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Originally posted: http://www.seattleweekly.com/2011-06-01/news/the-alleged-adventures-of-phoenix-jones/
By Keegan Hamilton

Trying to uncover what’s real and what isn’t about Seattle’s most famous superhero.

On a dark and drizzly night in downtown Seattle, five strangers huddle outside police headquarters awaiting the arrival of the man who calls himself Phoenix Jones. Scheduled to be here at half-past midnight, it’s now 1 a.m. and the city’s most famous real-life superhero is nowhere to be found.
Three-fifths of the group is part of a local documentary film crew that has been following Jones and his team of “Rain City Superheroes” on foot patrols for the past three months. Already familiar with Jones’ modus operandi, the filmmakers are in no hurry. “Last night they made us wait an hour,” says one, as she rummages through her purse in search of a granola bar. “Tonight I brought a snack.”
Suddenly, one of the crew spots Jones’ familiar black-and-gold mask and matching rubber suit behind the steering wheel of a passing Kia sedan. A few minutes later, Jones rounds a corner on foot and strides towards the group, trailed by two men in black neoprene balaclavas.
“Hi,” he says, in a gruff approximation of Christian Bale’s sandpaper growl in The Dark Knight. “I’m Phoenix Jones.” He stands six feet tall, with a patch of curly black whiskers protruding from the dark brown skin on his chin, which, along with his mouth, is the only portion of his face not concealed by the mask. Fingerless gloves with lead-lined knuckles augment his firm handshake, and in his utility belt he carries a protective arsenal; cattle prod, tear gas, handcuffs, and a first-aid kit.
Jones introduces his nightstick-toting associates as Ghost and Pitch Black, and then outlines the evening’s agenda. With last call approaching, the plan is to make the rounds in Pioneer Square before heading up First Avenue to Belltown. “By then it will be the crack hour,” he says, referring to the wee hours of the morning when business is booming at one of the city’s most notorious open-air drug markets. But first, with three cameramen in tow, Jones and his sidekicks plunge headlong into the mob of drunken twenty-somethings spilling out onto the streets.
Frat boys holler, “Love your work, bro!” and tipsy girls in skimpy outfits squeal “Ooh, take a picture with me!” Jones stops and mugs for dozens of camera-phone portraits with his fans while ignoring the taunts—”Hey look, it’s Joaquin Phoenix! You ruled in Gladiator, dude!”—of others.
Passing through a parking lot, he and his posse catch a whiff of marijuana smoke. “You smell that?” he asks. “That’s not a crime. Stupid, but not a crime.”
Outside The Last Supper Club, a girl trips and hits the pavement in full view of a few uniforms. Jones darts to the rescue, helping her up and reaching for his first-aid kit, but the young lady and her friends stumble off into the night before he can offer her a Band-Aid.
“In that situation we did the right thing,” Jones says to his crew. “But it doesn’t matter if the police are right there. Our job is to be where they aren’t.”
With that, the superheroes start heading north toward Belltown, making sure to stop at every crosswalk with a red light because, says Jones, he was once issued a jaywalking citation while in costume. Just inside the main entrance to Pike Place Market, Jones pauses to chat up a guy struggling to load a belligerently drunk girl into the backseat of a car. A group of bystanders stop to gawk at the spectacle.
“I don’t trust the cops, but I trust Phoenix Jones,” says one of the onlookers.
The man’s friend is incredulous. “Well, what’s he done?” she asks. “What does he actually do when something breaks out?”
“He puts himself in harm’s way. He got his nose broken before. He gets right in the middle of situations.”
“Yeah, but that’s something any other drunk person would do.”
“Well, yeah, but he’s wearing a costume.”
This back-and-forth between late-night revelers is representative of Jones’ polarizing personae. Since he began patrolling the Seattle streets in late 2010—wearing an outfit complete with bulletproof vest, “ballistic cup,” and “stab plates”—he has turned into a lighting rod for controversy not just among regular Seattleites, but also police, reporters, and, incredibly, other self-styled “Real Life Superheroes,” many of whom scoff at the notion of “fighting crime,” and instead prefer to perform good deeds while clad in comic book-inspired attire.

But while Jones’ critics are skeptical of his motives and harrowing tales of near-death, he has scores of supporters who either like his shtick or believe him when he says he pounds the pavement on their behalf. “I’m the first superhero to come along and come as close to a comic book as possible,” says Jones. “I fight crime like you see in a comic book. I get hurt like you would get hurt in a comic book. I have an alter ego like you would have in a comic book. I’m interesting and I’m charismatic on-camera, off-camera, and in person. People want to know what I’m doing. They want to get to know me.”
So who is this masked man with the cojones to call himself the “Guardian of Seattle”? How did he engineer his faster-than-a-speeding-bullet ascent to celebrity? And, more important, has he really helped police catch any criminals?
Jones has a Los Angeles-based publicist to help hone his image as a knight in shining rubber. And to hear him tell it, he’s only in the game to do good.
“Fighting crime in the mask and rubber suit, no matter how awesome I do or how many criminals I lock up, eventually it will lose its appeal to the people,” he says. “The goal is for the people to be inspired by what I do. The goal is to inspire people to not put up with petty crimes.”
But while Jones is busy puffing up his body armor-protected chest on the nightly news, in real life he has accumulated a 22-entry-long court record filled mostly with minor violations, but also including a restraining order after he allegedly made death threats against another costumed crusader. And though police reports and 911 recordings obtained by Seattle Weekly indicate that Jones has, in fact, phoned in numerous suspected lawbreakers over the past seven months, the records show that his efforts have resulted in more amusing whiffs than actual arrests.
What kind of person dresses up like a superhero? Long before Hollywood unleashed Kick-Ass and Super—two movies released within the past year about real people who don capes and masks—Tea Krulos was asking himself that very same question.
Krulos, a freelance journalist from Milwaukee who pens the blog “Heroes in the Night” and is working on a book with the same title, has traced the “real life superhero” phenomenon back to Captain Sticky, a man who called in-costume press conferences in early 1970s San Diego in order to draw attention to causes he thought deserved more attention, like a nursing home caught abusing its patients. Because Captain Sticky was a spectacle, his exploits usually caught the attention of the press, who were always willing to put a mic in his face.
According to various estimates, Captain Sticky has now begat between 250 and 500 self-proclaimed superheroes worldwide. On the website RealLifeSuperheroes.org, the men—for that is who they are, with few exceptions—create profiles and talk shop, with threads like “Grapple Gun. Possible?” (The verdict: definitely possible, not practical.)
Krulos says that the majority of these “citizen heroes,” as they call themselves, resemble their founding father Captain Sticky in that they would rather feed the needy than bust heads. In New York, a Brooklyn man who simply calls himself Life is the co-founder of Superheroes Anonymous, a group that makes small gestures like giving fresh socks to the homeless in order to prevent foot fungus. In Seattle, more than two years before Jones first went on patrol, a man named White Baron started roaming the streets handing out food and clothing. “A lot do it because they want to help out their neighborhoods and communities and they see this as a fun, adventurous way to do that,” says Krulos.
