Tag green scorpion

Originally posted: http://atalanta77.blogspot.com/2011/04/superheroes-de-barrio.html
Me gusta leer periódicos antiguos. Cuando hojeas un artículo de hace tres, cuatro, cinco años, eres consciente de que estás leyendo mejor libro de historia. Es sumamente sorprendente en qué derivaron ciertos personajes o acontecimientos. Por no hablar de las noticias de índole económica anteriores a la crisis. La perspectiva del tiempo hace que ciertos artículos hoy asusten.
Dedicándome a este menester, encontré un reportaje que daba cuenta de un fenómeno para mí por completo sorprendente, el de los “superhéroes de la vida real”. Ya os imagináis el percal. Siguiendo la tradición más ortodoxa de los cánones de tebeo, repartidos por el mundo viven unos tipos “normales” que, a tiempo parcial, se han creado otra identidad a la que acompaña el pertinente disfraz y tras la cual, se dedican a combatir el mal en las calles de su ciudad.

Scanned copies by Entomo:

From Extra Magazine
By Claudia Ciammatteo
Bastano una tuta (o un paio di mutandoni), un mantello e una maschera per essere come Batman e l’Uomo Ragno o quasi.
Quelli “iscrittia all; Albo” sono circa 200. Difendono vecchiette, si battono peri lavoratori, fanno pronto soccorso e… spalano la neve.
La criminalita dilaga, la corruzione e alle stele, l’inquinamento cresce, lo spetro del terrorismo inernazionale aleggia in tutti gli aeroporti. Per salvarci ci vorrebbe Superman… E, infatti, c’e. Anzi, ce n’e piu di uno. Anche se puo sembrare incredibile, chi pens ache vegliare sul bene dell’umanita sia solo roba da bumetti sbaglia.
Al mondo esistono quasi 200 supereroi in carne e ossa, che inventandosi un nome altettanto suggestive di quello di batman o l’Uomo Ragno e indossando un costume all’altezza del compito, hammo deciso di combattere le ingiustizie o difendere I piu deboli. O almeno di provarci. Sono riuniti nel Real Life World Superhero Registry, ovvero, il primo Albo ufficiale dei supereroi della via reale, nato nel 2005.
Dai fumetti, al fatti. Il fenomeno ha almeno Quattro capostipiti. Tra questi, a Citta del Messico, Superbarrio Gomez e un’autentica celebrita: in aderente costume di lycra rosso, mutandoni e mantello Dorati sul fisico corpulento, il volto coperto da una maschera da wrestler “luchador”, si batte per I diritti dei lavoratori messicani ed e sempre in prima fila nei cortei di protesta. A New York, invece, e famosa gia da alcuni anni Terrifica, paladin della sicurezza femminile, che pattuglia locali e bar armata di spray irritante al peperoncino, cellular e macchina fotografica. Altrettanto célèbre, nonostante la sua identita sia segreta, Angle-Grinder Man (letteralmente: Uomo Smerigliatrice angolare), in tuta blu e stivali d’oro, che di note pattuglia le auto in divieto dis sosta dale ganasce messe dai vigili. Per non parlare di Captain Ozone, di  Belfast, supereroe ecologista in cappuccino e lungo mantello blu, stemma nero e che dopo le ultime battalglie a difesa dei salmo ni e del riciclaggio delle tavolette del water, figura ufficialmnte tra gli organizzatori del Green Poer Rally, mega dimostazione pacifica in difesa delle energie rinnovabili che avverra simultaneamente in Canada e negli Stati Uniti il 31 luglio prossimo.
C’e chi aiuta la polizia con segnalazioni anonime.
Da Scorpione verde a Zetaman. Scorrendo l’elenco del registro dei supereroi, una cosa e evidente: lo sparuto gruppo originario e andato moltiplicandosi. Sui nomi d’arte e sul tip di missione degli eroi (poco “super” ma molto “utile”) la fantasia nono manca: in Canada opera Polar Man (Uomo Polare), pronto a splare la neve per evitare rovinsoe cadute agli anziani; dale parti di Cincinnati Shadow Hare (Lepre ombra), che con la maschere near sul volto protégé i senzatetto; nell’Oregon c’e Zetaman (l’uomo Zeta), campione di primo soccorso.
A vegliare sui cittadini assediati dai malintenzionati, tra gli altri, ci sono poi Fox Fire (Volpe di fuoco), paladina femminile travestita con un cappotto di pelle near e una maschera di volpe; Dark Guardian (Guardiano Scuro), che porta una maschera veneziana sul naso, e anche il misterioso The Eye (l’Occhino). Ma ci sono ache Green Scorpion (Scorpione verde), che opera in New Mexico; Death’s Head Moth (Falena testa di morto) in Virginia e Mr Silent (Silenzioso), l’angelo delle notti dell’Illinois.
Piu recente e la nascita di gruppi di supereroi, come la “Black Monday Society” (Societa del lunedi mero) nello Utah, la Great Lakes Heroes Guild (la Gilda degli eroi dei Grandi laghi) mello sato del Wisconsin e, a New York, l’Heroes Network (rete gegli Eroi) fondata dall’amomino Thothian, che come superavversario ha scelto addirittura Osama Bin Laden.
Ma chi si nasconde dietro tute, maschere e mantelli? La stragrande maggiroanza dei supereroi in carne e ossa prospera olteroceano. <<Quello dei supereroi della vita reale>> dicono gli esperti intervistati dai network americani come Cbe e Cnn, <<e un fenomeno socilogico che si e sviluppato principalmente negli Stati Uniti, come reazione allo choc dell’11 settembre>>. Ed e stato raffrorzato dalla politica di cittadinanza attivca lanciata dal presidente Barack Obama.
Niente armi e molta rete. Per vigilare contro la possibilita di infiltrazione di violenti, incoscienti, o gustizeri “fai da te” tra le loro fila, il regolamento ufficiale dell’Albo mondiale dei supereroi stabilisce criteri rigidi di ingress (vedi riquadro in queste pagine) e limitazioni, pena la radiazione; no all’uso di armi vere, innanzitutto. Si invece ad armi e coltelli di plastic, e a tecniche di autodifesa. Del resto, anche se non fermano aerie con la mano ne vanno piu veocia della luce, questi emuli di Superman qualche rischo lo corrono ugualmente. Per scambiarsi dritte e consigli, e dare appuntamento ai propri fan a caccia di aggiornamenti sulle imprese del giustiziere perferito, molti di loro utilizzano il social netork MySpace.
La crescent prpolarita di alcuni di loro, che privia di superpoteri hanno necessariamente ambizioni piu limitate di quelle dei supereroi dei fumetti, suscita pero qualche perplessita. <<Ma e un errore>> fa notare lo scrittore Giampelmo Schiaragola, autore di due scherzosi vademecum per aspirant supereroi, <<il primo compito di un eroe non e tanto quello di sconfiggere il male; quanto di dare il buon esempio, ovvero di creare altri eroi>>.
Mentre qualcuno songna perfino di sconfiggere Bin Laden
E a Napoli, Entomo combatte criminalita e inquinamento. Fra le sue mission: dare una mano nell’emergenza rifiuti
L’uomo-insetto partenopeo. E in Italia? L’uncio supereroe di casa nostra ammesso nell’anagrafe ufficiale, e Entomo: l’Uomo insetto che vegla sulla citta di Napoli. Il suo motto: “Ascolta il mio ronzio, temi il mio morso: inietto giustizia”. Ha 32 anni, e attivo dal 2007, e la sua identita e segreta. Ha un costume da insetto verde chiaro, con maniche scure, sul petto il simbolo stilizzato della lettera greca “sigma” e combatte criminalita e inquinamento grazie (a suo dire) alle sue tre armi: I sensi sviluppati come quelli degli insetti, le techiche di autodifesa e le segnalazioni anonime alla polizia.
<<Pattuglio le strade della citta, di giorno e di note, fermo I piccolo crimini come posso>> ha recentemete dichiarato in un’intervista al quotidano Il Reformista. Entomo sostiene che il suo costume giochi da diversivo, sorprendendo e distraendo I malintenzionati; usa una tecnica di autodifesa chiamata Krav Maga per disarmare I nemici, e li intimidisce senza ferifli. Tra li piu recent missioni, l’emergenza rifiuti a Napoli: <<Ho fermato alcuni tentative di teppismo ai Danni delle persone, delle strutture e dell’ambiente>>. Un modus operandi illegal, almeno I Italia, dove per legge (n.152 del 1975) e vitato comparire mascherati in luogo pubblico. <<Ma io non sono un esaltato, non mi oppongo o contrappongo alla polizia, ne mi sostitusisco a essa>> obiettta Entomo. <<Anzi, li auto a distanza con le mie segnalazioni anonime>>. E a chi aspira a emularne le imprese, consiglia: <<Trova il Supereroe nascoasto dentro di te. Quindi Materializzalo come una seconda pelle e sii quello che sei gia veramente. Fine della storia>>.
Boutique per Super
Eora che cosa mi metto?. Il dubbio puo venire anche ai supereroi. Per questo, a New York, e nata la prima boutique dedicate ai paladini dell’umanita, dove si possono acquistare costume personalizzati, maschere, quanti, armi e alteri accessori: si chimama Brooklyn Superhero Supply Co., e ha anche um goliardico catalogo online. Quache idea? Un mantello classic da supereroe, o da auito-supereroe, in seta a glitterato (cioe pieno di lustrini). Ha un prezzo oscillante tra 1 22 e 1 35 dollari. Mai pui senza. Ma si puo trovare anche la pistol a particelle ($25), il vaporizzatore sonico ($30), il campo di forza in mylar ($12), un’arma “a protoni” ($20), il dispositivo per leggere nel pensiero  ($99.50) o una pinna meccanico ($39). I piu creative possono anche acquistare il fluido per la clonazione ($9) e il cuore cibernetico ($16.25).
Vuoi essere un supereroe? Ecco I criteri per l’ammissone.
Chi non ha mai fantasticato di combattere il crimine e debellare spaventosi nemici? Non e facile come sembra: per essere accettati nel Registro mondiale die supereroi (www.worldsuperheroregistry.com), e godere del privilegio di una scheda personale, con il proprio nome, area d’azione, abilita speciali, bisogna obbedire a tre regole indergabili.
I precetti degli eroi. Primo: non valgono ne autocandidature ne raccomandazioni. Per iscriversi bisogna essere contattati direttamente dal Registro mondiale, in seguito a una comprovata (attraverso ritagli di giornale o testimonianze dirette di rappresntanti legali) attivita di supereroe. Secondo: l’unica motivazione personale ammessa e la disinteressata vocazione al bene dell’umanita (quindi un candidate non pruo rievere incentive economici di alcun tipo, ne essere stipendiato per la sua attivita o rappresentare associazioni esterne, anche sense scopo di lucro). Terzo: il costume da supereroe non serve a proteggere solo l’anonimato ma e “simbolo indossabile” dei valori a difesa dell’umanita; sono dunque vietati I costume volgari e inappropriate.
Translation to English via Google
With just a suit (or a pair of knickers), a cape and a mask to be like Batman and Man Spider or so.
Those “all members; Roll” is about 200. Defend old women, are fighting dangerous workers, are first aid and … shovel snow.
Rampant crime, corruption and stele, pollution grows, get free of terrorism inernazionale hovering at all airports. It would take Superman to save us … And in fact there. Indeed, there are more than one. Although it may seem incredible ache watch over those who think mankind is just good stuff bumetti wrong.
Worldwide, there are nearly 200 heroes in the flesh, who invented a name altettanto suggestive of that of Batman and Spider or the man wearing a costume to the task, Hamm decided to fight injustice and defend the weak. Or at least try. Met in Real Life World Superhero Registry, ie, the first official list of superheroes by real, born in 2005.
