Hang on, I've gotta kick me some ass here.

Marilyn goes running off into the dark streets as the Ripper -- who looks way too British to be a bloodthirsty killer, but there you go with books and covers -- struggles to get out of the lamppost I wrapped around his arms and chest. That sitch is taken care of, five-by-five, but the kid in the shades keeps mumbling.

"Muhammad Ali," he murmurs, and a heavy gloved fist smacks across the back of my head. See, that's just frickin bizarre, cause Ali's still alive, man. But I don't have time to work this out.

I float like a butterfly, sting like a bee, and give him the gentlest tap I can that'll knock him out. Guy's a legend, after all. There's a weird sense of hand-me-down deja vu in the fight, even if it does go by quickly.

So like I was saying --

"Godzilla," the kid in shades says, holding his head between his hands and rocking back and forth on the muddy street.

Oh, crap. Wait right there, this might take a minute.

I fly over Ragman, who is frankly relishing the task of putting the boot to some Nazi ass, and give him a little thumbs-up as I grab the sides of the office building which a giant radioactive lizard is about to smash into bricks and dust. Tactile TK, baby doll, it's not just for kicking butt anymore. All I have to do is hold on and --

arrrgh, and concentrate, which always gives me such a damn migraine --

-- and the force field which makes me nigh-invulnerable extends across the skin of the building, absorbing the shock of big old nasty lizard fists.

Gotham is unusually colorful below me. The Joker which Duela and Batman are fighting? Yeah, he's literally a cartoon. Bright colors, painted cels, moves like he's got no bones. But he's all 3-D, you know. And the thing about cartoons, it's hard for them to take damage.

Big Dark and Spooky (that'd be Bats) doesn't seem to mind. It means he can hit that much harder without worrying about a fatality, and brother, this guy's got a lot of pent-up rage to work through when it comes to the Joker. You don't want to know what a flesh-and-blood fist sounds like when it hits orange-and-purple cartoon chest. It's really unpleasant.

Anyway, back to Godzilla. He can't smash through the building, so he unleashes this jet of radioactive fire at me, which wouldn't bother me much, but a lot of what's behind me is flammable. Or inflammable? Whichever. It burns real good.

Tactile teke can't help me with that, but I take as much of the brunt of the blast as I can angle for, and hope no one down below gets scorched. Then I fly right into the big Jurassic Park wannabe's mouth -- ever smelled New York during a garbage strike? Yeah, I should be so lucky right now -- and do a little boxing number on his tonsils. Don't ask me why a big reptile thing has tonsils, but if they're there, by gosh, I'm going to pound on them.

Anyway, this beeotch is going down soon, so while I pound, let me get on with what I was saying.

Where was I? Marilyn, Jack the Ripper, Joker, Hitler. Yeah, and the kid in the shades, that would be Kid Eternity, who last I heard had died -- not that I met him, so your guess is as good as mine if this is the same or a new one or his long-lost clone or what. Kid E's got this power. He can resurrect the dead. That's all I know about him.

Yeah, bud, I know Ali's not dead, and neither is a cartoon Joker, and you know what? Before that, we were fighting Greek gods, only Bats said they weren't the ones he had met with Wonder Woman, and when I got to this burg, Rags and Bats were whaling on the Super-Globetrotters, who were like these basketball players with totally whacked-out superpowers. They were cartoons, too. None of those folks are dead, so a word to the wise: Kid E's powers have changed.

Crap, I didn't get to my point, but there's something I've gotta do first. Thanks for being patient.

WHAM!

Ever had a superpowered guy in your mouth slam his fist into the back of your throat? Me neither, cause personally me and Ray Palmer get along just fine and dandy, so if you're curious, ask Godzilla what it feels like.

Oops, you can't. Beeotch is down, out cold. Chalk one up for the Kid with the S, folks. Sizzle. What's my name, Big and Scaly? Say my name!

Ragman's done with Hitler, who has just been taught that it really isn't kosher to pick on Jews, and he's working his way through an army of Swastika-ed robots now. Duela leaves the Joker to Bats, and helps on robot duty --

-- you know the weird thing about Duela? She just, like, was walking by and decided to join in on the fight. I'm glad she picked the right side, cause the girl's got mad skills --

-- so right now, I'm figuring I have some breather time, so what I was getting at is --

"Satan."

Say WHAT?

A pitchfork comes sailing up at me from street level, I kid you not. This putative Satan, he's got dark red skin and pitch-black horns, and this stupid little French-looking mustache. Not a cartoon, but he may as well be. I can smell him from here, like woodsmoke and elephant farts.

The pitchfork is red-hot, I can feel the heat coming off of it before it's anywhere near me, so I zoom to the side and grab the handle of it as it passes. Fighting demons with pitchforks. You know, I was doing that just yesterday.

What's annoying me is I'm not even in my work clothes, I'm in a T-shirt and jeans, and they're getting a bit beat-up by all the activity. Keep a low profile, Supes told me. Well, I would, if the demons and cartoon bad guys would leave me the heck alone!

As much as I'm sure you'd love to see me get my butt kicked by Satan for awhile, I'm going to let the fight go on while I continue to talk to you, okay? It's one of those Fourth World things. No, wait. Fourth Wall? Whichever one Barda isn't from.

Phew, that's better. I am so not looking over my shoulder to watch my butt get kicked. Nope. So, like I was saying about a bazillion damn times, this all started because I was looking for a janitor.

See, like, I'm Superboy, aka Kon-El, the Kid of Steel, the Master of Disaster, the Maestro of the Almighty Groove Thing, the Daddy of the Mack Daddy, M.C. Superfunk, and --

-- lost track of what I was saying again.