In the back room of the Night Kitchen in Belltown, a few evenings after his Friday-night patrol, Phoenix Jones shares his own origin story. One that, in his rehearsed telling, doesn’t sound as much like a call to adventure as a call to duty.
It all began sometime last year, when Jones says a thief shattered his car window with a stone stuffed in a ski mask. (He declined to provide an exact date or month.) Jones, a married 23-year-old day-care worker with two young sons, picked up the discarded mask and threw it in his glove box, he says, without giving it a second thought.
Then, the next night, while at a club celebrating a friend’s birthday, a fight broke out between two of Jones’ friends and a larger group of men. Running to his car to retrieve his cell phone—Jones says he never keeps it in his pocket because he doesn’t want to risk damaging it when he break-dances—Jones, a cage fighter in his spare time, impulsively threw on the mask and chased down the fight’s instigator.
“Basically, I was reacting to a crime,” he says. “People might call it a strong overreaction, and I wouldn’t disagree. It’s a different reaction than most people would have.”
When police arrived and asked Jones for a name, he gave them an alias he says has “personal significance.” Emboldened by the thrill of the chase, Jones soon ditched the ski mask and upgraded his getup to include a fedora, cape, blue tights, a white belt, and a face covering.
“The first time [my wife] saw me she said, ‘Aren’t those nylons from Wal-Mart? Aren’t you going to get a real suit?’ ” he says.
Growing up in foster homes that he shared with more than 30 adopted siblings, Jones says he wasn’t a hard-core comic book fan, but a big enough one to have a favorite: Nightwing, the alter ego of Dick Grayson, the original Robin who left Batman and struck out on his own. Copying Nightwing’s style, Jones upgraded a final time when he ditched his lighter ensemble and ordered the skintight black-and-gold suit he still wears today.
Then, on Nov. 19, 2010, Jones earned his first headline when SeattlePI.com reported on an internal memo circulating among Seattle Police warning officers not to mistake a new group of do-gooders for criminals. A spooked Capitol Hill resident saw Jones and his entourage in masks outside of a gas station and called 911, assuming he was about to witness a robbery. The story included a blurry photo of Jones posing with a uniformed officer and, shortly thereafter, a viral sensation was born.

According to the Lexis-Nexis news database, Jones has now been mentioned in more than 350 articles worldwide. He’s made appearances on Good Morning America and National Public Radio, and appeared on the pages of publications as diverse as People magazine and The United News of Bangladesh. His Facebook page has been friended by more than 7,000 people, and videos he and others have uploaded to YouTube have been viewed hundreds of thousands of times. With his brash personality, occasionally self-deprecating sense of humor, and unwavering righteousness, Jones is a veritable sound-bite machine. As a result, nearly every story about him has been fawning, without trying to verify any of his supposedly courageous exploits, or acknowledging that they are, for the most part, completely unverifiable.
On Jan. 4, for example, KIRO aired a report on Jones that focused on an attempted car theft that allegedly took place in Lynnwood. A man who appeared on camera but refused to give his last name said he interrupted a thief trying to break into his car. Just as the man was about to dial 911, he said, Jones “came dashing in” and chased the thief away. Only when the story went national did a reporter from Talking Points Memo reach out to Lynnwood Police, who cautioned that the Department couldn’t confirm the story. Contacted recently by Seattle Weekly, Lynnwood Police spokesman Shannon Sessions goes one step further: the story “was found to be a false report—never happened.”
When The Wall Street Journal reported on Jones in April, the article’s author noted the backlash against Jones in the Real Life Superhero Community, many of whose members believe he’s less than truthful and attention-hungry. Jones’ peers are suspicious of his tales of glory, and multiple superheroes contacted for this article either turned down interview requests or made clear their doubts.
“He tells a ton of lies, makes up stories, and embellishes and exaggerates what he does,” writes Dark Guardian, co-administrator of Real LifeSuperHeroes.org, in an e-mail. “I’m very surprised no one in the media has called him out on it yet.”
When Jones debuted last November, he made it clear he wasn’t like other superheroes. Though he claims he’s donated thousands of dollars to several charities (records show he donated $500 to the international aid program Water for Africa; he also says he has contributed food and funds to Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission) he insists humanitarian work should be done on personal, not superhero, time. As he puts it: “There’s no comic book where Spider-Man runs around with a bag of sandwiches.”
On this point, Jones has an unlikely ally: Agent Beryllium, Seattle representative for ROACH—Ruthless Organization Against Citizen Heroes, a group of supervillians who have emerged to poke fun at the wannabe crusaders. Beryllium—who, along with nearly everyone else in the super subculture, asked that her real name be withheld—doesn’t think the superheroes should be getting so much publicity for their good deeds.
“Just be responsible people in your everyday lives,” she says.
Then again, Beryllium isn’t too fond of Jones either.
“He’s a special case,” she says. “Being an attention whore is one thing, but almost overnight he goes from being a guy with a cape and a fedora to wearing expensive plastic molded body armor. It just smells fishy to me.”
Peter Tangen had a hand in the transformation Beryllium finds so fishy. A Los Angeles photographer whose portfolio includes the posters for Batman Begins, Hellboy, and the Spider-Man series, Tangen is also the creator of a website (RealLifeSuperheroes.com, not to be confused with the .org forum) that features summer blockbuster-style portraits of two dozen costumed crusaders from across the country. Tangen says he initially set out to shoot the superheroes for a gallery exhibition, but after learning about their altruism, he began doing what he could to help them, accepting charitable donations on his website, and, occasionally, acting as a middleman with reporters.
Jones took the superhero world by storm a few months after Tangen completed his photography project, and Tangen says he decided to help him spread his message that “the problems of this world will never be solved until people realize one person can make a difference.” Tangen is now Jones’ de facto spokesman, in charge of coordinating his many interviews and appearances. The day after his Friday-night patrol of Pioneer Square, for instance, Jones was scheduled to visit three Seattle comic-book stores in conjunction with a nationwide Free Comic Book Day event. Tangen insists there’s never a fee for Jones’ services, adding, “To my knowledge, he’s never made a penny doing this.”
“Peter has been really instrumental in shaping the way I do things,” says Jones. “I had all the natural skills and all the raw talent, but he focused it.”
Dealing with a self-described superhero and his PR guru is sometimes an exercise in absurdity. When first contacted by Seattle Weekly via email, Jones responded with Tangen’s phone number and instructions to use a code word—”Twin Brother”—when calling Tangen so that the publicist would know he had Jones’ permission to talk. Then, on the eve of Jones’ interview, Tangen emailed to ask that photos of his client be staged so as to not show a portion of his suit that had been damaged by a mysterious fire.
By all accounts, Tangen has worked wonders for Jones’ career, such as it is. Earlier this year, Jones flew to Los Angeles and appeared in full regalia at the premiere of Super, the superhero comedy starring Rainn Wilson. (Wilson, a Seattle native, also name-dropped Jones on Jimmy Kimmel Live, joking that he has “taken 197 crack pipes away from people.”) In addition, Jones claims he turned down an offer for his own reality TV show, leaving $200,000 on the table because he didn’t like the concept.
