Walking with Superman: Day 156

Superman takes a break from his cross-country trek to fulfill a Christmas tradition. Every year, the Man of Steel spends Christmas Eve reading and answering the thousands of letters addressed to him over the year, piled up in a back room of the post office in Metropolis, DE. The task is a hard one, not because it taxes Superman's amazing abilities, but because it weighs so heavily on his mind. The letters send him crisscrossing around the country, helping people in need. A young girl in Minnesota has been denied a simple life-saving medical treatment by her religiously-motivated parents. A whistleblower in North Carolina finds himself blacklisted from his field for trying to do the right thing. A family in Missouri thinks they know who kidnapped their son, but can't get the police to investigate. A housewife in Connecticut thinks she's becoming an alien after contracting a Coluan virus while working with alien refugees. Hour after hour, Superman does his best to solve these intractable problems and put his skills to use where they're needed. Those letters are the easy ones. The really tough ones, like one from a bullied gay teen in Kentucky, are the ones where Superman is too late.