Superman sighted in Mount Prospect!
Look, up on the newsstand: It's a bird, it's a plane, it's Superman in Mount Prospect!
“Superman” issue #705, released this week, finds the Man of Steel in the Northwest suburb, the first stop in the comic book's new “Grounded” series, in which “Clark Kent crosses the United States looking to rediscover truth, justice & the American way as Superman.”
The visit was the brainchild of 73-year-old Annette Kowalczyk, a lifelong fan who wrote to DC Comics when the project was announced and suggested that Superman follow in the footsteps of the village's other recent super man, “American Idol” champion Lee DeWyze.
“I sent a whole story in about wanting him to come to Mount Prospect,” Kowalczyk said.
Kowalczyk hasn't yet seen the issue, but she said that DC representatives promised her a “walk-through” for Superman in Mount Prospect after her invitation was accepted.
The issue opens with a boy running home to his mother in Mount Prospect, but then finds Superman himself taking a more leisurely course to the suburb, first stopping in downtown Chicago and seen against the readily identifiable backdrop of Millennium Park's Pritzker Pavilion and “Cloud Gate,” the sculpture better known as “The Bean.”
Kowalczyk said she's had mixed results passing her love for Superman on to the three kids she raised in Mount Prospect and now seven grandchildren, but she has watched the latter-day Superman TV series “Smallville” with them.
“I'm sure they would be astounded to see him walking down the streets of Mount Prospect,” she added.
No more astounded, however, than Kowalczyk already is. “I am so happy,” she said about the visit and her accepted invitation.