“I would like to have a TV show where Phoenix Jones travels around the world inspiring people,” he says. “I don’t want a giant house and a Lamborghini like Batman—that’s just stupid. I want to be able to say to people on the street… ‘This is the Phoenix Jones apartment complex where you can rent with no credit.’ ”
Jones is cryptic about the cause of the malfunctioning wardrobe referenced by Tangen. “It got melted, I got burned,” he says, refusing to elaborate. “It’s unverifiable, and whenever I open my mouth and say something unverifiable, it sounds like I’m lying.”
Indeed, Jones’ tales have raised eyebrows among skeptical journalists and superheroes alike.
“I can’t really ever get the truth out of Mr. Jones,” says Skyman, a Seattle-area character who focuses on homeless outreach and has twice patrolled with Jones. “The guy came in with a track record of ‘I’ve been shot and stabbed,’ but he has no proof, and we’re supposed to take him on his word.”
When pressed for evidence to verify his near-death encounters—which include the two serious claims alluded to by Skyman: one a shooting in Tacoma, another a stabbing in Seattle—Jones draws a blank. He claims to have a private doctor who treats his serious injuries, which also allegedly include getting hit with a baseball bat and punched by an attacker with keys wedged between his knuckles, but Jones says the doctor won’t agree to an interview for fear of losing his medical license. Jones also never followed through on an offer to hand over his medical records.
What’s more, neither of his two most harrowing encounters—the shooting and stabbing—were reported to police. “I was walking through an alleyway in Tacoma,” says Jones. “I wasn’t involved in any altercation. I wasn’t involved in any fight. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time and I got shot.”
Jones says a bulletproof vest saved his life, but nearly getting gunned down after just a few weeks on the job made him reconsider his superhero career. Jones claims he took a month off and eased back in by handing out food at a homeless camp. There, a knife fight broke out, he says, and he got cut when he intervened.
During the interview at the Night Kitchen, Jones offers to take off his suit and show his scars as proof that what he’s saying is true. Shirtless but still wearing his mask, he ignores the bewildered glances from a couple across the room and asks his partner Pitch Black to point out the remnants of several wounds on his back.
He has a few welts below his right shoulder blade, which he claims were caused by the fire that damaged his suit, and a faint, quarter-inch-long scar on his upper forearm that he says he got in the line of duty. But there’s nothing around his midsection where Jones says he was stabbed.
“Looks like that one healed up, bro,” says Pitch Black.
In an attempt to independently verify some of Jones’ alleged exploits, Seattle Weekly filed a public disclosure request with Seattle Police seeking information about every call for service that has involved Phoenix Jones and/or his real-life identity. As of May 5, there were a total of 18 incidents. Officers filed reports in seven cases, but ended up making just two arrests.
The first arrest occurred around 4:30 p.m. on Dec. 18 in the northbound lanes of I-5 at Northeast 80th Street. It is classified on the paperwork as a “pedestrian violation” but all other information is redacted from the paragraph-long report. Jones declined to discuss the encounter, except to confirm that he dialed 911 and claim that the arrest is tied to “an ongoing drug investigation.”
Other documents are more detailed. Shortly after midnight on Dec. 12, Jones was inside Pioneer Square nightclub Venom when he called the cops claiming an Asian man offered him sex with a woman for $100. Jones, the report says, “realized this was a prostitution arrangement and was concerned for the victim because it appeared that [she] could not speak any English.” The officers interviewed the alleged pimp and hooker, but didn’t arrest either of them, and Jones refuses to discuss the details of the case.
On Feb. 20, Jones reported a domestic dispute after he spotted a man “grabbing” his wife in the couple’s Rainier Beach driveway. The responding officer reported smelling alcohol on the man’s breath, and was told the argument began when the woman stormed out of the house after discovering that her husband had been mailed a copy of Sports Illustrated‘s swimsuit issue. It was just an argument, they said, and it never escalated to physical violence. Jones claims he saw the man pull the woman’s hair, but he didn’t mention this to the 911 dispatcher. Once again, police did not make an arrest.
As proof that he doesn’t embellish, Jones cites one of his more high-profile encounters. On Jan. 12, KOMO reported that Jones got his nose broken during a street brawl in Belltown. He reportedly pinned a drug dealer to the ground, but then two other attackers caught him off-guard. One held him at gunpoint and the other kicked him in the face. All three ran away before police arrived on the scene. (Records show that police responded to a 911 call from Jones on Jan. 11 at First Avenue and Madison Street, but were “unable to locate the incident or complainant” and did not file a report.)
Jones claims that KOMO had footage of the fight, but agreed not to broadcast it in exchange for an interview with him. But when reached by phone, the station’s news director Holly Gauntt says that’s not true. She says Jones put them in touch with someone who allegedly taped the incident on a camera phone. Another witness seconded Jones’ version of events, which was enough for KOMO to broadcast their story, but the video evidence never materialized. “We never saw it,” says Gauntt. “No deals were made. We wouldn’t do that.”
till, Jones won’t back down.
“If you guys want to call me a liar and say I make up stories, why don’t I win every time?” asks Jones. “Getting my nose broken was not a win.”
The only other known Jones-related arrest came on April 21, when he and Pitch Black teamed up for a drug bust in the University District. Pitch Black was out of costume when a man reportedly offered to sell him heroin. Jones swooped in and detained him until police arrived. The suspect voluntarily emptied his pockets, and was arrested after police discovered “a clear straw containing a brownish residue” and a “red, heart-shaped box,” with five oxycodone pills inside.
Jones claims he has contributed to additional arrests in Everett and Tacoma, but spokesmen for both police departments say they can’t turn up any cases involving Jones. Tangen also says there is an ongoing SPD investigation that started with a tip from Jones. It deals with “a sex trafficker,” Tangen says, repeating a story also told by Jones, “Not a guy who’s a pimp with prostitutes . . . when [police] went to his house, there were prisoners.”
Sgt. Ryan Long, a detective in SPD’s vice squad, confirms that Jones “was a complainant in something” but also suggests his role was minor. “I don’t know what he’s claiming,” says Long, “But I’ve had inquiries from other journalists in the past. I would suspect he’s shopping you guys off of each other.”
Upon hearing Long’s remarks, Jones simply shrugs. He has doubters, he says, but he does not doubt himself.
“I think there’s a healthy amount of skepticism in general with writers about what I do,” he says, “And a healthy sense of ‘We don’t want to empower this person’ that comes out of the Police Department.”
Jones says another alleged incident, one that may put his family in harm’s way, is why he demanded his real name be withheld in this story. Tangen says Jones told him about a time when “police picked up a couple of Russian women brought into Seattle for sex trafficking and they reported seeing ‘Batman’ in the area . . . so there is also a possibility that organized crime may be under the impression that he is a threat as well.”
