his final year helping people. Not fighting cosmic threats (although he does that too, because threats don't stop coming just because you're dying). Not building monuments to his legacy. Not seeking revenge on Luthor. Not wallowing in self-pity. Not raging against the dying of the light.
Helping people.
He creates a new element to cure a specific disease. He gives Lois Lane superpowers for her birthday so she can understand what his life is like. He arm-wrestles with Atlas and Samson for the right to take Lois on a date. He visits the Bizarro world and helps its inhabitants even though they are, by nature, incapable of thanking him properly. He prevents a teenage suicide.
That last one. Issue ten. The suicide prevention issue.
I need to talk about this. I need to talk about this because this issue is the reason this fanfiction exists. This issue is the seed from which every chapter, every scene, every word of this story has grown.
Here is what happens in All-Star Superman #10:
Superman is dying. His powers are fluctuating. He has months to live, maybe weeks. The world knows he's dying, and the world is afraid, because what happens when Superman is gone? Who protects them then? The weight of that question—the weight of an entire planet's fear and dependency—is on his shoulders, and his shoulders are, for the first time, buckling under it.
And in the middle of all that—in the middle of the cosmic drama and the existential crisis and the ticking clock of his own mortality—he sees a girl on a ledge.
A girl. On a ledge. Preparing to jump.
And Superman stops.
He stops everything. He stops saving the world. He stops dying. He stops being Superman, capital S, the icon, the symbol, the most powerful being on the planet. He becomes, for one perfect, quiet, devastating moment, just a person. A person who sees another person in pain and cannot walk past.
He lands next to her. Not between her and the edge—he doesn't block her, doesn't force her, doesn't use his power to prevent her from jumping. He stands next to her. He respects her agency. He respects her pain. He doesn't dismiss it or minimize it or try to fix it with a speech or a sermon.
He says: "Your doctor really was running late."
He says: "I heard your heart was broken."
He says: "I'm sorry."
And then he holds her. He wraps his arms around her—arms that can move planets, arms that can shatter mountains, arms that can do anything—and he holds her. Gently. The way you hold something precious. The way you hold something that matters.
And he says the line. THE line. The line that is, as far as I'm concerned, the single greatest line in the history of fiction:
"It's never as bad as it seems. You're much stronger than you think you are. Trust me."
And the girl doesn't jump.
That's it. That's the scene. That's the whole thing. No fight. No villain. No spectacle. No dramatic feat of strength or speed or power. Just a man talking to a girl on a ledge, holding her while she cries, telling her she's strong.
And it is the most heroic thing Superman has ever done.
More heroic than lifting continents. More heroic than punching Darkseid. More heroic than flying faster than light or reversing the rotation of the Earth or any of the other physically impossible, cosmically impressive, action-figure-ready feats that Superman has performed across eighty-plus years of publication.
Because those feats are about power. And power is not what makes Superman Superman.
What makes Superman Superman is that he stopped.
He stopped for one person. One girl. One moment. In the middle of the biggest crisis of his life—his own death—he stopped because someone needed him. Not the world. Not the Justice League. Not the fate of the universe. One person. One girl on a ledge.
And he treated her like she was the most important thing in the world.
Because she was.
Because every person is.
That's All-Star Superman. That's the gospel according to Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely. That's the truth that I am trying, with every word of this fanfiction, to capture and transmit and preserve.
Every person matters. Every problem matters. No cry for help is too small. No suffering is too minor. No person is too unimportant.
Superman doesn't rank. Superman doesn't triage. Superman doesn't calculate the strategic value of his interventions or allocate his time based on threat level assessments or media impact projections. Superman helps. Whoever needs it. Whenever they need it. However they need it. Without condition. Without exception. Without end.
And that—that—is why Superman is in MHA.
Because MHA is a world that has forgotten this truth. MHA is a world where heroism has been commodified so thoroughly that the idea of helping someone because they need help is radical. Revolutionary. Incomprehensible. MHA is a world where a man carrying groceries for an old woman is a more subversive act than any villain's plan, because the grocery-carrying challenges the fundamental premise on which the entire hero industry is built: that helping people is a profession. That it requires a license. That it is something you earn the right to do.