From Comics to facts. The phenomenon has at least four founders. Among them, Mexico City, Superbarrio Gomez and genuine celebrity in tight red lycra dress, knickers and coat the Golden physical portly, his face covered by a mask wrestler “luchador”, fighting for workers’ rights Mexican and always at the forefront of protest marches. In New York, however, already famous and terrifying for some years, champion of women’s security, patrolling and local bar armed with irritating pepper spray, cell phone and camera.
Equally impressive, although his identity is secret, Angle-Grinder Man (literally: Angle Grinder Man), in blue overalls and boots with gold, notes that the patrol car in parking ban dis dale shoes made by the brigade. Not to mention Captain Ozone, Belfast, superhero ecologist in cappuccino and long blue coat, black coat and that after the last psalm ni battalglie in defense of the tablets and recycling of water, figure among the organizers of Green ufficialmnte Poer Rally Mega peaceful defense can show that renewable energy will take place simultaneously in Canada and the United States on July 31 next.
There are those who help the police with anonymous reporting.
From Scorpion green Zetaman. Go down to the register of superhero, one thing is clear: the tiny original group and went multiplying. Names of art and the tip of the heroes of mission (just “super” but very “useful”) lack the imagination ninth in Canada by Polar Man (Man Polar), ready to splare rovinsoe to avoid the snow falls for the elderly; Dale shares of Cincinnati Shadow Hare (Hare shadow), that with the masks on the face near the protégé homeless in Oregon there Zetaman (man Zeta), Standard First Aid.
To ensure the citizens besieged by the bad guys, among others, are then Fox Fire (Fire Fox), a champion female transvestite leather coat and a mask near fox Dark Guardian (Dark Guardian), who wears a Venetian mask nose, and even the mysterious The Eye (the Occhini). But there are ache Green Scorpion (Scorpio green), which operates in New Mexico, Death’s Head Moth (Moth skull) in Virginia, and Mr. Silent (Silent), the angel of nights Illinois.
More recently the emergence of groups of superheroes such as “Black Monday Society (Society of mere Monday) in Utah, the Great Lakes Heroes Guild (the guild of heroes of the Great Lakes) mello Sato of Wisconsin and in New York the Heroes Network (network GEGL Heroes) based dall’amomino Thothian, which chose as superavversario even Osama Bin Laden.
But who is behind suits, masks and capes? The vast maggiroanza superhero in the flesh olteroceano prosperous. << say experts interviewed by American networks like CNN and Cbe, >>. And it was the policy of citizenship raffrorzato attivca launched by President Barack Obama.
No weapons and plenty of networking. To guard against the possibility of infiltration of violent, reckless, or gustizeri DIY “among their ranks, the official rules of the Dawn World of superheroes down strict criteria for entry (see box on this page) and limits the penalty radiation, no use of real weapons, first. It instead weapons and plastic knives, and self-defense techniques. Moreover, even if they do not stop with the hand aerie veocia leave most of the light, these rivals Superman’s some risk it running anyway. To exchange tips and advice, and to meet their fans hunting for updates on the executioner peripherals companies, many of them use social netork MySpace.
The growing prpolarita some of them, without necessarily having superpowers ambitions more limited than those of superhero comics, but raises doubts. <<Giampelmo Schiaragola noted writer, author of two humorous handbook for aspiring superheroes, >>.
While some songna even to defeat bin Laden
And in Naples, Entomo fight crime and pollution. Among his mission: to help in emergency waste
The man-insect Naples. And in Italy? The uncia superhero home nell’anagrafe official admitted, and Entomo: Man insect that watches over the city of Naples. His motto: “Hear my buzz, my bite themes: inject justice.” He has 32 years, and active since 2007, and his identity and secret. It has a pale green insect costume, with dark sleeves, chest stylized symbol of the Greek letter “sigma” and fights crime and pollution through (he said) its three arms: The meaning developed as those of insects, of Techichi self-defense and anonymous reporting to the police.
<< recentemete he said in an interview with the newspaper The Reforma. Entomo argues that his custom games as a diversion, surprising and distracting the attackers, using a technique called Krav Maga self-defense to disarm enemies, and intimidate without ferifli. Among them the most recent mission, the garbage emergency in Naples: >>. A modus operandi illegal, at least Italy, where by law (n. 152 of 1975) and vines appear masked in public places. << obiettta Entomo. << And to those who aspire to emulate companies, advises: >>.
Super Boutique
Eora what I wear?. The question can also be superheroes. For this reason, New York, and founded the first boutique dedicated to the heroes of humanity, where you can buy custom costume, masks, those who alter weapons and accessories: you chimama Brooklyn Superhero Supply Co., and also um undergraduate catalog online . Quache idea? A classic superhero cape, superhero-or I help, Silk Glitter (ie full of glitter). Has a price ranging from $ 35 a 22:01. Never without pui. But you can also find the gun particles ($ 25), the vaporizer sonic ($ 30), the force field Mylar ($ 12), a weapon “proton” ($ 20), the device to read minds ($ 99.50) or a mechanical fin ($ 39). The more creative can also buy the fluid for cloning ($ 9) and heart cybernetic ($ 16.25).
Want to be a superhero? Here are the criteria for ammissone.
Who has not fantasized about fighting crime and eradicating frightening enemies? Not easy as it seems to be accepted in the superhero day Global Registry (www.worldsuperheroregistry.com), and enjoy the privilege of a personal card with your name, area of action, special skills, we must obey three rules indergabili.
The precepts of the heroes. First, they are not worth candidate, nor recommendations. To enroll you must be contacted directly from the Global Registry, following a proven (through newspaper clippings and eyewitness accounts of rappresntanti legal) activities of superhero. Secondly, the only permissible motivation and selfless vocation for the good of humanity (thus not a candidate pruo rievere economic incentives of any kind, be they salaried for his activities or associations representing the external sense even for profit). Thirdly, the superhero costume is not only to protect the anonymity but “symbol wearable values in defense of humanity, are therefore prohibited the suit vulgar and inappropriate.

ARJUN RAMACHANDRAN
It’s certainly not a bird, or a speeding bullet, or a plane. It looks more like a guy in a silly lycra outfit.
Wearing masks and the full superhero get-up, a band of “real life superheroes” are patrolling the world’s cities trying to clean up the streets.
So claim the comic book-like crime-fighters, a loose association of costumed do-gooders who say they are taking up the fight for justice for ordinary people.
Boasting names like Dark Guardian, Citizen Prime, and Green Scorpion, the mainly US-based characters say they need to wear outfits to protect their identities from the evil-doers they attack.
Most have MySpace pages where they reveal the philosophy of their superheroism.
Florida superhero Amazonia wrote why she was prompted to strap on the black Zorro-like mask and defend her city, Ocala:
“I finally had enough of seeing the gangs terrorizing the downtown section of my city. They would mug, beat and otherwise harass senior citizens and women.
“So I took up the mantle of Firebird and set out to do what I could to help others.”
Many of the superheroes say they are armed with weapons such as stun guns, which can be legally carried in the US.
“Shadow Hare”, a 1.7 metre, slight-of-stature 21-year-old Cincinnati resident who carries handcuffs, a stun-gun and pepper spray, boasts: “I’ve stopped many evil doers … such as drug dealers, muggers, rapists, and crazy hobos with pipes.”
Many of the superheroes’ good deeds are of a civic nature – such as volunteering with charities or feeding the homeless.
But some make more bolder claims of actual crime-fighting.
Shadow Hare said he dislocated his shoulder two years ago while helping a woman who was being attacked.
He also said he was working with a San Diego-based superhero called Mr Extreme to “track down a rapist”.
On his MySpace page, Dark Guardian writes of the moment he saw two men with baseball bats waiting to beat someone up outside their house late at night.
“I park across the street from them. I wait and watch them. I make sure they see me so they know someone is watching, soon after they leave.
“I didn’t have to go and fight two guys with bats to stop a crime. I just made my presence known and they decided to stop what they were trying to do.”
On another occasion he writes of confronting a deranged man trashing a store.
“I stood in front of him and made sure everyone got out of the store. I tried talking him down. The store had already called the cops.
“Once the police came he cooperated and was hauled away. If he came at me or anyone else this story would end differently and I would have been in court myself because I had my knife at the ready.
“Glad it ended the way it did.”
Some superheroes also formed together under different banners to tackle crimes in unison, such as the Allegiance of Heroes.
One such group, titled the Justice Society Of Justice, claims to offer “twice the JUSTICE as the leading competitors!”.
An online “Superhero Registry” lists members of the “the Real-Life Superhero community”, outlining their speciality (for example public service or crime-fighting), where they patrol, whether their identity is secret and if their status as a superhero has been confirmed.
The website states the superheroes are not just role-playing, but that this is “a movement among ordinary people to make the world a better place in an extraordinary way”.
“There are always those who will take something less seriously, but the Real-Life Superhero community is generally composed of sincere, well meaning people who have finally decided to go out and make a difference.”
The heroes wear costumes to inspire others, protect their privacy, and “conceal vulnerabilities in one’s protective gear”, the site says.
People can also make their own submissions to be added to the registry but acceptance usually requires evidence of heroic activities through “media documentation of such activities, or testimonials from established Real-Life Superheroes”.
On his MySpace page, superhero Dark Guardian also writes of the weight of expectation on real superheroes.
“What I got most out of being a Real Life Superhero is living up to the name. I have to be the living embodiment of a superhero. With that comes great responsibility.
“I have walked away from being a Real Life Superhero before , but I couldn’t give it up. It is who I am. It is what I believe in.
“And it will help change the world.”
But police appear not to have warmed to the idea.
“We expect people to report crime to the police and not put themselves in jeopardy,” New York Police Department spokesman Deputy Police Commissioner Paul Browne said in an article about the “superheroes” last year.

Reported by: Jenn Burgess
Email: [email protected]
It’s dusk in the Valley. A shadow moves among the downtown Phoenix buildings. Though this masked man doesn’t seem to want his real identity fully known, his mission is made clear: stop social injustice and bring peace to the streets.
How do I know this? It’s right there on his MySpace page.
The masked man, known as ‘Citizen Prime’, is part of a growing ring of citizen superheroes. You may see him around town since his region of concentration is listed as Arizona.
But he’s not the only one — another superhero, ‘Green Scorpion’, can also be found in Arizona and New Mexico.
This handful of gold-hearted, masked men and women have their own MySpace pages. Collectively, they even have their own websites: worldsuperheroregistry.com and citizenheroes.com.
They may look wacky, but according to an article in the Times Online, the superhero community was, in part, born in the embers of the 9/11 terrorist attacks when ordinary people wanted to do something short of enlisting.
To even be considered for the Registry, a real-life superhero must meet certain criteria, according to the website.
Three of the primary requirements are wearing a costume, doing heroic deeds, and operating solely by personal motivation, rather than financial gain.
According to Citizen Prime’s MySpace page, he’s married and a proud father. Last year, he was part of an operation to drop off toys to Banner Children’s Hospital.
A blurb on Prime’s MySpace page tells a little more about his mission: “I strive to be a inspirational symbol of hope. We need to stop social injustice – by approaching the heart of the matter – and finding the hero inside every man, woman and child and priming their true greatness. You can be as much hero as I am. Heroes are needed in this life and no cape is required to help change the world.”

Originally posted: http://www.cinematical.com/2008/12/30/real-life-superheroes-becoming-more-popular/
By Erik Davis
Dec 30th 2008 // 11:02AM
While they’ve been around for a few years now — emerging from the suburban shadows shortly after 9/11 — the current superhero craze, propelled mainly by popular movies like The Dark Knight, Spider-Man, Iron Man and Watchmen, has created more than just big-screen sequels — oh yes, try an assortment of real-life superheroes (or so they like to think). For example, the Green Scorpion (pictured right) works out of the New Mexico/Arizona region, is a member of The Justice Society of Justice organization and states the following on his website: “Eventually, everyone has the opportunity to awaken and become who they always wanted to be. Some people just hit the snooze button and go back to sleep.”