As if that wasn’t enough, Jones claims his house was broken into a few months after he started patrolling the streets, and worries that the break-in was retaliation for his crime-fighting ways. Like most of his other claims, however, this one is also unverifiable: Jones says he didn’t file a police report because nothing of value was stolen, so once again there’s no paper trail.
The Rain City Superheroes’ Facebook page warns aspiring crime-fighters looking to join Jones’ crew that his standards are high. A military background or martial arts expertise is mandatory (according to MixedMartialArts.com, Jones real-life counterpart has an undefeated amateur fighting record in Washington); community-service experience is a plus but not required; and you must also own a bulletproof vest that is at least capable of stopping small-arms fire. Jones himself is fond of his “Dragon Skin” model, which he says he purchased for $1,500 with a loan from his mom. All applicants, he says, must also pass a background check.
Not every member of Jones’ posse has been so carefully screened. His partners Ghost and Pitch Black, for instance, are friends of his from high school, both of whom say they served in the armed forces or have other defense training. But a review of Jones’ own criminal record begs the question: Does he measure up to his group’s high standards?
A search for the man who calls himself Phoenix Jones on the Washington Courts online database yields 22 results. The majority are for minor traffic violations, mostly speeding tickets. But he has also been cited six times for driving without a license, driving without insurance, and/or driving with his license suspended. He also was booked during a traffic stop in Snohomish County for “refusal to give information to or cooperate with an officer.”
According to a police report, on Sept. 3, 2008, Jones was pulled over on a scooter between Lynnwood and Mountlake Terrace after his driving, “enraged several motorists.” The officer noted that Jones “was extremely nervous” and bragged that he was “a WA state cage fighter champion.” Jones’ license was suspended at the time, so he tried to conceal his identity by using a friend’s name. Unfortunately for Jones, his friend’s license also was suspended. Jones eventually fessed up and used his real name, but still refused to give the officer his home address.
The real-life Jones has been evicted twice (with three more “unlawful detainers,” as such cases are called, ending in dismissal) and had two judgments filed against him in civil court. Jones won’t discuss his poor driving record, saying it has no bearing on his character or ability to fight crime. He admits he’s had financial problems, but accurately asserts that he has always paid back his debts per the court’s orders.
On Nov. 30, a King County resident filed an unlawful harassment suit against Jones in Superior Court. According to court documents, the man told a judge that a week earlier, Jones “called me multiple times through an unknown number and made threats about my physical safety at 1 a.m.” He also stated that three days later, Jones “contacted me and threatened me with knowledge of my address and my girlfriend’s car data,” and that, “a mutually known person . . . told me that [Jones] wants to kill me.”
The court granted a restraining order, requiring that Jones pay court costs for the case and not go within 500 feet of the man or his residence. When Snohomish County sheriffs tried to serve Jones with the court order, they realized that the address he’d listed on court documents was his martial arts studio, and not his home.
Reached by phone, the man who filed the suit explains that he has spent the past decade as real-life superhero Mr. Raven Blade, purportedly doing both crime patrols and humanitarian work in the Seattle area. Raven Blade has himself received some media acclaim, appearing in a CNN story about citizen heroes. (Raven Blade, like Jones, requested that his real name be withheld for this story.) He says he was outraged by Jones’ boasts in an early news report so, using his Raven Blade identity, he posted a scathing letter to Jones on his blog.
Jones later contacted Raven Blade via Facebook message and wrote in all capital letters, “I KNOW YOUR ADDRESS AND CAR, PLEASE LETS KEEP THIS CIVIL LEAVE ME ALONE.” A few days later, Raven Blade alleges, he saw Jones drive past his house and point at him with his thumb and forefinger, “like if you’re a kid playing cops and robbers and trying to shoot somebody.” That’s when Raven Blade says he decided to file for a protection order.
Asked about the restraining order and Raven Blade’s statements, Jones initially denies having any knowledge of the situation.
“I have a legal team that handles most anything,” he says, “So if anyone filed a restraining order against Phoenix Jones, if they filed it against me, my legal team handles it and I don’t know anything about it.”
A few moments later, however, Jones backtracks and says that the “mutual friend” Raven Blade referenced in the court documents eventually retracted his statements about the death threat. Neither Jones nor Raven Blade would disclose the identity of their “mutual friend,” except to say that he too is a real-life superhero.
Jones also claims that Raven Blade suffers from Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism. “I think that has a lot to do with the way he perceives me,” says Jones. “I don’t hold any grudge against him, and there’s an open communication line if he ever comes out and wants to work with me.”
Raven Blade, in turn, vehemently denies that he has Asperger’s and says there’s no way he’d ever go out on patrol with Jones.
“He’s trying to slander me,” he says. “It’s a classic tactic, you don’t like somebody so you try and make them look bad . . . He is not a superhero by any stretch of the imagination. He is, however, a very good marketer and a very good poser.”
Back in Belltown on the soggy Friday night, “crack hour” has arrived.
Standing on the corner of Second Avenue and Bell Street around 2:45 a.m., Jones and his crew are patrolling an area that’s obviously a low priority for Seattle Police—there’s not a uniformed officer, bike cop, or police cruiser in sight, and there won’t be for the rest of the night. Meanwhile, haggard addicts aggressively panhandle the few pedestrians brave or foolish enough to still be out and about. Unsavory characters stand on opposite sides of the intersection, peddling plastic baggie-packaged products as if they were legal.
Jones says he can’t confront the dealers unless he has probable cause. Accosting every group suspiciously standing on a public sidewalk would be considered harassment under Washington state law, he says, so a fight must break out in order to intervene. If they solicit him, or if he can pin down the precise type and quantity of drugs being exchanged, he will phone in a report to police. But until then, his strategy is to stand near a group and hope that his presence will intimidate them into shutting down their operation.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t really work out that way. “Man, you can’t arrest people,” says a young black man idling on a BMX bike. “I talked to the police about you.”
What makes the dealers a little uncomfortable, though, are the cameramen. “Yo, they snappin’ pictures!” shouts one of the men before slinking down the block to another corner. Some people remain, including a junkie nodding off in the middle of Second Avenue. Doubled over and on the verge of collapsing face-first into the pavement, the man somehow retains just enough balance to stay upright. Jones and his crew stare at the grim scene for a few minutes, trying to determine the proper course of action. Would it legally be considered harassment if they picked him up and moved him out of the street? Or should they wait until a car is coming so they’ll have a reason for rescuing him?
“This is ridiculous,” says Ghost, finally, before approaching the man along with Pitch Black, gently taking him by the arm, and guiding him to the curb.
With no obvious trouble brewing, a photographer asks Jones if he’d mind taking a break to do a photo shoot in a nearby alley. Jones obliges and spends the next 15 minutes posing. But just a few moments after leaving the alley, a man approaches asking for help. He has tattoos on his face and the backs of his hands, and says his street name is Poe. Pointing to a raspberry-colored welt on his face, Poe explains how he just got punched by one of the drug dealers. He wants Jones to track down the guy who hit him.