Oh yeah, the janitor. Jordan Elliott. See, okay, I was a clone of Superman, back when he was dead, except that then it turned out I wasn't (but he actually was dead; I mean, then he wasn't dead, but in between he was dead for real, not just faking it), and I was actually the clone of this other guy, this total tool named Westfield, who ran Cadmus. Cadmus is the bunch of guys who made me, and some other clones, too, as well as Doomsday, the guy who killed Superman -- except it turns out they didn't create Doomsday, either, they were just studying him.

But anyway. Westfield wanted to use his DNA, altered to mimic Superman's powers, but he couldn't cause it just wasn't compatible with what they wanted to do. So they screened their employees, and check this --

OW! Yo, Satan, you best watch yourself. I'm totally gonna thrash on you.

-- Elliott was the only cat around with the right DNA. Don't ask me how. But so now I'm looking for him, cause right before I found that out, I was talking to this priest who was really Deadman --

-- I mean, the priest wasn't dead, see, there's this GUY, named Deadman -- well, his name is actually Boston Brand, which sounds like a kind of baked beans if you ask me -- but what with him being dead, and a man, he just goes by Deadman, and he like possesses the living to do good deeds and wander the Earth.

Like Caine, in Kung Fu, only more dead. And way more pale.

Right, so I was talking to Deadman possessing this priest, and wondering, hey, do I get a soul, what with my being a clone? Maybe I'm hitting some weird adolescent crisis -- except I don't age -- but I don't know. I'm sort of curious what's in store for me. That whole teen angst identity crisis thing, you know. Like on Dawson's Creek? Or that episode of Buffy, where the mad hottie was all "I don't WANNA be the Slayer, I just want to be a girly-girl and be all enthralled by my mad hotness, and how come I gotta kill vamps when I just want to go to prom?" Maybe that was the movie. Damn, those chicks are fine. Both of em. The redheaded witch, too. Oh, and Cordelia! Boy, I'd like to tap that --

-- ahem. Got off track again.

Hey, I'm kicking Satan's tush now. Go me!

Oh wait, now I'm not. Crap.

So yeah, I was talking to Deadman about souls, and he had this message for me, but then he forgot and he had to go back to wherever he is when he's not possessing people, and what am I gonna do, interrogate everyone in the world till I find out who he's possessed next? I don't have that kind of time, man.

But I've got this thing on my mind, and Supes wasn't much help with me figuring it out, and truth to tell, neither were his folks (good pie, though -- damn good pie), so when I find out I'm not the clone I thought I was --

-- well, by golly, I figured it's like some kind of sign. Like, hey, maybe I should find this Jordan Elliott guy. If nothing else, I oughta make sure he's still mad cute in his 40s or however old he is, so that I know if I do age, I'm gonna hang on to that.

I don't mean cute in a gay way, by the way. I mean, this guy's my father or whatever you call the guy you're cloned from.

Not that there's anything wrong with being gay. Just ask Robin! Hey, Tim, nice tights.

So if you were best buds with the Justice League -- well, practically -- and you were looking for someone, who would YOU talk to? That's right. Batman. World's Greatest Detective.

Of course, then I get here and this Kid Eternity guy is totally letting loose with the dead and fictional and none of the above folks, so I haven't had a chance to ask Big and Spooky yet, but --

-- oh, speaking of which, the Joker's just gone down hard. Man, cartoons can take a beating, especially the totally insane ones. Duela's helping Ragman wrestle Cthulhu -- now that's one for the cover of Life Magazine -- and Batman, he just stomps over to Kid Eternity and clonks him in the head.

Kid E falls down. Cthulhu disappears. Satan disappears. Just before I was gonna wicked thrash him, too, let me tell you.

I better get back on the other side of the Fourth World or Wall again. Stay tight, watch the show.

"Hey," I say, catching my breath and trying to straighten as much of my ripped-to-hell T-shirt as possible, so I'm not showing off my superclone nipples. "Good thinking, Batman. Sir. How'd you figure out knocking down Kid E would make the guys go away?"

He gives me this look, you know, this cold, blood-chilling look. "Knew it all along," he grunts.

"So, uh," I look at Ragman and Duela, who are helping each other put dislocated shoulders back in place and very studiously not looking at Batman, "why didn't you, you know ... knock him out before? Or tell us?"

Bats just looks over at where the cartoon Joker had been before he disappeared, doesn't say anything for a long time, and then grunts again. "Hnh. I was busy." He's got a voice that makes James Earl Jones sound about as intimidating as Carrot Top on helium.

"Right." I nod, crack my neck, wince. "Yeah. Well. Listen, I was wondering--"

He tosses me a notecard. "Jordan Elliott. Social security number, current address, telephone number."

I catch it, a little, well, dumbfounded. I mean, the guy's that good, you know? "Wow. Hey, thanks. You ever need my help --"

"I'll call Superman."

"Right. Yes. Well. Do that. Uh, there was this other thing --"

"I can't help you find your soul, Superboy. Wouldn't know where to start. If Kid Eternity wakes up, tell him to get it under control or stay the hell out of Gotham. I've got work to do." And he's gone. I mean, one minute I'm looking at him, and the next, his ankle twists a little and he falls into the shadow of the alleyway, and he's just gone.

Which leaves me looking at Ragman and Duela Dent and feeling like kind of a schmuck.

"Soul?" Ragman asks. He taps his foot against Kid Eternity, just making sure the guy's still out, I guess.

So yeah, that's how I wound up on the road with the daughter of a supervillain, Gotham's only Jewish superhero, and a dead guy who can summon anyone he can think of.

More later.