Or what about Doktor DiscorD, who’s also a member of The Justice Society of Justice, and states: “We dont care about victimless crime like drug use or people buying prostitutes. the kind of CRIME we’re talking about is the kind that makes little old ladies afraid to leave their houses.” Laugh all you want, but Scorpion and DiscorD are joined by roughly 200 other real-life superheroes (or, as they call themselves, “Reals”) all across the world. According to a pretty hilarious article in the Times Online, the rules are fairly 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 … they must shun guns or knives to avoid being arrested as vigilantes …”
Homebase for these “Reals” looks to be the World Superhero Registry, where you can scroll through tons of real-life superhero profiles, read interviews, scan the message boards, scope out a gadget gallery and — get this — read movie reviews, the last of which appears to be … drum roll please … The Dark Knight. So what do you think of these real-lifers? Cool thing to do on a Saturday night, or people desperately in need of a real life?
 

JOSHUA BEARMAN
Everyone has the opportunity to awaken and become who they always wanted to be.
—Green Scorpion
Master Legend races out the door of his secret hide-out, fires up the Battle Truck and summons his trusty sidekick. “Come on, Ace!” he yells. “Time to head into the shadows!”
The Ace appears wearing his flame-accented mask and leather vest; Master Legend is costumed in his signature silver and black regalia. “This is puncture-resistant rubber,” Master Legend says proudly, pointing at his homemade breastplate. His arms are covered with soccer shinguards that have been painted silver to match his mask. “It won’t stop a bullet,” he says, “but it will deflect knives.”
“Not that any villain’s knives have ever gotten that close!” the Ace chimes in.
When Master Legend bursts into a sprint, as he often does, his long, unruly hair flows behind him. His mane is also in motion when he’s behind the wheel of the Battle Truck, a 1986 Nissan pickup with a missing rear window and “ML” spray-painted on the hood. He and the Ace head off to patrol their neighborhood on the outskirts of Orlando, scanning the street for evildoers. “I don’t go looking for trouble,” Master Legend shouts above the engine. “But if you want some, you’ll get it!”
Then he hands me his business card, which says:
Master Legend
Real Life Super Hero
“At Your Service”
Like other real life super-heroes, Master Legend is not an orphan from a distant dying sun or the mutated product of a gamma-ray experiment gone awry. He is not an eccentric billionaire moonlighting as a crime fighter. He is, as he puts it, “just a man hellbent on battling evil.” Although Master Legend was one of the first to call himself a Real Life Superhero, in recent years a growing network of similarly homespun caped crusaders has emerged across the country. Some were inspired by 9/11. If malevolent individuals can threaten the world, the argument goes, why can’t other individuals step up to save it? “What is Osama bin Laden if not a supervillain, off in his cave, scheming to destroy us?” asks Green Scorpion, a masked avenger in Arizona. True to comic-book tradition, each superhero has his own aesthetic. Green Scorpion’s name is derived from his desert home, from which he recently issued a proclamation to “the criminals of Arizona and beyond,” warning that to continue illegal activities is to risk the “Sting of the Green Scorpion!” The Eye takes his cue from the primordial era of Detective Comics, prowling Mountain View, California, in a trench coat, goggles and a black fedora featuring a self-designed logo: the “all-seeing” Eye of Horus. Superhero — his full name — is a former wrestler from Clearwater, Florida, who wears red and blue spandex and a burgundy helicopter helmet, and drives a 1975 Corvette Stingray customized with license plates that read SUPRHRO.
Most Real Life Superheroes are listed on the World Superhero Registry, a recently assembled online roster. (“I can’t say if I will ever fight an army of giant robots or a criminal mastermind,” an Indianapolis superhero called Mr. Silent notes in his entry. “I just don’t know.”) Some superheroes have joined forces in local crime-fighting syndicates: the Black Monday Society in Salt Lake City, the Artemis National Consortium in San Diego and the tautologically titled Justice Society of Justice in Indianapolis. Attempting to unite all the superheroes under one banner are groups like the World Heroes Organization and Heroes Network, which hosts an online forum where more than 200 crime fighters trade tactics (should I wear a mask?), patrolling tips (how do I identify a street gang?) and advice/feedback (can you get bulletproof vests on eBay?).
The Justice Force is Master Legend’s own crime-fighting syndicate, a rotating cast of ad hoc superheroes that seems to include everyone he knows. There’s the Disabler, Genius Jim, the Black Panther and a duo named Fire and Brimstone. At his right hand is the Ace, so named because he always needs “an ace up my sleeve!” The Ace lives with Master Legend at the team’s secret hide-out, a dilapidated clapboard house in a seedy neighborhood outside Orlando. In the back is Master Legend’s workshop, a converted garage where he develops various weapons, like the Master Blaster: a six-foot-long silver cannon fueled by cans of Right Guard that can shoot “a variety of projectiles,” including stun pellets made from plastic Easter eggs filled with cayenne pepper and rock salt. As the superheroes see it, the fact that they can’t project energy bolts or summon force fields only adds to the purity of their commitment. Their heroism, in a sense, derives from their lack of powers. What they have instead is the power to craft themselves anew. “This whole movement is more than just fat guys in spandex,” insists Superhero, himself a brawny guy in head-to-toe spandex.
Once you take on a secret identity, there’s the problem of maintaining it. Many Real Life Superheroes shun press. Some are difficult to reach even by phone. Others allow interviews, but will meet only in costume and in public. The first time I meet Master Legend face-to-mask, for example, it is carefully choreographed by him to occur on the neutral turf of a restaurant in downtown Orlando. “I can’t show you my face,” he says as we meet in front of Gino’s Pizza and Brew, which he has designated as a safe zone. “And there are only a couple places that will let me in with my uniform and mask on. But here they know all about me!”
Why all the secrecy? Compromised methods, safety of loved ones — the “usual issues,” according to Master Legend, that are confronted by superheroes. Don’t forget, he warns, that the public can be ambivalent toward masked avengers. Consider lovable Spider-Man, constantly facing exposure by his own boss, the irascible J. Jonah Jameson. Real Life Superheroes were alarmed by the sad case of Captain Jackson, a “police-sanctioned” hero in Jackson, Michigan — until his DUI arrest and the resulting Jackson Citizen Patriot headline: “Crime Fighter Busted for Drunken Driving.” The article went on to unmask Jackson and his sidekicks, the Queen of Hearts and CrimeFighter Girl. Superheroes nationwide were aghast that a town would turn on its heroes like that, and the incident drove skittish superheroes deeper underground. “You can see why I have to be careful,” says Master Legend.
Behind the counter, the cashier giggles as Master Legend orders a beer. “Master Legend thanks you,” he says, reaching out a gauntleted hand for the beer. When we go upstairs to the small dining room, the young couple at a nearby table stop eating and eye us nervously. Master Legend gestures wildly as he shows me the scar from the time he was shot while saving an old lady being mugged. “They got me here,” he says. “But it was small-caliber. Not enough to take down a superhero!” This is how Master Legend recounts his life, always punctuated with exclamation points, as if every moment is a high-stakes ordeal that ends with some deserving offender getting an “all-night tour of Fist City!” or the business end of his “trusty ol’ Steel Toes!”
If there existed a Master Legend Issue 1, it would flash back 26 years to his origin story in New Orleans, where the teenage hero’s identity was forged in poverty and abuse. “My momma and daddy were not good people,” he says. “Through them, I saw how cruel the world can be.” At age 15, Master Legend began looking after his grandma, a caring Creole woman from the bayou who showed him “the goodness of things.” When Master Legend found some comics in a neighbor’s trash, they became his blueprint. As early as third grade, he used a T-shirt, a magic marker and some old shoelaces to fashion a rudimentary costume, which he donned while protecting classmates from the school bully. He also found a mentor named Master Ray, from whom he learned “kindness and kung fu.”
Master Legend was 16 when fate whispered in his ear. One day he was playing guitar in Jackson Square — “just jamming, you know, picking up some change” — when a purse snatcher appeared. Master Legend instinctively tore after him through the alleys of the French Quarter, where he retrieved the purse. Later that night, he was recognized by the criminal and fought him off again. “That’s when I knew I had to wear a mask,” he says. Being in New Orleans made it easier: “I would dress up in a costume and walk the streets, and no one would notice. I fit right in.” The next day, Master Legend’s grandma ran across a story on the news: “Masked Man Saves Woman.” “The Legend,” he says, “was born.”
At Gino’s, after a few more beers, Master Legend announces that he must attend to some business back at the secret hide-out. After paying, we cross the street. It is early evening. The sun has dipped below Florida’s afternoon cloud cover, and Master Legend’s silver uniform reflects the warm glow of the horizon. He turns and strikes an inadvertently dramatic pose. A passing taxi stops, and the driver cranes his neck to see the spectacle of Master Legend shining at sunset. Then the driver leans out of the window and yells, “Master Legend! How you doing? Say hello to the Ace!”
The next day, I persuade Master Legend to let me visit his secret hide-out. He gives me directions. Or rather, he gives me directions to a nearby liquor store, and in one last step of cloak-and-dagger maneuvering, he pilots me the final few blocks in the Battle Truck, its rear window destroyed during an attack by a hammer-wielding enemy.
When we arrive, the Ace walks out to greet us. Compared to the Fortress of Solitude with its alien zoo or the Batcave’s techno-enhanced crime lab, theirs is a modestly appointed superheadquarters. The pleasant tropical afternoon can’t quite conceal the state of the neighborhood, with its crumbling houses on the verge of being reclaimed by swampland. Inside the hide-out, a TV is propped up in the corner on cinder blocks. Master Legend’s mattress is on the floor. The wall is bare other than a Halloween decoration of a skull. Against one wall is a folding card table covered with a pile of papers and some ninja stars. I pick one up, inciting a gleeful demonstration. “Just a snap of the wrist!” Master Legend says, sending one flying straight into the far wall. “Catch this!” yells the Ace, joining in. “Takedown!” Master Legend says with a clap when I land one successfully. Eventually, Master Legend announces that “ninja time is over,” but not before he freestyles a final behind-the-back throw, nailing the skull on the wall right between the eyes.
Most Real Life Superheroes compensate for their lack of Adamantium skeletons or solar-fueled extraterrestrial strength by claiming extensive martial-arts abilities. Master Legend’s own personal fighting style is called “The Way of the Diamond Spirit,” which he says represents “an evolution of hand-to-hand combat.” As if to demonstrate, he sends a few jabs into the air. “One place you don’t want to be,” he says, tightening his gloved hand into a clenched fist, “is on the receiving end of the No Mercy Punch!”
The No Mercy Punch makes many appearances in the annals of Justice Force history. There was the time Master Legend and the Ace shut down a crack den; the drug kingpin they put out of business; the money Master Legend forcibly retrieved from a thief who stole from a handicapped Vietnam vet; and the recent mission when the Justice Force had to “put the stomp on a child molester and his gang of crackheads.” They had a plan, but things went awry when Master Legend’s brother was captured in the thick of battle by the child molester, whom they call Tree Man Roy. “That’s when we went into chaos mode,” Master Legend says. But they got his brother free and “cut that big ol’ Tree down.”
Master Legend has many more florid tales of adventure, some plausible, like retrieving a friend’s stolen money, others quite outlandish, like the child molester and his gang of crackheads. (For starters, doesn’t it seem like you would have to be one charismatic child molester to attract an entire gang of crackheads to do your bidding?) On the folding table in the hide-out, I notice a police report. It documents the incident with the hammer and the Battle Truck. Sure enough, it describes how two men were taken into custody for attacking the inhabitants of the house at this address. Master Legend provided a statement, below which the officer wrote, “The hammer was placed into evidence.”
