Red Truck Road Trip - WEST Coast Team

One thing that I’ve emphasized during this trip is that I’m traveling with a bunch of uber-nerds. I don’t think you can be an artist without having at least a couple of nerdy characteristics, to be perfectly blunt. However, Mike takes nerdiness to weird extremes in certain cases: he’s a rampant science fiction addict, takes historical tours of towns he visits, loves technology and is always on the lookout for shiny new gadgets to play with, draws comics in his spare time, and has an encyclopedic knowledge of world mythology at his command. So, I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised when he insisted we stop off at Metropolis, IL, while we were en route from St. Louis to Nashville, TN (this was last Wednesday, we’ve been a little busy and haven’t been able to post for a couple of days).

Before I go any further, I should explain something: all his life, Mike’s wanted to be Clark Kent. His parents thought it would be a good idea to teach him to read via comic books and, much to their chagrin, he never put them down. Granted, when he was younger, he thought he wanted to be Superman himself because he loved running around in a cape and singing the movie theme. I’m sure his folks were convinced that he was a some sort of Karmic retribution for a crime spree in a previous life, since they had to take both he and his cape out in public numerous times and to the hospital once or twice before he learned that he could not, in fact, fly.

Now, back to the main story. Metropolis, IL is a town which must be populated by almost nothing but comic nerds. In 1972, both DC Comics and the Illinois State Legislature declared Metropolis to be “the home of Superman” and the city has fully embraced its adopted son ever since. In the 1980s, the town decided to erect a seven-foot-tall statue to Kal-El on the north side of its courthouse, which a number of folks decided to test the bulletproof nature of after its erection. 1993 saw over $100,000 raised in fundraising, and a fifteen-foot-tall statue was built out of bronze (and, yes, before you ask: it’s much more durable than its predecessor). Not content with a mere monument to the Man of Steel, Metropolis pays homage to the comics with its local newspaper, the Metropolis Planet, and the world’s largest Superman Museum (located about 50 feet down the street from the statue).

The museum itself actually fills a lot of space and is jam-packed with toys, props, costumes, posters, and famous comics from Superman’s 69 year existence (admission is $3 and well worth the price). At first glance, it’s almost like wandering through a fan’s cluttered basement, but it quickly becomes apparent that it’s organized in a rough chronological order and is chock-full of all sorts of fun stuff. If you want to allocate enough time to properly check the museum out, plan on spending 45 minutes to an hour wandering around its aisles. Just don’t feel obligated to wear a fedora whilst meandering around the town, like Mike did; the locals tend to look at you kind of funny.