“When did this happen?” asks Jones.
“Soon as y’all left,” says Poe.
The irony of the superhero missing out on the only real skirmish of the evening to pose for pictures is not lost on Jones, but he tries to make the best of the situation.
“We have handcuffs,” he says. “We can citizens-arrest the guy, but when the police come you have to put your name down.”
“Nah,” says Poe. “I’d have the whole ‘hood after me if I did that.”
After getting a description of the alleged attacker, Jones heads back to the corner where the fight occurred. His plan, he says, is to wield “the Phoenix Cam” — a silver Flip pocket camcorder—and confront the assailant, provoking another altercation.
“I’m going to have to take a hit for the team,” he says. “I’ll get the guy to punch me in the face and we can press assault charges.”
“Are you aware of the concept of blocking?” asks Ghost.
“Yeah,” says Jones. “But then it’s not assault, it’s only attempted assault.”
Alas, by the time the superheroes return to the scene of the attack, the corner is empty. Jones and his crew circle the block a few more times, then decide to call it a night.
“I like that I’m not going to get punched in the face,” says Jones. “But I’m disappointed we didn’t get to take someone down.”
Still, by his standards the night is a resounding success.
“Sure other superheroes don’t like me,” he says. “Why? Because they suck at their jobs . . . Tonight we literally didn’t stop any crime. But we did definitely talk to some drug dealers, we picked up a girl who fell and hit her face on the ground, and we talked to a bunch of different people in Seattle who may now report crime because they talked to us. That’s still 100 times better than every other superhero.”
Additional links:
The (Alleged) Adventures of Phoenix Jones: The Police Reports
The (Alleged) Adventures of Phoenix Jones: The 911 Calls
The (Alleged) Adventures of Phoenix Jones: The Movie

Originally posted: http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_weekend/20110401/ts_yblog_weekend/real-life-superheroes-really
By Jim Brasher
What are you doing this weekend? Going to brunch? Mowing the lawn? Fighting crime? Hmm…which one of these things is not like the other?
Welcome to the confusing, often contradictory world of self-described Real Life Superheroes. (That’s R.L.S.H for short). It’s a loosely affiliated community of people who develop their own superhero persona, put on costume and try to prevent crime in their neighborhood. And all without super speed, invisibility or wings.
So are they vigilantes or volunteers? Commendable or ridiculous? Is what they’re doing even legal? I decided to find out. Check out the video above for my night on patrol with “Motor Mouth.” But first, a little more about the cast of characters, starting with…

THE MASKED MAN:
I’ll admit, I had a few misgivings about meeting a masked stranger decked out in Kevlar and leather in a dark garage. But as you can see in the video, those fears dissipated the moment Motor Mouth started talking. (Turns out, he never really stops talking.) He’s intense, driven, but also has a great sense of humor about the path he’s chosen.
“You have to be a little eccentric,” he said, “there’s no question about it. You gotta be eccentric and you gotta have a little bravado about yourself.”
We went on patrol in downtown San Jose, California with Motor Mouth, Anthem and Mutinous Angel. A typical night on patrol involves lots of walking and plenty of curious stares. But for Motor, his costume is a symbol, a visual reminder that someone in the night is paying attention.
“We’re just like that average man in his mid-forties or fifties going ahead and patrolling his neighborhood in a neighborhood watch group, except we do it with a little bit more flair,” he says. And, he insists, they’re out there as a deterrent only.
“We don’t want to get in the way of the police,” he says, “we try to work with them to the best of our abilities, because we do not see ourselves as vigilantes, not in the slightest.”
(A vigilante is someone who effects justice according to their own understand of right and wrong; someone who punishes an alleged criminal suspect outside the legal system. And that, as you may have guessed, is illegal.)
So Motor Mouth espouses a ‘deterrence-only’ philosphy. But the first rule of the R.L.S.H community is that there are no rules in the R.L.S.H community. (No formal ones anyway.) And not everyone subscribes to the same theories about what it means to prevent crime. So to get a wider view, we spoke to…
THE DIRECTOR:
Director Michael Barnett and producer Theodore James spent a year on the road, following close to forty Real Life Superheroes all over the country for an upcoming documentary called… Superheroes. They were kind enough to share some of their footage with us, and we met Barnett at Arclight Cinemas in Hollywood for an in-depth conversation about his experience.
“There’s not one thing the RLSH community focuses on,” he says, “they really do focus on everything, every aspect of the community, and how to make it better. And the thing that drives all of them, is people who do not care; that’s their mission, change the people who do not care to caring people.”
You can watch more of our interview with Barnett here. And stay tuned to this page for breaking news about when and where you can see the film.
THE LAW & THE GOOD NEIGHBORS:
We also spoke to Cindy Brandon, executive director of San Francisco SAFE (Safety Awareness For Everyone). SF SAFE is unique, a non-profit organization that works in partnership with with the police to provide neighborhood watch program to the residents and businesses of San Francisco.
She stressed the importance of alerting the police to any suspicious activity. “If you see a crime in progress,” she says, “your first reaction should be to call 911.” Getting involved in trying to stop a crime is a risky proposition.
“If they do intervene they’re putting their own life in jeopardy. While I think each person can make that determination themselves when they witness something happening, we tell people not to get involved, but to go into a safe place and call the police right away.”
Actual law enforcement officials stress the same message. According to Lieutenant Andra Brown of the San Diego Police Department, real life superheroes, “don’t have the backup that we have, and trying to take a situation into their own hands could perhaps get out of hand for them, and it could actually create more work for the police officers.”
“Now we perhaps have another victim we have to deal with, we have someone who maybe has been represented to be part of law enforcement, or an authority if you will, and that can confuse other people out on the street. So yeah, there’s a lot of situations where they could impede what’s going on, or what a police officer needs to take care of.”
THE ARTIST:
Like many members of the real life superhero community, Motor Mouth got his inspiration from the pages of a comic book. So we commissioned artist and performer Kevin McShane to create two original comic book panels for our piece, based on footage from our piece.

FINAL THOUGHTS:
Motor Mouth, Mr. Extreme, Mutinous Angel, Thanatos, Dark Guardian, Master Legend, Life, Crimson Fist, Zimmer, Saph, Ghost, Asylum, Red Voltage, Zetaman. Their reasons for putting on a costume are as colorful and varied as their names. While I learned pretty quickly that it’s next to impossible to generalize about the Real Life Superhero Community, many share a common nemesis: apathy.
According to Motor Mouth, fighting apathy means “trying to awaken the minds of the public to the little bit of more they can do in society, to make the world a better place.”
They certainly had an impact of director Michael Barnett. “In the end, I found something pretty profound. I found people with often times very little resources doing really, sort of small but beautiful things to make their communities better.”
What do you think? Watch the video and let me know.