Real Life Superheroes have a conflicted relationship with law enforcement. The hardcore types have a somewhat dated, Death Wish-era worldview, as if the cities are overrun by chain-saw-wielding clown gangs and the cops just can’t control the streets anymore. The more civic-minded superheroes imagine themselves as informal police adjuncts, a secret society of costumed McGruffs. One of Master Legend’s most prized possessions is a framed certificate of commendation from the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, for the time he and the Disabler snapped into action after Hurricane Charley, helping to clear the roads and rescue people from the wreckage. “We were on the news and everything,” Master Legend says. “The police recognized what we did.”
Since then, Master Legend claims that he has developed a police contact on the inside, his “very own Commissioner Gordon.” To prove it, he gives me a phone number. I immediately call and leave a message; I’ve tried to confirm tales from other superheroes, only to discover that the police have never heard of them.
“I have friends in high places,” Master Legend promises. “When they see the silver and black, they know who’s coming.”
As a means of establishing a superhero identity, it is difficult to overstate the importance of the costume. Real Life Superheroes devote much of their time to researching, procuring, making, comparing, fine-tuning and otherwise fetishizing their looks. The costume itself is the radioactive-spider bite, the source of their abilities. Without a costume, after all, you’re just another do-gooder schmuck. “Anyone can have this power,” Superhero says. “All you need to do is tie a towel around your neck and put a sock over your head and run out the door.”
Master Legend often apologizes for the state of his own uniform. It’s getting worn, the mask peeling in places, and feels unpresentable, like someone getting married in shorts. He tells me that he’s ordered new outfits from Hero Gear, a custom supplier in Minneapolis, but high demand is causing a delay. “If only they were here,” Master Legend says with regret. “You’d see a whole new upgrade for the Justice Force!”
Such upgrading can get expensive. Citizen Prime, a superhero based in Utah, spent $4,000 hiring an armorer to forge a sci-fi suit out of plate mail (with canary-yellow accents). Green Scorpion has a tailored mask from Professor Widget, an ultraclandestine supplier of custom equipment who mysteriously appeared online not too long ago. “No one knows who Professor Widget is, where he lives or how he operates,” says Green Scorpion, whose mask is supposedly formed from a ballistic alloy that Widget pioneered called Mongreltanium. (It is advertised as bulletproof, which is why Green Scorpion paid so much for it, although he would like to do his own “ballistics testing” before official deployment.)
Professor Widget also provides pricey tailored gear, like the steel cane with modular nonlethal attachments that Green Scorpion purchased with last year’s tax rebate. Slightly cheaper are catalogs, which Superhero has used to turn himself into a mail-order Batman; his utility belt bristles with pellet guns, bear mace, a tactical baton and the Arma 100, a nitrogen-powered, 37mm personal cannon.
“A lot of those guys have quite the arsenal,” Master Legend says in admiration as he gives me a tour of his own weapons lab, housed in a converted garage out back. This is where Master Legend tinkers with do-it-yourself creations, like the Master Blaster and the Iron Fist, a nasty-looking metal truncheon he made to fit over his hand and deliver “the good old throat slam.” These days, budgetary constraints limit him to more basic gear: a staff, a sword, a good old-fashioned chain and whatever else he can buy cheaply and modify.
I notice some thick sheaves of foam on the wall of the lab. “Soundproofing,” Master Legend says. “For keeping down the volume.”
“During practice,” says the Ace.
“What kind of practice?” I ask.
The Ace smiles and pantomimes air guitar.
The weapons lab doubles as the practice room for Master Legend’s band, which is also called the Justice Force. “The Ace plays the drums,” says Master Legend. “I play guitar and sing.” The drums are in storage at the moment, but the Ace assures me that the Justice Force has a tight set.
“This guy’s wicked on the strings,” he says, pointing at Master Legend. “There’s not a Steely Dan song that me and him can’t play.”
The Justice Force perform originals, too — more than 100 songs, all written by Master Legend. They recorded a single, with their friend, another associate known as the Pain. It’s called “Epic of the Sunrise.” “Want to hear it?” Master Legend asks.
Back at his computer, Master Legend plays the song and takes me through the verses — a Manichaean tale of near-apocalypse wherein Master Legend is an agent of redemption. “I put how I feel into music,” he says, bobbing along with the riffs he composed to accompany the grand opera of his life. “There is a good world out there, and it’s waiting to be restored. That’s what I’m all about. I really hope I can save the world.”
Saving the world, of course,requires personal sacrifice. Few Real Life Superheroes have families. And those with women in their lives often find that their higher calling can cause rifts. Master Legend has seen a lot of relationships go sour, starting with his wife, who divorced him 10 years ago. “She never believed in what I did,” he says. Then there was his last girlfriend. “She left because she wanted to sit around on the couch and hold hands. Well, that’s not in the cards for Master Legend.”
Another casualty of the superhero lifestyle is career advancement. Unlike Peter Parker, Master Legend has no cover job. He can’t hold down a nine-to-five, he says, because a life on the precipice of action means always being available to answer the call. “I’ll walk right out the door if someone needs me,” he says with a laugh. Three years of trade school exposed Master Legend to electronics, welding and other “skills” he drew on while dabbling in odd jobs over the years: shrimp fishing, tree trimming, roofing, salvage work. Lately, he’s been working as an assistant to elderly people. Here again, Master Legend finds himself locked in a battle between good and evil. “All these people are waiting to kick out the old folks, put them in the old-folks’ home,” he says, working himself up with indignation. “But as long as I’m there, they can’t! And they hate me for that.” For Master Legend, it’s all just another type of superheroing. “These are the two sides of my life, which is really one side,” he says, “and that’s the side of making things right.”
The Ace tells me about his conversion to the cause one night as we fetch some Chinese takeout to bring back to the secret hide-out. (Master Legend can’t come with us, because he still won’t remove his mask in my presence.) “I met Master Legend a long time ago,” the Ace says. They hit it off at a party, bonding over music, and discovered that they had a lot of mutual friends. “Before that,” the Ace says, “I was married. Had a good job.” The Ace made good money setting up stage shows — Nickelodeon events, Blue Man Group, that sort of thing. The Ace used to be a performer himself. In a surprising digression, he tells me he once led a “dance revue” called Male Factor. “This was before Chippendales,” he reminds me. “Not like they do now, with just bump and grind, and no imagination. We had choreographers, like in Vegas. In fact, we even did Vegas! Movies, too. Ever heard of Spring Fever? 1982. Starring Susan Anton. Check it out.”
But that was years ago, before the divorce. And the brief stint in jail last year. I didn’t ask exactly how bad things got for the Ace, but eventually his wife’s boss moved into his house, and he moved in with Master Legend. “That’s when I got sucked into the whole Justice Force thing,” says the Ace. He’d helped Master Legend before, but at a distance and never in costume. “I was getting more and more involved. Then M.L. got me a mask and convinced me to put it on. And that’s when I saw the light. It’s a powerful thing.”
Late last year, when the Ace made his first public appearance, he worried what other people might think. But in the protective warmth of the costume, he says, the fear is quickly overcome. “There’s the flawed you and the good you,” he says, striking a philosophical note. “And this” — he holds up the mask — “gives us the chance to make up for our flaws.”
The windows are rolled down, letting in the sound of cicadas from the dark stand of trees across the empty parking lot. “I know it sounds silly,” he says. “But once you change someone else’s life, even in a small way, it makes you realize you can change things in your own life.”
Back at the secret hide-out, as we lay out the Chinese feast on the table, a friend stops by for a quick conversation with Master Legend. It is dusk, and I watch two silhouettes against the twilight out on the porch, conferring quietly.
“That was the Black Panther,” Master Legend says when the friend leaves. The Black Panther “doesn’t want to get caught up with the press,” so Master Legend didn’t introduce him to me, but make no mistake: Black Panther is a Justice Force fellow traveler. Besides sometimes jamming with the band — Black Panther is known to introduce a “reggae vibe” — he helps out on missions. Not too long ago, Black Panther told Master Legend about a local family that was having financial trouble and was in danger of being evicted. So Master Legend helped raise money to cover their rent. “Sometimes that’s all people need,” he says. “A little boost.”
One day last year, Fire alerted Master Legend to a controversial freeway extension up near Apopka, where the state was clashing with activists over the plight of the gopher tortoises living on the site. “I couldn’t believe it,” Master Legend says. “These are beautiful prehistoric creatures, and they wanted to bury them alive with cement. It’s crazy, but that’s the way of the world. That’s why the world needs us.” The Justice Force joined the protest, costumes and all, and the state was forced to relocate the tortoises. “That was a great mission,” Master Legend says. “Those tortoises are the nicest little guys you’d ever want to meet. They look like living cartoons, just eating their lettuce. They’re adorable.”
But nothing is more satisfying to Master Legend than helping those who are less fortunate. On their last big Christmas mission, he and the Ace filled the Battle Truck with supplies they bought, having pooled funds from the Justice Force, and headed to skid row. When they arrived, they were mobbed. Master Legend reckons that they gave something to every single homeless person in Orlando: toothbrushes, razors, soap, blankets, canned goods, cigarettes, candy. When the bags were empty, he and the Ace headed back to the secret hide-out to celebrate with a few beers.
“We aren’t that much better off than the people we’re helping,” the Ace notes, gesturing to the squalor of the hide-out. Neither Master Legend nor the Ace received any Christmas gifts themselves, but neither of them is complaining. “A lot of people talk about doing right by other people,” says the Ace. “But what are they really doing?”
Despite their successes, things have been hard for the Justice Force lately. “These are bad times,” Master Legend says, opening a few “thirst quenchers” after dinner. I’ve already noticed there are always a few empty twelvers laying around the secret hide-out. Outside the front door, a mountainous pile of crushed cans suggests that Busch is the Justice Force brand of choice.
“This is our one vice,” Master Legend says, “the ol’ brewski.”
“That’s right,” adds the Ace.
“With all our aches and pains from fighting off so many criminals, we gotta have our beers,” Master Legend says.
“Hear, hear!” The Ace hoists his can.
With that, Master Legend unloads about his troubles. It’s tough being a superhero, he says, because your whole life must be lived to a certain standard. Looking out for everyone in the Justice Force involves a lot of thankless work. And then there’s the wider superhero community, which has succumbed to rival factions and bitter accusations over who the real superheroes are and who should lead them to greatness. A superhero named Tothian, who lives with his parents in an undisclosed part of New Jersey, serves as president of the Heroes Network — the self-proclaimed “United Nations of Superheroes.” Tothian has tried to excommunicate several members, including his former partner, Chris Guardian, who then co-founded the Worldwide Heroes Organization. More than a few Real Life Superheroes seem like they’re just one splash of acid in the face away from tormented supervillainy. Several superheroes once suggested kidnapping foreign leaders to make a statement on Darfur. Others pointed out that this was (a) illegal and (b) dangerously unheroic. As a universally respected veteran, Master Legend often plays a diplomatic role, moderating between sides. “I don’t need any more problems from the superheroes out there,” he says. “I have plenty right here.”
Case in point is the secret hide-out. “I mean, look at this place!” Master Legend complains, acknowledging the disarray. “It’s a disaster!” The reason, Master Legend confides, is that he’s being evicted. This is the dominant battle in his life at the moment, one he didn’t choose to fight. The secret hide-out, it turns out, is a rental. The state Department of Transportation has invoked eminent domain to widen the freeway, causing a protracted battle. This is why the place is empty. “They’re gonna tear down the secret headquarters!” Master Legend says, pounding his beer can on the table. “We have to be ready to leave in a moment’s notice.”
