Superman can shoot beams from his eyes, fly faster than a jet and survive point-blank gunshots to the head because our sun is a different color from his sun - fine, we'll accept that. He's essentially a solar battery, constantly absorbing energy that turns him invincible, superhumanly fast and all that other stuff that makes him one of the hardest characters to write.

But, even though his skin is impenetrable, what about his innards? Would a device, properly inserted into his mouth or say, super bottom, bypass his invulnerability and destroy him, or would he shake it off like so many shitty movies?

We must know.

Here's the scenario: in the newly announced  Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe, Superman and Cyrax are going at it. Magical fairies or space/time anomalies (whatever rationale they use in the game) make Superman weak enough so Cyrax can perform a brand new rectal fatality on Supes. In goes the bomb.

Does Superman have a colon of steel? Would the bomb go off with a muffled "pop!" and then Supes coughs out a bit of smoke like a cartoon, or would he shatter into a thousand Krypto-pieces? We consulted a DC Comics expert (with a collection of more than 10,000 funny books) via text message:

So according to this particular expert, Supes can withstand a regular-sized blast, even an internal one. The real question then becomes, can Superman survive a NUCLEAR BOMB?

Answer: It depends on which Superman has the bomb in his butt. Pre-Crisis Superman (don't ask, it's a really long story) could friggin move planets, fly through stars and easily survive ten nukes implanted under each finger. At one point his sneezes wipe out planets. With that kind of power, detonating a nuke in his ass would do little but turn him on.

"Super Friends" Superman is considerably less powerful and would probably be effed if he woke up with an armed nuke ticking away in his ass. Animated '90s Supes was similarly weak until the last season of Justice League Unlimited, so we imagine a similar fate would befall him. We assumed modern Supes was a bit weaker, but our DC expert said nay:

Curse DC and its constantly rotating history! Turns out that recently Superman flew through the goddamn sun to burn away microscopic nanomachines that were attacking his innards. The fact they died and he didn't shows that his insides withstood the pressure and heat of a star - far beyond any mere nuke's capabilities. We puny humans have no hope should he decide to go rogue... except Batman.

Our final tally of various supermen with myriad devices erupting from their anuses:

Jun 24, 2008