Video: http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_weekend/20110401/ts_yblog_weekend/real-life-superheroes-really
Video featuring Michael Barnett: http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_weekend/20110401/ts_yblog_weekend/we-interview-michael-barnett

Maybe it is due to the popularity of “Watchmen,” which featured crime-fighters with little or no super powers. Or maybe in the “Dark Knight” was a harbinger of things to come, when masked vigilantes tried to emulate Batman on their meager budgets. The Great Recession may be the single largest factor in this growing movement. Men and women are donning costumes and hitting the streets, to protect the public, across the nation, and yes, even around the world.
What is a Real Life Superhero? According to Superheroes Anonymous, the mark of a Real Life Superhero (RLSH) is someone who sees injustice in the world, and in costume, does something about it. Over the past three years Superheroes Anonymous has help validate the purpose of RLSH, ordinary people who go out of their way to help others.
Many of these latter-day Guardian Angels help feed the homeless, perform various community services, and inspire others to take positive social action. Their members are doctors, students; people from all walks of life. Some attribute their altruism to being disillusioned with chasing the almighty dollar, after being laid off from their jobs. Others are repenting for past transgressions during their youth. The one thing they have in common is an overarching desire to make the world a better place.
Some even fight crime in the literal sense, those who do usually keep their real identities a secret. Mr. Ravenblade found his calling when he prevented a mugging/rape. Mr. Xtreme, who founded the Xtreme Justice League, patrols neighborhoods to stop violent crime in San Diego. The Black Monday Society members Insignis, Ghost, and Oni help keep Salt Lake City, Utah safe. Crimson Fist may sound like a hardened crime-fighter, but he mainly helps feed the homeless.
In New York, Terrifica, a female crime-fighter, has been protecting inebriated women at bars and parties from being taken advantage of by men since the mid-1990’s. Dark Guardian, a martial arts instructor, helps keep bad elements at bay, gives inspirational speeches, and will even clean up trash or graffiti. Life not only helps the homeless, he also teams up with other superheroes to attack drug dealers. Most of these superheroes are law-abiding citizens who help police catch real criminals. On the occasions when they do cross the line, they tend to keep it very close to the chest.
RLSH say that the main reason they don masks is more to raise public awareness than to strike fear in the hearts of criminals. They are hard to ignore which helps drive their message of community activism. They also seem to prefer myspace to Facebook. Just don’t expect an up-to-date report on their sites. They are too busy keeping us safe.
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Superheroes Anonymous trailer from beginnorth on Vimeo.

John Harlow in Los Angeles
For Mr Invisible, the first and last blow to his burgeoning career as a superhero was an unexpected punch that flattened his nose.
“After months of designing my costume, getting my street moves just right, it was my first week out as a Real Life Superhero – and probably my last. This tiny, tiny girl did not like me trying to calm down her screaming boyfriend. She blindsided me, I’m still bruised. It’s dangerous out there,” said the deflated would-be crime fighter last week.
Mr Invisible is cheered that at least his grey one-piece “invisibility suit” works, proven when a drunk urinated on him in an alley. But he is weary of lurking in dark, down-town Los Angeles after dark.
The 29-year-old graduate is “refocusing” on his day job as an insurance salesman. His farewell appearance will be at a New Year’s Eve party.
Mr Invisible may be living up to his name but his spray-painted “supershoes” will quickly be filled by another Real Life Superhero eager to save America from itself. There are, according to the recently launched World Superhero Registry, more than 200 men and a few women who are willing to dress up as comic book heroes and patrol the urban streets in search of, if not super-villains, then pickpockets and bullies.
They may look wacky, but the superhero community was born in the embers of the 9/11 terrorist attacks when ordinary people wanted to do something short of enlisting. They were boosted by a glut of Hollywood superhero movies.
In recent weeks, prompted by heady buzz words such as “active citizenry” during the Barack Obama campaign, the pace of enrolment has speeded up. Up to 20 new “Reals”, as they call themselves, have materialised in the past month.
The Real rules are simple. They must stand for unambiguous and unsponsored good. They must create their own Spandex and rubber costumes without infringing Marvel or DC Comics copyrights, but match them with exotic names – Green Scorpion in Arizona, Terrifica in New York, Mr Xtreme in San Diego and Mr Silent in Indianapolis.
They must shun guns or knives to avoid being arrested as vigilantes, even if their nemeses may be armed. Their best weapon is not muscle but the internet – an essential tool in their war on crime is a homepage stating the message of doom for super-villains.
This is more than bravado, say veterans. It may help as evidence after a Real has been arrested or even committed to a mental health hospital for evaluation. That happened to Mr Invisible’s equally short-lived predecessor, Black Owl, who last summer had to be sprung from a psychiatric ward by his teenage daughter who told doctors: “Dad forgot for a moment, when faced with police, just for a moment, that he did not have real superpowers. He could not just fly away.”
“This is a more serious business than it looks,” said Citizen Prime, whose $4,000 (£2,700) costume disguises an Arizona businessman and father of a toddler who thinks his cape, mask and stun-gun are cool.
Prime patrols some of the most dangerous streets in Phoenix but, like most Reals, is reluctant to speak about the villains he has dispatched with a blow from his martial arts-honed forearm. He does admit helping a motorist change a flat tyre.
“Kids love the costume, so I seek to keep them out of the gangs today rather than take them on tomorrow,” said Prime who, at 41, regards himself as on the mature wing of the Real community.
He is worried about lunatics and hotheads. He says he would never act like the Black Monday Society in Salt Lake City who interrupt drug deals in public parks and face off against armed thugs.
Utah police officers say they appreciate Ghost, a 33-year-old concrete worker, and his colourfully costumed cohorts Insignis, Oni, Ha! and Silver Dragon. But other police departments recall that America’s most feared gangs, the Crips and the Bloods, were also born as idealistic “community defenders”.
It can be dangerous. Master Legend of Florida, who arms himself with a pepper-spraying cannon powered by cans of antiperspirant, was attacked by a man with a hammer.
There is a high burn-out rate. Terrifica, a 5ft 9in redcaped superheroine, who would manhandle drunken girls away from heavy-handed dates in nocturnal New York, spoke about how she despised her “weak, needy and dumped” alter-ego Sarah.
Artemis of San Diego reported on his blog that he had heard a woman screaming outside his home but by the time he had dressed up in his costume the police were already there. Kevlex, 47, who runs the Superhero Registry, says he patrols more in winter than summer in Arizona, when his Kevlar and Spandex kit itches. But the deadliest kryptonite against a superhero is boredom.
“I was out every night, 8pm until 2am, hanging about all the bad corners and nothing happened, nada, zip,” recalled Mr Invisible. “It was raining: even the drug dealers were at home. And often cops are just too good at their jobs.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article5404186.ece

By Paul Constant
They hide their true identities behind elaborate masks and costumes, patrolling the streets of downtown Salt Lake City in groups of two and three. People react to them in various ways: Older folks tend to ignore them. Drunken young adults want to pose with them for photos. Teenagers tend to hiss, growl and shout in their general direction, while children walk right up to them and ask what they are doing. Despite the masks and secret identities, they’re completely open about their purpose.