Master Legend notes the irony: Having defended the gopher tortoises against a freeway, Master Legend must now fight the very same cunning villain again, this time in his own backyard. “It’s like they’re getting back at me,” he says. “And believe me, they’re coming full force. I’d rather face a dozen men with chains in an alley than deal with the bureaucracy of the state of Florida.” It’s a sobering thing, he says, for a superhero to be constrained by the demands of real life. “I want to be out there taking care of criminals, not packing my stuff in boxes.”
It’s the first time I’ve seen Master Legend dispirited. He’s hardly eaten. But he brightens when talking about the new secret hide-out he just lined up. It’s a house right on the next block. The Ace will move with him. They have to wait to get their displacement check from the state, and pay back some people for storage, and then move their stuff in, but if all goes well, they’ll be up and running soon.
Master Legend decides we should take a tour of the new secret hide-out. When we get there, the place is empty except for a single ninja star Master Legend placed in the center of the floor as a good-luck talisman. We see the bedrooms, the hallway trapdoor (handy in case the duo are surrounded by “an enemy attack”) and the garage that will be transformed into the new weapons workshop and band-practice room. “I know this is a shabby, old place,” he says. “But there is a lot of potential here.” He’s already got big plans for a van outfitted to allow Master Legend to emerge from the back on a motorcycle — the Legend Cycle — while the van is moving, like Knight Rider. Genius Jim, the mechanic, is already scouring his contacts for the van and the Enduro two-stroke that he will turn into the Legend Cycle.
“Can you imagine what that will be like?” Master Legend says. “If everything works out as planned, there will be no stopping us.” Together, he and the Ace admire the empty house with satisfaction. Then we go back to their current empty house, where the Ace offers a toast. And we all drink to the new secret hide-out.
I‘ve forgotten all about Master Legend’s police contact by the time he returns my call, several weeks after my message. “This is the Sergeant,” he says, asking that his name not be revealed. “I was fishing down in the Keys. What do you want to know about Master Legend?”
The Sergeant tells me that one of his patrol officers came across Master Legend running through the bushes in costume one night. The encounter wound up in a report, and that report wound up on the Sergeant’s desk. The officer recorded Master Legend’s describing how he “fights evil” in the streets, and the Sergeant, who’s in charge of vice investigations, took a chance and tracked Master Legend down. Based on the neighborhood, he figured, Master Legend might be a good local contact. “And sure enough,” the Sergeant tells me, “I start getting calls from Master Legend with information. And it checks out. Master Legend has helped put away a few criminals.”
I call Master Legend to tell him I reached the Sergeant. He’s not surprised. “I knew he would come through,” Master Legend says. “He’s a good guy. I’m in the process of gathering evidence against someone else for him. Master Legend does the recon, and the police strike! Just how it ought to be!”
When I ask how things are going otherwise, Master Legend drops some bad news: The Ace moved out. He just wasn’t pulling his weight anymore. “He was depressed because of his personal stuff,” Master Legend says. “I wanted him to start pitching in. That’s part of getting back to normal. It would be good for him. But he was doing less and less, just hanging around all day.”
The situation worsened when the Ace didn’t show up for a few Justice Force missions. Suddenly, he wasn’t fulfilling his duties as a roommate or as a sidekick. “I wasn’t mad,” Master Legend says. “I just tried to talk to him. We all did. The Third Eye gave me good advice about how to approach the situation. But we wound up getting in a fight, and the Ace up and moved out. Just like that. Being here was helping for a while, but I guess he just needs to sort things out by himself.”
The Ace took his drums, technically disbanding the sonic wing of the Justice Force, but Master Legend has already found some new music partners. Among them is Ace Gauge, the new sidekick who has assumed the role of the Ace. The old Justice Force band, Master Legend says, turned out to be “more of a studio project,” whereas this new venture will mean performing again.
“There is just too much going on,” Master Legend says, “to worry about the past.” The costume upgrades finally showed up, for one thing, and the two-tone bodysuit, improved mask and World War II helmet come together strangely well. Master Legend also found a suitable van and located a motorcycle. In preparation for deployment, he had a magnet made for the van door that says Justice Force Special Operations Unit. On the world-saving front, the team is preparing to mount a new type of mission, a public-relations campaign to raise awareness about a strain of staph infection that’s spreading among the homeless in the Orlando area. “It will be like the gopher-tortoise mission,” Master Legend says, “but bigger!” The van will be pressed into service, and Superhero might come in from Clearwater with his Corvette.
This may be the real reason Master Legend inhabits a never-ending comic book in his mind, assigning everyone a character in the grand narrative. His roommate turns into the Ace, his mechanic into Genius Jim, and a friend with some recording equipment into the Pain. And so the reality of Master Legend, a guy who has no job and lives in a run-down house in a crummy neighborhood in Orlando, is transmuted via secret decoder ring into an everlasting tale of heroic outsiders, overcoming the odds and vanquishing enemies.
To the outside world, this makes Master Legend seem like a lunatic. But to the people around him, he is the charismatic center of an inviting universe. “It sounds a little silly,” Superhero says, “but we all want to be part of a better tomorrow.” Or, for that matter, a better today. Being a Real Life Superhero means that Master Legend can get in his Nissan pickup and call it the Battle Truck. He can tape together a potato gun and call it the Master Blaster. He can stand in the porch light of a disintegrating clapboard house, a beer in his hand, and behold a glorious clandestine citadel. And who are we to tell him otherwise?
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/25020634/the_legend_of_master_legend

By Ward Rubrecht
Geist’s breath fogs the winter air as he surveys the frozen Minneapolis skyline, searching for signs of trouble. His long duster flaps in the breeze as his eyes flick behind reflective sunglasses; a wide-brim hat and green iridescent mask shroud his identity from those who might wish him harm.
Should a villain attack, the Emerald Enforcer carries a small arsenal to defend himself: smoke grenades, pepper spray, a slingshot, and a pair of six-inch fighting sticks tucked into sturdy leather boots. Leather guards protect Geist’s arms; his signature weapon, an Argentinean cattle-snare called bolos, hangs from a belt-holster.
A mission awaits and time is of the essence, so Geist eases his solid frame, honed from martial arts training, into his trusty patrol vehicle—a salt-covered beige sedan. Unfamiliar with the transportation tangle of downtown, he pulls a MapQuest printout from his pocket, discovering his goal is but a short cruise down Washington Avenue.
Soon Geist faces his first obstacle: parking on the left side of a one-way street. “Usually one of my superpowers is parallel parking,” he chuckles as he eases his car into the spot, emerging victorious with a foot and a half between curb and tire. He feeds a gauntleted fistful of quarters into the parking meter, and then pops the trunk on the Geistmobile to retrieve his precious cargo. On the street, he encounters businesspeople on lunch break—some stare openly; others don’t even notice his garish attire. “It’s easier in winter,” Geist says with a laugh. “Winter in Minnesota, everybody’s dressed weird.”
Finally, his destination is in sight: People Serving People, a local homeless shelter. Geist strides boldly into the lobby—a cramped, noisy room where kids and adults mill about chatting—and heaves his stuffed paper bags onto the counter. “I have some groceries to donate,” he tells Dean, the blond-bearded security guard on duty, whose placid expression suggests superheroes pop in on a regular basis. “And I have an hour on the meter if there’s anything I can do to help out.”
Wendy Darst, the volunteer coordinator, looks taken aback but gladly puts the superhero to work. Soon the Jade Justice finds himself hip-deep in a supply closet, piling books into a red Radio Flyer wagon. He wheels it back to the lobby, entreating the children to select a text. But the kids seem more interested in peppering him with questions. “So are you a cowboy or something?” one boy asks.
Geist kneels down to reply with a camera-ready grin, “Maybe a super-secret, space-cowboy detective!”
Another kid, awed by the uniform, just stares silently. “Hi,” Geist says with a smile, holding out his hand in greeting. “I’m a real-life superhero.”
The kid grabs Geist’s leather-clad mitt and grins back. “I’m four!”
Such is the life of Minnesota’s only superhero—a man in his mid-40s who sold off his comic book collection to fund a dream borne of those very pages. Unlike his fictional inspirations, he hasn’t yet found any villains to apprehend in Rochester, a sleepy city of 95,000 about 80 miles south of Minneapolis. But that doesn’t mean he’s wasting his time, he says. “When you put on this costume and you do something for someone, it’s like, ‘Wow, I am being a hero,’ and that is a great feeling.”
BY MOST OBSERVERS’ RECKONING, between 150 and 200 real-life superheroes, or “Reals” as some call themselves, operate in the United States, with another 50 or so donning the cowl internationally. These crusaders range in age from 15 to 50 and patrol cities from Indianapolis to Cambridgeshire, England. They create heroic identities with names like Black Arrow, Green Scorpion, and Mr. Silent, and wear bright Superman spandex or black ninja suits. Almost all share two traits in common: a love of comic books and a desire to improve their communities.
It’s rare to find more than a few superheroes operating in the same area, so as with all hobbies, a community has sprung up online. In February, a burly, black-and-green-clad New Jersey-based Real named Tothian started Heroes Network, a website he says functions “like the UN for the real-life superhero community.”
The foremost designer of real-life superhero costumes lives in New Brighton, Minnesota. His given name is Michael Brinatte, but he pro wrestles under the name Jack T. Ripper. At 6’2″, with bulldog shoulders, he looks more likely to suplex you than shake your hand. It’s hard to imagine him behind a sewing machine, carefully splicing together bits of shiny spandex, but when the 39-year-old father of three needed to give his wrestling persona a visual boost, that’s just where he found himself, drawing on his only formal tailoring education: seventh-grade home economics. He discovered he had a talent for it, and before long was sewing uniforms and masks for fellow wrestlers, learning techniques to make his work durable enough to withstand the rigors of hand-to-hand combat.
After he posted photos of his masks on the internet, he met his first real-life superhero: Entomo the Insect Man, a crimefighter and “masked detective” based in Naples, Italy. Entomo wanted Brinatte to make him a mask to incorporate into his black-and-olive uniform. A lifelong comic fan, Brinatte took the assignment seriously, and it showed in the stitching. When Entomo showed off his new mask to the community of Reals, Brinatte started getting more orders: a green-and-black bodysuit for Hardwire, a blue-and-white Z-emblazoned uniform for Zetaman. Eventually, Brinatte started a website, www.hero-gear.net, to formalize his business, and now spends 10 to 15 hours each week making superhero uniforms. “They have a good heart and believe in what they’re doing, and they’re a lot of fun to talk to,” Brinatte says.
His super friends are starting to get publicity. Last October, an organization called Superheroes Anonymous issued an invitation to any and all real-life superheroes: Come to Times Square to meet other Reals face-to-face and discuss the future of the movement. The community roiled with discussion of the invitation—was it a trap by an as-yet-unknown real-life super villain? In the end, only a dozen Reals attended, but the gathering attracted the notice of the New York Times and the BBC, which gave the budding league of justice worldwide ink.
“We’re basically normal people who just find an unusual way to do something good,” Geist says. “Once you get suited up, you’re a hero and you’ve got to act like one.”
SO YOU’VE DECIDED to become a real-life superhero. Like Wolverine, you’ve chosen a secret identity and a uniform. But unlike the X-Man, you don’t have retractable claws or a mutant healing factor. How do you make up the difference?
Most Reals use a combination of martial arts and weaponry. The Eye is a 49-year-old crimebuster from Mountain View, California, who wears a Green Hornet-inspired fedora and trench coat. Though he focuses mainly on detective work and crime-tip reporting, he prepares himself for hand-to-hand combat by studying kung fu and wielding an arsenal of light-based weapons designed to dazzle enemies.
“In movies, a ninja will have some powder or smoke to throw at you to distract,” he explains. “That’s essentially what I’m trying to do.”
