Walking with Superman: Day 153

With the holiday season well underway and one of the highest unemployment rates in the country, you might expect that the people of Yuma, AZ would be stressed and depressed. In truth, they're more satisfied than ever, and it's all because they're the test market for a brand new herbal remedy called Clementia! The supplement relieves stress, eases pain, and induces a feeling of calm, satisfied euphoria. Not everyone is so pleased with the substance, though, and a group of physicians and scientists contact Superman to voice their concerns. Clementia, they claim, has some serious side effects: lethargy, narcolepsy, hallucinations, a growing inability to distinguish reality from dreams, and a very high rate of psychological dependency. Perhaps most disturbingly, their analysis of the drug shows that it is indeed plant-derived, consisting mostly of spores and other fragments, but that the origins are almost certainly extraterrestrial. If that weren't enough to get Superman involved, then the identity and questionable ethics of the drug's proprietor would be. And when the Man of Steel confronts the sinister snake-oil salesman Funky Flashman, he learns the terrible, all-too-familiar secret behind Clementia...