Superman doesn't earn the right to help. He doesn't need to earn it. Nobody does. The right to help is inherent. It's built in. It comes standard with the basic package of being a person.
And if the system tells you otherwise—if the law says you need a license to be kind, if the Commission says you need approval to save a life, if the entire weight of institutional authority bears down on you and says you are not authorized to help that person—
Then the system is wrong.
And Superman will keep helping anyway.
Because that's what Superman does. In Kingdom Come. In All-Star Superman. In this story.
He helps.
He always helps.
One more thing, and then I'll let you go.
I said that MHA reminds me of Kingdom Come. The professionalization. The commodification. The ranking system. The spectacle. The heroes who have forgotten what heroism means.
But there's a key difference between Kingdom Come and MHA, and the difference is important:
In Kingdom Come, the heroes fell. They started as genuine heroes—as people who helped because it was right—and the world corrupted them. The commercialization happened over time. The fall from grace was gradual, tragic, and preventable.
In MHA, the heroes never rose. The system was commercial from the beginning. The professionalization of heroism didn't happen as a corruption of an existing ideal—it happened as the founding principle. The hero system in MHA was designed to be a career path. It was designed to be ranked and regulated and monetized. The heroes of MHA didn't fall from grace. They were never in grace to begin with. They were trained in grace's absence.
And that's sadder. That's so much sadder. Because it means that the heroes of MHA—Izuku, Bakugo, All Might, Aizawa, all of them—don't even know what they're missing. They don't know what real heroism looks like because they've never seen it. They've grown up in a world where heroism equals professionalism, where helping equals licensing, where good equals ranked, and they've never had a reason to question those equations because everyone around them accepts them as axioms.
Until Superman.
Superman is the existence proof. Superman is the demonstration that those equations are wrong. Superman is the living, flying, cape-wearing, cat-rescuing, villain-visiting embodiment of a different way of being. A way that doesn't require a license. A way that doesn't require a ranking. A way that doesn't require permission.
A way that just requires choosing to help.
That's what All-Star Superman teaches. That's what Kingdom Come warns against losing. That's what this story is about.
A man who chooses to help. Every day. Every person. Every time.
Not because anyone told him to.
Because it's right.
Okay. I'm done. I'm done for real this time. I know that was a lot. I know this is supposed to be a fanfiction and not a college thesis on the semiotics of the Superman mythos. I know some of you are going to scroll past this entire note and go straight to chapter six and that's completely fine and I respect your time management skills.
But for those of you who read the whole thing, I want to say this:
Thank you. Genuinely. From the part of me that is still Marcus Cole, sitting on the floor of a Cincinnati apartment with a longbox and a dream, thank you for being here. Thank you for caring about this story. Thank you for understanding that a fanfiction about Superman in MHA is not really about superpowers or fight scenes or shipping or any of the things that fanfiction is usually about.
It's about hope.
It's always been about hope.
Go read All-Star Superman. Go read Kingdom Come. And then come back here and read chapter six, and we'll continue the story of a man who refuses to stop helping, in a world that has forgotten how.
See you soon.
— The Author
P.S. — Someone in the comments of the last chapter asked if Superman was going to fight All For One. The answer is yes. The "fight" will last approximately four seconds. Three of those seconds will be Superman asking All For One if he'd like to surrender. The fourth second will be Superman ending the fight. This is not a spoiler. This is a promise.
P.P.S. — Someone else asked if Superman was going to attend the U.A. Sports Festival. The answer is no. Superman will be at Tartarus that day, talking to Harbinger about Isaac Asimov. This is also not a spoiler. It is a statement of priorities.
P.P.P.S. — If you haven't read All-Star Superman yet, what are you doing? What are you doing with your life? Close this tab. Go read it. Come back when you're done crying. Because you will cry. You will cry because Grant Morrison wrote a story about a dying god who saves a girl on a ledge, and it will break your heart, and then it will put your heart back together stronger than it was before.
That's what Superman does. He puts hearts back together.
Even yours.
Especially yours.