All superheroes have origins, and The Eye is no exception. He grew up tinkering with electronic gadgetry, first with his dad, then in the employ of a Silicon Valley company (he’s reluctant to say which one). The Eye considers himself “on-duty” at all times, so when a co-worker started pimping fake Rolex watches to others in his office, the Paragon of Perception sprang into action. He went into work early, snuck into the watch-monger’s office to locate the stash of counterfeit merchandise, and then dropped a dime to Crimestoppers. Ultimately, police wouldn’t prosecute unless The Eye revealed his secret identity—a concession he was unwilling to make—but he nonetheless chalks it up as a victory. “We stopped him from doing this,” The Eye says. “He knows someone’s watching.”
For sheer investment in gadgetry, none top Superhero, an ex-Navy powerlifter from Clearwater, Florida. His patrol vehicle is a burgundy 1975 Corvette Stingray with a souped-up 425-horsepower engine. He wears a flight helmet installed with a police scanner and video camera, and carries an extendable Cobra tactical baton, a flash gun, sonic grenades, and a canister of bear mace. Topping off the one-man armory is an Arma 100 stun cannon, a 37mm nitrogen-powered projectile device. His ammo of choice? Sandwiches. “Nothing stops them in their tracks like peanut butter and jelly,” he explains in a video demonstration posted online.
Once you’ve honed your body and strapped on your utility belt, it’s time to decide how to focus your heroic efforts. Within the community of Reals, there’s a buffet of choices. Some choose mundane tasks—The Cleanser strolls around picking up trash, while Direction Man helps lost tourists find where they’re going. Most Reals also lend their personages to charities, donating to food banks or organizing clothing drives.
Other Reals scoff at the idea of being a glorified Salvation Army bell-ringer and instead go looking for action. “I fight evil,” says Tothian, the New Jersey crimefighter who founded Heroes Network. “I don’t think picking up garbage is superheroic.”
Master Legend, a chrome-suited 41-year-old from Winter Park, Florida, patrols the streets looking for crimes in progress, and claims his efforts have paid off. “I’ve dumped garbage cans over crackheads’ heads, I slam their heads against the wall, whatever it takes,” the Silver Slugger says with bravado. “They try to hit me first, and then it’s time for Steel Toe City.”
IN 1986, ALAN MOORE RELEASED his magnum opus, Watchmen, a 12-issue comic series whose conceit was built on a simple premise: What would it be like if superheroes existed in real life? Besides helping to usher in a new age of “mature” graphic novels, the series foreshadowed some of the complications facing real-life superheroes today.
For instance: How to balance crime fighting with family life? Zetaman, a goateed, black-and-blue-clad Real hailing from Portland, Oregon, got married seven years go, but only recently started his career as a costumed crusader. He says his wife’s reaction to his new hobby was lukewarm—she made him promise not to go out at night, and told him to focus on charity work instead of fisticuffs. “She thinks it’s a phase,” he says with a laugh.
The media can be even less charitable, as Captain Jackson, a gray-and-yellow-suited hero from Michigan, discovered in October 2005. That’s when a headline appeared in the Jackson Citizen Patriot that could’ve been penned by J. Jonah Jameson himself: “Crime Fighter Busted for Drunk Driving.” The article unmasked Captain Jackson as Thomas Frankini, a 49-year-old factory worker who’d been arrested for driving with a blood-alcohol level of 0.135 percent. The story was picked up by the Detroit Free Press and Fox News. Frankini was devastated. “My patrol days are over, I’m afraid,” he said.
Unlike in the comics, real-life Commissioner Gordons rarely express gratitude for superheroes’ help. One evening when Master Legend was on patrol, he heard a woman scream and ran to investigate. But when he located the damsel in distress, she thought he was attacking her and called the cops. “They wanted to know if I was some kind of insane man, a 41-year-old man running around in a costume,” he recounts. “Apparently, they had never heard of me.”
Bernard, a sharp-featured, 33-year-old police detective from suburban Philadelphia who asked that his last name be withheld, has become something of a rabbi to the online community of Reals. When he first stumbled upon the phenomenon, he thought, “These people are nuts.” But as he learned more, he saw how the costumed do-gooders could make a difference. “They’re definitely committed, and their heart is in the right place.”
Most Reals are harmless enough, but Bernard worries about the bloodlust displayed by a small segment of the community. A recent thread on Heroes Network debated whether it was appropriate for a Real to carry a shotgun in his patrol vehicle. These aggressive Reals don’t realize how difficult it is to apprehend criminals in the real world, Bernard says. “It’s not like drug dealers stand around with quarter ounces of cocaine, throwing them in the air and saying ‘Here’s drugs for sale,'” he says. “Let’s imagine that one of them does come across a drug dealer, gives them a roundhouse kick to the head, and finds a whole bag of pot in his pocket. Nobody’s going to celebrate that. If anything, now you’re going to have a huge fiasco. Let’s face it—the world is complicated. You don’t solve anything by punching somebody.”
Rumor has it that a Real named Nostrum recently lost an eye in the line of duty, and some wonder if it will take a fatality to jolt the community out of its four-color fantasy. Wall Creeper, a 19-year-old who fights crime in Colorado, even seems to welcome the possibility. “To die doing something so noble would be the best thing to happen,” he says.
JIM WAYNE KEPT HIS EYE OUT in his hometown of Phoenix, Arizona—and the bald 40-year-old didn’t like what he saw. “Somewhere along the line we’ve stopped caring about each other and started caring about ourselves,” he says.
Two years ago, Wayne saw a commercial for Who Wants to Be a Superhero?—a reality show in which costumed contestants compete for the honor of starring in their own comic book—and something inside him clicked.
“Ever since I was a kid, if you asked any of my friends or family who they knew that should be a superhero, they’d probably say me,” he says.
Wayne dreamed up Citizen Prime, a persona patterned after his favorite comic book character, Captain America. “He, even more than Superman or Batman, epitomizes what a hero is: someone who stands up for their principles and goes out there to help people,” Wayne says. To bring his alter ego to life, Wayne spent $4,000 on custom-made armor—everything from a shiny chest plate to a bright yellow cape and a sloping steel helmet. “I made a commitment to make this and wear it and create this presence and see where that takes me,” he says.
Initially, it didn’t take him far. “There’s a reason why police are always coming after crimes,” he says. “It’s one of those fictions in comics when superheroes are walking down the street and hear a scream. I found out real quickly that patrolling for patrolling’s sake seems like a lost effort.”
That realization sparked a change in how he thought about his role. “I think even though there’s some fun to be had in the kick-ass aspect of comics, it’s fiction and fantasy and we know it,” he says. “As you translate those icons over to the real world, you have to face truths, such as violence begets violence.”
So Prime hung up the bulletproof vest and tactical baton and began volunteering for charity work. He teamed with Kids Defense, an organization aimed at protecting kids from internet predators, and allied with the Banner Desert Hospital pediatrics wing, offering to personally pick up toys from anyone who wanted to donate to the holiday drive. “I want to get people out there to create a presence in the community,” he says. “You make a presence of good in the community and the darker elements retreat.”
Recently, he started his own nonprofit called the League of Citizen Heroes. The organization, as he envisions it, will draw on an army of volunteers—both masked and unmasked—to contribute to the greater good. “That’s the level of sophistication that I think the movement’s moving towards,” he says, “We don’t have to just be patrolling the dark streets.”
Superhero, one of the first recruits to the League, shares Wayne’s dream, but is less philosophical when it comes to why, when all is said and done, he decided to put on a costume.
“I horse-shitted myself into thinking I was being a symbol for people and all that,” Superhero says. “But then I just faced the truth and admitted I do it ’cause it’s hella fun.”
http://www.citypages.com/content/printVersion/361255

By Ward Rubrecht
Geist’s breath fogs the winter air as he surveys the frozen Minneapolis skyline, searching for signs of trouble. His long duster flaps in the breeze as his eyes flick behind reflective sunglasses; a wide-brim hat and green iridescent mask shroud his identity from those who might wish him harm.
Should a villain attack, the Emerald Enforcer carries a small arsenal to defend himself: smoke grenades, pepper spray, a slingshot, and a pair of six-inch fighting sticks tucked into sturdy leather boots. Leather guards protect Geist’s arms; his signature weapon, an Argentinean cattle-snare called bolos, hangs from a belt-holster.
A mission awaits and time is of the essence, so Geist eases his solid frame, honed from martial arts training, into his trusty patrol vehicle—a salt-covered beige sedan. Unfamiliar with the transportation tangle of downtown, he pulls a MapQuest printout from his pocket, discovering his goal is but a short cruise down Washington Avenue.
Soon Geist faces his first obstacle: parking on the left side of a one-way street. “Usually one of my superpowers is parallel parking,” he chuckles as he eases his car into the spot, emerging victorious with a foot and a half between curb and tire. He feeds a gauntleted fistful of quarters into the parking meter, and then pops the trunk on the Geistmobile to retrieve his precious cargo. On the street, he encounters businesspeople on lunch break—some stare openly; others don’t even notice his garish attire. “It’s easier in winter,” Geist says with a laugh. “Winter in Minnesota, everybody’s dressed weird.”
Finally, his destination is in sight: People Serving People, a local homeless shelter. Geist strides boldly into the lobby—a cramped, noisy room where kids and adults mill about chatting—and heaves his stuffed paper bags onto the counter. “I have some groceries to donate,” he tells Dean, the blond-bearded security guard on duty, whose placid expression suggests superheroes pop in on a regular basis. “And I have an hour on the meter if there’s anything I can do to help out.”
Wendy Darst, the volunteer coordinator, looks taken aback but gladly puts the superhero to work. Soon the Jade Justice finds himself hip-deep in a supply closet, piling books into a red Radio Flyer wagon. He wheels it back to the lobby, entreating the children to select a text. But the kids seem more interested in peppering him with questions. “So are you a cowboy or something?” one boy asks.
Geist kneels down to reply with a camera-ready grin, “Maybe a super-secret, space-cowboy detective!”
Another kid, awed by the uniform, just stares silently. “Hi,” Geist says with a smile, holding out his hand in greeting. “I’m a real-life superhero.”
The kid grabs Geist’s leather-clad mitt and grins back. “I’m four!”
Such is the life of Minnesota’s only superhero—a man in his mid-40s who sold off his comic book collection to fund a dream borne of those very pages. Unlike his fictional inspirations, he hasn’t yet found any villains to apprehend in Rochester, a sleepy city of 95,000 about 80 miles south of Minneapolis. But that doesn’t mean he’s wasting his time, he says. “When you put on this costume and you do something for someone, it’s like, ‘Wow, I am being a hero,’ and that is a great feeling.”
BY MOST OBSERVERS’ RECKONING, between 150 and 200 real-life superheroes, or “Reals” as some call themselves, operate in the United States, with another 50 or so donning the cowl internationally. These crusaders range in age from 15 to 50 and patrol cities from Indianapolis to Cambridgeshire, England. They create heroic identities with names like Black Arrow, Green Scorpion, and Mr. Silent, and wear bright Superman spandex or black ninja suits. Almost all share two traits in common: a love of comic books and a desire to improve their communities.
It’s rare to find more than a few superheroes operating in the same area, so as with all hobbies, a community has sprung up online. In February, a burly, black-and-green-clad New Jersey-based Real named Tothian started Heroes Network, a website he says functions “like the UN for the real-life superhero community.”
The foremost designer of real-life superhero costumes lives in New Brighton, Minnesota. His given name is Michael Brinatte, but he pro wrestles under the name Jack T. Ripper. At 6’2″, with bulldog shoulders, he looks more likely to suplex you than shake your hand. It’s hard to imagine him behind a sewing machine, carefully splicing together bits of shiny spandex, but when the 39-year-old father of three needed to give his wrestling persona a visual boost, that’s just where he found himself, drawing on his only formal tailoring education: seventh-grade home economics. He discovered he had a talent for it, and before long was sewing uniforms and masks for fellow wrestlers, learning techniques to make his work durable enough to withstand the rigors of hand-to-hand combat.
