Ah Parasite and Metallo, the two villains that more than anything could really use some love. Both have a ton of really great and interesting concepts baked into each that have yet to truly be explored. Metallo as a “Superman” for the military and Parasite as an energy vampire who absorbs not only the life force but also the memories or even the physical forms of the people he eats. If I was ever lucky enough to write Superman, those are the two I’d want to write.
I’d disagree mainly because Parasite stories usually just focus on gluttony and him eating everything in sight. But he has the potential to be so much more in the right hands.
I envision a Parasite that takes a much more intelligent, much more horror based story. Basically Superman meets Salem’s Lot by Stephen King with a little of the [PROTOTYPE] video game as well.
The real emotional core of the story cuts to the heart of the Superman mythos. Clark believes that deep down the majority of people are good. If you stand tall and give them an example, people will generally act like heroes themselves. Parasite however proposes a different take. He feeds on people and takes everything from them: their memories, their skills, their powers, their
souls. He can see peoples hearts and what he finds is that most of them are petty, selfish, close minded people that harbor dark thoughts they keep hidden, sometimes even from themselves. So he sneers at Clark’s beliefs and outright tells him about some of the stuff he’s read in people who seemed “upstanding”.
Ultimately Superman can’t get near Parasite for reasons I’ll keep to myself since I’m still working on it, so he has to take on an Oracle like role for a group of five citizens who have the ability to take Parasite down. But those five people are tempted by Parasite to give up in exchange for desires they’ve suppressed deep within, desires Parasite knows about and can fulfill if they’ll just stop aiding Supes. So it’s a story about whether Superman’s faith in the goodness of humanity is justified or not. I think something like that is well worth exploring, especially right now.