“Inferno,” one of the newest members of the group, is unfazed by the evening chill. He passes by a group of teens. One of them shouts: “Halloween’s not over!” Inferno winces, rolls his eyes, and responds, in the bored tone of someone who’s tired of hearing the same joke over and over again, “Nope, it’s not.” A girl of about 14 breaks from the mass of tittering boys and bravely approaches Inferno. He’s wearing a red hood and tunic, thigh-high pleather boots, and a matching black pleather mask that covers his eyes and nose. She breaks the awkward silence: “Can I ask about your costume?”
Inferno nods, unconsciously touches his red goatee and answers: “I’m part of the Black Monday Society.”
The girl cocks her head. “The Black Monday Society?”
“Yeah,” Inferno begins, a little more comfortable now, getting into a well-worn groove, “We just walk around, you know, patrol the streets.”
“Like Citizens on Patrol?” adds the girl, invoking the title of the fourth Police Academy movie. Her friends seem to get the reference and break into laughter.
Inferno brightens. “Yeah. “Citizens on patrol.”
“Cool!” says the girl, and despite the fact that her male friends are still hanging back—way back—and giggling, she seems to be genuinely happy about the idea. Inferno smiles and hands her a business card.
“We have a Website,” he says. “Look us up, it’ll tell you more about what we do. That’s pretty much what it’s about. It’s a lot of fun.”
“OK,” she says, waving goodbye with the card and running back to her friends, “Have fun!”
“You, too,” Inferno says. “Bye.”
And then he goes back to patrolling the streets, keeping his eye out for danger, wherever it lurks.
We Need Another Hero

The Black Monday Society started five years ago, when a Salt Lake City-area tattoo artist and lifelong comic-book fan named Dave went exploring on MySpace. “I always told my wife, even before we got married, that if I ever see a real superhero, I’m so going to be one,” he says. “Come on, just the idea of wearing a mask, going out, doing something good? Being somebody else for a little bit? Doesn’t that sound a little enthralling to you?”
After doing a search for comic-book-related fan groups, Dave happened upon the Web pages of two Indianapolis men who go by the names “Mr. Silent” and “Doktor DiscorD.” They called themselves Real Life Superheroes, and they went on patrol on the Indianapolis streets searching for wrongs to right.
“So,” Dave says, “I set up a MySpace page, made an identity for myself, just to talk to them, and it kind of evolved from there. It was really inspiring.”
Dave couldn’t believe this was happening, that his childhood obsession was taking shape, and that people all over the world were a part of it. “I went home to my wife and told her about it and she said, ‘Wow,’ and then she said, ‘Is this for real?’ and I said, ‘Yeah,’ and she said, ‘So, when do you go out?’ and I said, ‘As soon as possible.’”
Like all Real Life Superheroes, Dave, 37, uses only his first name, and he’d rather go by his character’s name anyway. His first superhero identity was “The American Corpse.” He dressed in an Israeli army gas mask, fedora and a suit and tie, much like classic DC Comics superhero The Sandman. Dave’s good friend, a very tall man with a lazy Johnny Cash drawl, says he’s “always been fascinated by ghosts and goblins and demons and things of that nature,” so he decided to call himself “Ghost.” He made a costume of a rubber Halloween skeleton mask adorned with a shock of white hair and a matching ribcage on his chest. Ghost is 32 and works in real life as a concrete finisher. Quiet and unassuming, he explains his unusual hobby by saying, “It’s every little boy’s fantasy to be a real life superhero.”
Ghost sums up his passion for the street with a comment on his blog: “Doesn’t matter how many people snicker at us. What matters is we are out there doin’ our duty for justice.”
Recounting their first night out on patrol in 2001, American Corpse and Ghost say they were standing by their car on a city street having a smoke. A Salt Lake City cop on patrol approached them and pulled over. American Corpse says he decided to slowly approach her to explain their costumes and superheroic intent. She firmly told them, “Please stand by the hood of the car.” American Corpse kept walking toward the officer, then reached into his jacket to pull out his wallet and identification. Reacting to Corpse’s decision to keep moving, the officer put her hand on her revolver and shouted, “Stand by the hood of the car, now!” American Corpse says he wasn’t even really thinking but decided to try and calm the situation by saying, “It’s OK, ma’am, don’t worry. Relax; I’m a superhero.”
The cop eventually let them move on, but the heroes claim the Black Monday Society is on the Salt Lake City Police Department’s official list of street gangs. A spokesman for the SLCPD would not confirm that statement.
When Flats Need Fixing

If a healthy number of Websites and blogs are any indication, there are hundreds of Real Life Superheroes around the world, mainly operating out of urban areas. One of the best known is “Citizen Prime,” an RLS from Phoenix. Prime is a husband, father and office worker who puts on a costume (or uniform, as the RLS community prefers) with intent to fight crime. Though Prime does carry a pair of intriguingly named “stun-knuckles” in case he has to protect himself or others, most of the work he does fits neatly within the category of good Samaritanism—flat-tire repair and making speeches to elementary-school students about the dangers of drug use. But in the past year, buoyed by increased media attention, Prime has also started a successful toy drive to help needy children.
Prime, an office worker in his 40s, has a certain charisma, the kind usually seen in community organizers and old-fashioned politicians. In conversations, he’s prone to wholesome expressions like, “Oh, my gosh,” and “Gee,” sounding like a real-life Jimmy Stewart. He vouches for the Black Monday Society, implicitly. “They’re really good guys. I’ve had contact with them for a while now, and they seem like the real deal.” Prime visited the Black Monday Society over the long winter, but—human as they were—the heroes decided it was too cold to patrol. Still, one hero wrote on his blog that “we did suit up and take some photos,” and that “more team-ups will happen when it gets a little warmer.”
New Real Life Superheroes seem to appear every day. They add their photos and biographies to Websites like RealLifeSuperheroes.com and share their thoughts on weaponry, good deeds and other topics on blogs such as Heroes Network. There’s the Justice Society of Justice, based in Indianapolis; The Boise Brigade, and, from Washington, D.C., the Capitol City Super Squad. “Zetaman” patrols the streets of Portland, Ore., wearing a utility belt loaded with a first-aid kit, a baton and a Taser, among other gadgets.
Polarman shovels the snow-covered sidewalks of Iqalulit, the capital city of Canada’s youngest province, Nunavut—located north of Quebec on Baffin Island. Entomo the Insect Man claims to protect Naples, Italy, and frequents superhero message boards with hilariously Roberto Benigni-esque broken English comments. His MySpace page boasts a mission statement: “To be a Real Life Superhero is truly the greatest deed a man can accomplish in a backwards world like this, where fiction is truer to reality than reality itself. On the other hand, the chance to fight for such a stunning planet is too significant to be turned down. Hear my buzz, fear my bite,” and it ends, as all his posts do, with his tagline: “I inject justice!”