After he posted photos of his masks on the internet, he met his first real-life superhero: Entomo the Insect Man, a crimefighter and “masked detective” based in Naples, Italy. Entomo wanted Brinatte to make him a mask to incorporate into his black-and-olive uniform. A lifelong comic fan, Brinatte took the assignment seriously, and it showed in the stitching. When Entomo showed off his new mask to the community of Reals, Brinatte started getting more orders: a green-and-black bodysuit for Hardwire, a blue-and-white Z-emblazoned uniform for Zetaman. Eventually, Brinatte started a website, www.hero-gear.net, to formalize his business, and now spends 10 to 15 hours each week making superhero uniforms. “They have a good heart and believe in what they’re doing, and they’re a lot of fun to talk to,” Brinatte says.
His super friends are starting to get publicity. Last October, an organization called Superheroes Anonymous issued an invitation to any and all real-life superheroes: Come to Times Square to meet other Reals face-to-face and discuss the future of the movement. The community roiled with discussion of the invitation—was it a trap by an as-yet-unknown real-life super villain? In the end, only a dozen Reals attended, but the gathering attracted the notice of the New York Times and the BBC, which gave the budding league of justice worldwide ink.
“We’re basically normal people who just find an unusual way to do something good,” Geist says. “Once you get suited up, you’re a hero and you’ve got to act like one.”
SO YOU’VE DECIDED to become a real-life superhero. Like Wolverine, you’ve chosen a secret identity and a uniform. But unlike the X-Man, you don’t have retractable claws or a mutant healing factor. How do you make up the difference?
Most Reals use a combination of martial arts and weaponry. The Eye is a 49-year-old crimebuster from Mountain View, California, who wears a Green Hornet-inspired fedora and trench coat. Though he focuses mainly on detective work and crime-tip reporting, he prepares himself for hand-to-hand combat by studying kung fu and wielding an arsenal of light-based weapons designed to dazzle enemies.
“In movies, a ninja will have some powder or smoke to throw at you to distract,” he explains. “That’s essentially what I’m trying to do.”
All superheroes have origins, and The Eye is no exception. He grew up tinkering with electronic gadgetry, first with his dad, then in the employ of a Silicon Valley company (he’s reluctant to say which one). The Eye considers himself “on-duty” at all times, so when a co-worker started pimping fake Rolex watches to others in his office, the Paragon of Perception sprang into action. He went into work early, snuck into the watch-monger’s office to locate the stash of counterfeit merchandise, and then dropped a dime to Crimestoppers. Ultimately, police wouldn’t prosecute unless The Eye revealed his secret identity—a concession he was unwilling to make—but he nonetheless chalks it up as a victory. “We stopped him from doing this,” The Eye says. “He knows someone’s watching.”
For sheer investment in gadgetry, none top Superhero, an ex-Navy powerlifter from Clearwater, Florida. His patrol vehicle is a burgundy 1975 Corvette Stingray with a souped-up 425-horsepower engine. He wears a flight helmet installed with a police scanner and video camera, and carries an extendable Cobra tactical baton, a flash gun, sonic grenades, and a canister of bear mace. Topping off the one-man armory is an Arma 100 stun cannon, a 37mm nitrogen-powered projectile device. His ammo of choice? Sandwiches. “Nothing stops them in their tracks like peanut butter and jelly,” he explains in a video demonstration posted online.
Once you’ve honed your body and strapped on your utility belt, it’s time to decide how to focus your heroic efforts. Within the community of Reals, there’s a buffet of choices. Some choose mundane tasks—The Cleanser strolls around picking up trash, while Direction Man helps lost tourists find where they’re going. Most Reals also lend their personages to charities, donating to food banks or organizing clothing drives.
Other Reals scoff at the idea of being a glorified Salvation Army bell-ringer and instead go looking for action. “I fight evil,” says Tothian, the New Jersey crimefighter who founded Heroes Network. “I don’t think picking up garbage is superheroic.”
Master Legend, a chrome-suited 41-year-old from Winter Park, Florida, patrols the streets looking for crimes in progress, and claims his efforts have paid off. “I’ve dumped garbage cans over crackheads’ heads, I slam their heads against the wall, whatever it takes,” the Silver Slugger says with bravado. “They try to hit me first, and then it’s time for Steel Toe City.”
IN 1986, ALAN MOORE RELEASED his magnum opus, Watchmen, a 12-issue comic series whose conceit was built on a simple premise: What would it be like if superheroes existed in real life? Besides helping to usher in a new age of “mature” graphic novels, the series foreshadowed some of the complications facing real-life superheroes today.
For instance: How to balance crime fighting with family life? Zetaman, a goateed, black-and-blue-clad Real hailing from Portland, Oregon, got married seven years go, but only recently started his career as a costumed crusader. He says his wife’s reaction to his new hobby was lukewarm—she made him promise not to go out at night, and told him to focus on charity work instead of fisticuffs. “She thinks it’s a phase,” he says with a laugh.
The media can be even less charitable, as Captain Jackson, a gray-and-yellow-suited hero from Michigan, discovered in October 2005. That’s when a headline appeared in the Jackson Citizen Patriot that could’ve been penned by J. Jonah Jameson himself: “Crime Fighter Busted for Drunk Driving.” The article unmasked Captain Jackson as Thomas Frankini, a 49-year-old factory worker who’d been arrested for driving with a blood-alcohol level of 0.135 percent. The story was picked up by the Detroit Free Press and Fox News. Frankini was devastated. “My patrol days are over, I’m afraid,” he said.
Unlike in the comics, real-life Commissioner Gordons rarely express gratitude for superheroes’ help. One evening when Master Legend was on patrol, he heard a woman scream and ran to investigate. But when he located the damsel in distress, she thought he was attacking her and called the cops. “They wanted to know if I was some kind of insane man, a 41-year-old man running around in a costume,” he recounts. “Apparently, they had never heard of me.”
Bernard, a sharp-featured, 33-year-old police detective from suburban Philadelphia who asked that his last name be withheld, has become something of a rabbi to the online community of Reals. When he first stumbled upon the phenomenon, he thought, “These people are nuts.” But as he learned more, he saw how the costumed do-gooders could make a difference. “They’re definitely committed, and their heart is in the right place.”
Most Reals are harmless enough, but Bernard worries about the bloodlust displayed by a small segment of the community. A recent thread on Heroes Network debated whether it was appropriate for a Real to carry a shotgun in his patrol vehicle. These aggressive Reals don’t realize how difficult it is to apprehend criminals in the real world, Bernard says. “It’s not like drug dealers stand around with quarter ounces of cocaine, throwing them in the air and saying ‘Here’s drugs for sale,'” he says. “Let’s imagine that one of them does come across a drug dealer, gives them a roundhouse kick to the head, and finds a whole bag of pot in his pocket. Nobody’s going to celebrate that. If anything, now you’re going to have a huge fiasco. Let’s face it—the world is complicated. You don’t solve anything by punching somebody.”
Rumor has it that a Real named Nostrum recently lost an eye in the line of duty, and some wonder if it will take a fatality to jolt the community out of its four-color fantasy. Wall Creeper, a 19-year-old who fights crime in Colorado, even seems to welcome the possibility. “To die doing something so noble would be the best thing to happen,” he says.
JIM WAYNE KEPT HIS EYE OUT in his hometown of Phoenix, Arizona—and the bald 40-year-old didn’t like what he saw. “Somewhere along the line we’ve stopped caring about each other and started caring about ourselves,” he says.
Two years ago, Wayne saw a commercial for Who Wants to Be a Superhero?—a reality show in which costumed contestants compete for the honor of starring in their own comic book—and something inside him clicked.
“Ever since I was a kid, if you asked any of my friends or family who they knew that should be a superhero, they’d probably say me,” he says.
Wayne dreamed up Citizen Prime, a persona patterned after his favorite comic book character, Captain America. “He, even more than Superman or Batman, epitomizes what a hero is: someone who stands up for their principles and goes out there to help people,” Wayne says. To bring his alter ego to life, Wayne spent $4,000 on custom-made armor—everything from a shiny chest plate to a bright yellow cape and a sloping steel helmet. “I made a commitment to make this and wear it and create this presence and see where that takes me,” he says.
Initially, it didn’t take him far. “There’s a reason why police are always coming after crimes,” he says. “It’s one of those fictions in comics when superheroes are walking down the street and hear a scream. I found out real quickly that patrolling for patrolling’s sake seems like a lost effort.”
That realization sparked a change in how he thought about his role. “I think even though there’s some fun to be had in the kick-ass aspect of comics, it’s fiction and fantasy and we know it,” he says. “As you translate those icons over to the real world, you have to face truths, such as violence begets violence.”
So Prime hung up the bulletproof vest and tactical baton and began volunteering for charity work. He teamed with Kids Defense, an organization aimed at protecting kids from internet predators, and allied with the Banner Desert Hospital pediatrics wing, offering to personally pick up toys from anyone who wanted to donate to the holiday drive. “I want to get people out there to create a presence in the community,” he says. “You make a presence of good in the community and the darker elements retreat.”
Recently, he started his own nonprofit called the League of Citizen Heroes. The organization, as he envisions it, will draw on an army of volunteers—both masked and unmasked—to contribute to the greater good. “That’s the level of sophistication that I think the movement’s moving towards,” he says, “We don’t have to just be patrolling the dark streets.”
Superhero, one of the first recruits to the League, shares Wayne’s dream, but is less philosophical when it comes to why, when all is said and done, he decided to put on a costume.
“I horse-shitted myself into thinking I was being a symbol for people and all that,” Superhero says. “But then I just faced the truth and admitted I do it ’cause it’s hella fun.”
http://www.citypages.com/content/printVersion/361255
 

Citizen Prime and Green Scorpion can’t stop bullets with their hands or see through walls. They don’t have archenemies, and they’re not crippled by Kryptonite. They do, however, don costumes and patrol the streets of Phoenix, looking for wrongs to right and helpless to help. Some call them freaks. Other call them heroes.
Phoenix Magazine PDF File
March 2007
By Dan Rafter
Citizen prime can’t stick to walls or shoot webs from his wrist. He can’t jump over a building or sprint faster than a locomotive. Don’t bet on him to life an elephant over his head, either.
On the plus side, Citizen Prime could juggle handfuls of green kryptonite- if such material really existed- without suffering even the hint of a stomachache. And so far, not a single super-powered villain has threatened to roast him with a fire breath or zap him with lighting bolts.
To sum it up, Citizen Prime has no superpowers, no super-villain archenemies, and no super-weaknesses- unless you count bullets, knives, baseball bats, bricks or anything else that might cause physical damage to an ordinary human.
Sounds pretty much like a regular guy, right? Not so fast, Citizen Prime is a superhero, a real-life superhero. He wears a costume- black body armor and a similarly- colored helmet with a dark visor- and patrols the night streets of Phoenix, looking for wrongs to right. He has a secret identity, too. Few people, he says, know the name of the man behind that dark visor.
Citizen Prim might seem like a strange fellow, but he’s not alone, in the Phoenix area or around the country. A growing number of people- men and women, young and old, living in big cities and small towns, are donning homemade costumes and taking to the streets of their own communities. Some are out to stop crimes. Others provide comfort- blankets, clothing and food- to the homeless. Some erase graffiti or pick up litter. Others try to stop bar fights from getting out of hand.
And that’s just the beginning of these heroes’ specialties. At least one- New York City’s Terrifica, with her blonde wig and golden mask- wears pink tights, sips Shirley Temples, in bars and tries to stop young women from tumbling into alcohol- fueled one-night stands. Another, calling himself Polar Man, grabs a shovel and clears snow from the sidewalks of the elderly. Polar Man lives up north in Canada, so you understand the heroism in his actions.
