Superhero registry adding more Valley members to team

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.”

Copyright 2008 The E.W. Scripps Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.