Whole businesses have sprung up around the RLS life. Hero-Gear.net deals in costumes for Real Life Superheroes. Armories that produce chain mail and weapons for Renaissance fair actors have started to sell to the RLS community, as well. Dressing up like a superhero and going on patrol seems to be looking less like a bizarre pastime than it does a lifestyle choice, according to some of the heroes. Think teenagers going goth or animal-rights activists fervently volunteering for PETA.
The media is giddily spreading the word about RLS. Some television stations have struck a gold mine in covering regional “superteams,” packing their reports with references to Batmobiles and “Pow! Bang! Boom!” sound effects. A reporter from Rolling Stone went on patrol with the Black Monday Society last fall (though the magazine has yet to publish the story) and several filmmakers are rushing to finish documentaries about the Real Life Superhero movement. Members of The Black Monday Society claim one documentary maker told them that, to be featured in his film, they’d have to sign the rights to their superhero identities away to him. They declined. Another filmmaker and his subjects hosted a Times Square publicity stunt covered in The New York Times last October. Your Friendly Neighborhood Superhero, a recently completed documentary, is scheduled for various film festivals this spring. See RealLifeSuperhero.com for a snippet of the film.
Internet reaction to the RLS movement is mixed. RLS and superhero fans are continuously posting words of encouragement on each other’s blogs. But, as soon as a non-RLS site notices them, the general public, hidden securely behind a guise of anonymity, tears them to shreds. After a story about Silent and DiscorD appeared on comic-book writer Warren Ellis’s blog, the posters unanimously decided that RLSs were endangering themselves, if not others. One commenter, Monk Eastman, summed up the feelings this way: “I predict the following headline: ‘Oddly Dressed Virgin Found Shot 1,123 Times.’”
“A Little Gimmicky?”

Dave quickly dropped the American Corpse persona for another identity: a tights-wearing street fighter named Ferox. Ferox is reserved for Dave’s patrols farther north in Ogden. When in Salt Lake City, Dave is Insignis, a robed figure with a giant white cross across his chest. “The most easily recognizable symbol in the world is the cross,” he explains, “So what better symbol to have?” (The two names are derived from a large tattoo across his back that reads “Insignis Ferox,” Latin for “Mark of the Wild One.”)
After those first few patrols with Ghost, Insignis’ friends were quick to join them. The team grew to 13 members strong in a matter of months. The group originally patrolled on Mondays—hence the name—but “things are much more likely to happen on Fridays and Saturdays, so the Monday thing didn’t last long,” Insignis says. They stuck with the name primarily because “it sounds cool.”
New identities are common with the Black Monday Society: Inferno took his name because of a fiery temper he admits used to get him in trouble before becoming a RLS. But the 33-year-old recently decided to focus on his sense of humor by becoming “Ha!,” a clown-themed superhero.
Oni, 36, based his identity on a Japanese demon. He’s married to a woman the team calls “Mother One.” She creates most of their costumes by hand. “She’s very supportive of this,” Oni says. Most of the team, including 38-year-old occasional member “Silver Dragon,” a thin man with a thick Southern accent, are married. They say their wives are proud of them but balked at a reporter’s request to speak with the women. Earlier this year, Oni went on his first patrol with his daughter, who will take the name “Frost” as soon as she has a costume. “I was very nervous and excited at the same time;” he wrote on his blog. “I hoped that nothing would happen on her first time out. I am proud that she wants to give back to the community and help people that need it.”
The heroes say they have been spending more time in Ogden lately because of what they perceive as increased gang activity. Ogden Mayor Matthew Godfrey takes issue with that claim: “We have had a seven-year decline of crime in Ogden and one of the keys to that is getting the community involved. Having neighbors be vigilant and engaged is a critical ingredient to safer neighborhoods.” Godfrey adds that the Black Monday Society “fits in” with this push for community involvement. Although he finds them “a little gimmicky,” Godfrey allows that, “We will take their participation any way we can get it.” The Salt Lake City Police Department had no comment on the Black Monday Society. Lt. Paul Jaroscak, spokesman for the Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Department, says he has “no knowledge or comment” regarding the group.
If the local cops are sketchy on their knowledge of the superheroes, it might be due to the group’s lack of clarity. What, exactly, does the Black Monday Society do? They talk about “helping people” and “helping the homeless.” But, on one evening this past November, the patrol’s big events included a photo session with a gaggle of drunken college students, some heckling from passersby and a thumbs-up from an enthusiastic tourist from Minneapolis, who wished there was something like this “back home.” The patrol also handed out a couple of dollars to a homeless man with the telltale facial scabs of heavy meth use.
The team contends the patrols are its work, and that members curb crime simply by being seen. And Silver Dragon says there’s proof: “I’ve heard from friends that, after we patrol a particular neighborhood, there’s no crime there for the rest of the night.” That November patrol was one of the last crime-fighting excursions of 2007. The team has laid low for the winter, declaring Salt Lake City’s long, harsh winter too cold to patrol. But they plan on taking to the streets again, now that spring has arrived.
Oni, the only member of the Black Monday Society with extensive martial-arts training, recalls one time when he confronted a drug-addled man who was abusing his mother in a city park. “The first thing we do is call the cops,” he says, “in any situation.” Most superheroes will, in fact, say the same thing. They strongly advise against getting directly involved in police calls.
After calling 911, Oni and Ghost approached the man. They say he promptly relented when confronted with men dressed as demons. Insignis also recalls a time they chased after a drunk man who was standing by the side of the road, trying to punch passing cars. The man got away, but Insignis says, laughing, “He probably won’t be doing that again anytime soon.”
Outside Salt Lake City, the superhero action is getting a little more feverish and a lot less law abiding. Rumors have spread in the RLS community that one of their own, a man known as “Nostrum,” based in Louisiana, has lost an eye doing battle with a criminal. An RLS from Florida known as “Master Legend” claims to attack evildoers, bashing garbage cans over the heads of crack fiends and kicking others with his steel-toe boots. Another man, known as “Hero,” has quit fighting crime and is taking up ultimate fighting. “There is only one thing I can always count on, one thing that will always be there and that is the fight. The fight is all I have,” he recently blogged.
The Black Monday Society has set up an office, and Oni says they are working to gain legal status as a non-profit organization. “As soon as we do that, it’ll open up a lot more doorways for us so we can start receiving money and we can help more people,” he says, adding that “I’d like to do more than just help the homeless. I’d like to start helping abused and battered women. Things like that.”
In a parking lot after the patrol, the team gathers to smoke cigarettes and share a laugh or two. Inferno refers to Insignis as “Father O’Malley,” and asks him if his sidekick’s name is “Altar Boy.” Insignis laughs it off but then snaps back on message, insisting that the Black Monday Society is seeking more than fun and fame: “Instead of being the guy on the couch saying ‘God, I wish somebody would do something,’ I get to be the guy on the couch who says, ‘Yeah, I did something!’ or, ‘At least I tried.’ No regrets, no nothing. Just pure do.”
http://www.cityweekly.net/utah/article-6056-feature-slc-superheroes-the-black-monday-society-keeps-an-eye-out-for-street-crime-so-you-donrst-have-to.htm