The real-life superhero community, then, is a varied lot. But Citizen Prim says its members have at least one thing in common: They’re somehow trying to make a difference.
“Anyone can be a hero,” he says. “That is what Citizen Prime is really all about. Even if you don’t ever put on a costume, you can be out there making the streets a safer place. There are so many more of us good people than there are gangsters or criminals. There are so many more of us than there are bad people. All we need is civic pride and brotherhood, and we can take back the streets. We won’t have to figure out anymore what shade of fear we are today.”
Are folks like Citizen Prime- or Green Scorpion, Dark Guardian or Mr. Silent, other members of the real-life superhero brigade- at the forefront of a new trend? Can they make a real difference in their communities? Citizen Prime thinks so. And if you disagree? He doesn’t really care.
BIRTH OF A HERO
Citizen Prime as been patrolling the Phoenix streets for about seven months. Becoming a superhero, though, wasn’t a decision he made lightly. For six months prior to his first patrols, Prime researched the real-life superhero community, logging on to sites such as the World Superhero Registry (worldsuperheroregistry.com), which list profiles of real-life masked adventurers and crime-fighting groups across the country.
Prime liked what he saw. There was something inspiring about the passion displayed by heroes like Mr. Silent and Doktor DiscorD, two real-life superheroes who have become semi-famous for their work in Indianapolis. There real-life superheroes he read about weren’t complaining about the way things were. They were trying to make a change, even if that meant simply picking up litter or helping a homeless person cross a busy street.
When Prime’s on patrol, he isn’t looking for trouble. Don’t expect to see his name in the morning papers along with photos of a foiled bank robbery. Bullets don’t bounce off his chest, so Citizen Prime isn’t likely to tackle a gang of armed criminals. He’s far more likely to hit the streets with a car stuffed full of blankets and clothing to pass out to homeless men and women. He might call the police after spotting a drunk driver weaving down the Phoenix streets, or he might stop to chat with some youngsters about the value of doing good deeds.
Fist fights and karate chops? They’re rarely on Prime’s agenda.
The way he sees it, it’s far more important to serve as a source for hope that it is to get the snot kicked out of him during a brawl in a dark alley.
“We’re not standing on the rooftops, grappling hooks at the ready. But we are trying to make a difference. We’re sort of like the Guardian Angels on steroids.” Citizen Prime says.
Not having superpowers, of course, means that superheroes such as Prime have to make do with what they have. So, while Superman soars above the skies of Metropolis and Spider-Man swings from skyscraper to skyscraper in New York City, Citizen Prime relies on his car to get around. It’s easier to cover a lot of ground that way.
A typical patrol for Prime goes something like this: Late last fall, he was driving into the Phoenix when he spotted a car weaving on the road. It looked like a drink driver, so Prime picked up his cell phone and called the highway patrol, reporting the care and its license plate number. Less than a minute later, a patrol car zipped past him and pulled the drunk driver over.
Not heroic? Maybe it is, and maybe it’s not, but how often do drivers simply ignore the signs of an impaired motorist? And if Prime hadn’t dialed those numbers, who’s to say that the erratic driver, drunk or not, wouldn’t have cause a serious accident?
Another night, Citizen Prime noticed some suspicious individuals scoping out cars in a dark parking lot. Prime pulled into the lot with his parking lights on. He remained there until the suspicious individuals fled the scene.
And, not as dramatic as defusing a bomb or tossing a mugger into a dumpster, but the way Prime sees it, his presence might have stopped a crime.
“That’s what we’re like- we are big, red sirens,” he says. “Sometimes, it’s just about being present, and not being afraid to remain present, to stop someone from even committing a crime in the first place.”
A SECRET LIFE, NOT-SO-SECRET PROBLEMS
Prime is open about his life about a superhero. He’s not as forthcoming about his true identity, however. He won’t give out his real name, and says that few people know how he spends his evenings when he’s not patrolling the streets.
He is married, though, and his wife knows all about Citizen Prime. Surprisingly, she approves of her husband’s evening adventures.
Green Scorpion, another local real-life superheroes, is even more tight-lipped about his real identity. He makes sure as few people as possible know who he really is.
“I don’t share my superhero identity much,” he writes in an e-mail message, his preferred method of communication. “Most people thing we are nuts or joking.”
The Green Scorpion, though, isn’t joking. And that’s a point he and the other men and women who call themselves real-life superheroes stress: they’re not dressing up for kicks- well maybe just a little- but to help others.
The Green Scorpion is another masked adventurer working in Phoenix. He has his own tagline- “Evildoers, beware the sting of the Green Scorpion!”- that he includes on his MySpace page and in all of his e-mail messages. And his costume is pretty impressive- a trench coat, ultra- creepy mask and wide- brimmed hat.
Green Scorpion and Citizen Prime, however, do have something in common: Sometimes superheroes’ real lives collide with their masked lives.
Take for example, Ragensi, a 23-year- old real-life superhero who works in Huntington Beach, California. On patrol early last October, he realized that his cupboards at home were bare. Like any shopper, he ducked into a nearby supermarket to pick up some last-minute groceries. Ragensi, though, had to do his shopping in full costume, and although it was October, it wasn’t close enough to Halloween for costume-party time.
To understand this fully, it’s important to picture Ragensi’s costume. It’s no happy, day-glo superhero outfit. Think Batman, not Superman. Ragensi looks much like a ninja, clad in all black with his fingerless gloves and a dark scarf-like swath of fabric hiding all of his face except his eyes. And those eyes are creepy, highlighted by dark makeup. It gives Ragensi the permanent wide-open stare of someone who’s missing a few marbles. But when Ragensi stepped into his local market, no one, surprisingly, made a peep. No pointed fingers, no gasps and not a single, “Look at that!”
On his MySpace blog, Ragensi mentions that he felt almost invisible. This story is located next to a series of photos showing the masked adventurer pushing his shopping cart though the store’s aisles. In one shot, Ragensi proudly holds in his gloved hands a bag of Johnny Cat kitty litter. The effect is both unsettling and comical.
Balancing two lives isn’t the only challenge real-life superheroes face. They also have to deal with the difficulties of designing the perfect costume- it not only has to symbolize what a hero stands for, but it also must be functional. Accomplishing both tasks isn’t as easy as it sounds.
In the comics, this looks simple. Superman slips into a phone booth. Iron Man snaps on his metal suit. But in real life, things get complicated.
Ghost, a member of the Black Monday Society, a group of real-life superheroes based in Salt Lake City, knows all about costume hassles. On a MySpace blog dedicated to the exploits of the society, Ghost’s partner, Ferox, writes that the hero is still experimenting with his mask. The Reason? It’s difficult to take a much-needed coffee break when your superhero mask covers your entire face.
Ferox, too, has had his fair share of costume problems. In a phone interview, Ferox reveals that he originally called himself American Corpse and wore a costume that featured a gas mask. Turns out, the local police didn’t appreciate the look, especially after the events of September 11, 2001.
All of which raises an obvious question: Why do real-life superheroes need a costume at all? Can’t they simply do their good deeds, or run patrols, in street clothes? Dark Guardian, a real-life superhero based out of New York City who dresses in a black-and-white costume complete with a dark mask, has an answer:
“It’s about being an icon,” he says. “When you’re walking around doing stuff as a regular guy, people won’t notice you as much. They won’t take a second look. They see a guy dressed like me and they wonder what’s going on. It helps spread our message.”
AN ONLINE HEADQUARTERS
All good superheroes need a headquarters. Batman had his Bat Cave, Superman his Fortress of Solitude. Real-life superheroes have the World Superhero Registry. The site features profiles of dozens of real-life superheroes, from New York City to Los Angeles. It includes information about superhero teams- thing Justice League or Super Friends- groups like the Moonlight Club, Black Monday Society or Boise Brigade.
And when a superhero just needs to talk, there’s an online forum. The forum has hosted discussions on the best form of martial arts for a superhero (one member suggested Krav Maga, the official self-defense system used by the Israeli Defense Forces); the feasibility and concerns of developing a jet pack capable of lifting a human into the air (it might lift a superhero, but how would the hero gain enough control over the pack to fly accurately?); the best diet for a superhero; and the possibility of developing special gloves that shoot pepper spray.
The World Superhero Registry is the brainchild of Kevlex, a part-time, real-life superhero based in Flagstaff.
Kevlex says that the site was a natural for him. He has obvious computer skills, and he’s long been fascinated by the possibility that ordinary people could perform super-heroic feats. As a high school student, Kevlex- a name that comes from the combination of Kevlar body armor and spandex- would wander the halls of his school with a mask hidden on him, in case any danger popped up. He never had the opportunity to don that mask, but, he says, he never lost his passion for real-life superheroes.
Running the World Superhero Registry and going out on patrols maybe two times a month hasn’t imposed on much on Kevlex’s real life. He won’t give out his real name, but he does offer that he’s 40 years old and does have a real job.
Like other real-life superheroes, Kevlex isn’t surprise that men and women across the country are putting on masks and capes and patrolling the streets. He’s more surprised, he says, that there aren’t more people like him.
“I was surprise initially that something like this hadn’t occurred previously,” he says. “We have everything from radical terrorists to people who live in complete silence in monasteries. We have every extreme possible out there. The superhero archetype is so in the public consciousness that you’d think there would be people out there doing this long ago.”
NO PAIN, NO GAIN?
It’s hard to think about becoming a superhero without thinking about pain. Even the most skilled heroes in the comics get beat up nearly every day. That’s not much fun. Local adventurer Green Scorpion, who won’t go into details about his escapades, says that at times he has gone home with nasty injuries following his patrols.
“I have encountered property crimes, theft and assault,” Green Scorpion writes via e-mail. “I have ended up with some wicked bruises, and have come home limping a time or two. I don’t worry about getting hurt, though. I wear protective gear, and do not let myself get backed into corners.”
While Ragensi out in California spends most of his time as a superhero delivering blankets and hot coffee to the homeless or dropping off bags of toys to a nearby children’s hospital, he has occasionally stumbled upon more serious matters. Once, he says, he stopped and attempted mugging in a part, and had to tie the mugger’s hands to a lamppost.
Is Ragensi ever worried that he might get hurt?
“The thought does cross my mind from time to time,” he says. “The way I see it, though, is that you can get hurt in a lot of professions. Physical danger is just a reality of life, even for those who do their best to avoid it. Not that I’m saying I’m going to be stupid and rush into a dangerous situation without a care in the world. I’m just not going to let fears hold me back from living my life to the fullest.”
So, how long is the lifespan of a real-life superhero? Can we expect to see Ragensi as a 50-year-old man tying muggers to street lamps? And what about Green Scorpion? Will he be willing to sustain those bumps and bruise once he’s approaching mid-life crisis time? And if these heroes retire, will other real-life heroes take their places?
That’s hard to say. But the blogs written by these masked adventurers do offer hints that nighttime patrols and costume making aren’t necessarily all fun and games.
Several heroes have written about falling into funks, when patrols don’t offer the same thrill. Others have requested that Kevlex remove their names from the World Superhero Registry, explaining that they’re taking leaves of absences.
But Citizen Prime shows no sign of retiring from the hero life. Patrols still give him a rush, and he’s even working on creating a new superhero community, WHO, which stands for Worldwide Heroes, although, at press time, this project was place on the backburner.
“I don’t find it very hard at all to do this,” says Citizen Prime. “I don have a normal life and a normal job. But this really enhances the rest my life. I am always on patrol, even when I’m not in uniform. If I see something like a guy yelling at his wife in a dark parking lot, I’ll roll down my window to see whether I can help defuse the situation.
Really, Citizen Prime is just an extension of that.” -Dan Rafter lives in St. Charles, Illinois. He can be reached at
[email protected]