<\/a>OWL\u2019S WELL New Bedford\u2019s Civitron (right) has some potent super genes \u2014 his six-year-old son is also a superhero: Mad Owl.<\/p><\/div>
\nNew England heroes
\n<\/strong>“New England has a long history of people looking for justice, and I think it’s been passed down generation to generation,” says Civitron, who was born in Boston and moved to New Bedford in sixth grade. He says the history, and even the East Coast’s Gotham City\u2013like architecture, makes New England a great place to hang a superhero shingle.
\nPerhaps that’s why the region is damn near overrun<\/em> with superheroes.
\nRecluse also calls New Bedford home. Clad in a studded rubber mask and a shirt with the white outline of a spider, he is a mysterious and elusive figure, true to his name. He does, however, agree to speak briefly with the Phoenix<\/em>.
\n“When I first started,” recalls Recluse, “I was doing patrols in one of [New Bedford’s] worst neighborhoods, the South End. A lot of drug dealers, a lot of gangs, and I got injured doing that. . . . I thought it was like the comic books, apparently. I don’t know what I was thinking. I tried to stop three people from breaking into a house and I got thrown off the porch and landed on my shoulder, so I learned a lesson there.”
\nSince then, he says, he has taken a more careful approach, hitting the streets as a dynamic duo with a trained martial artist who calls himself Bushido (Japanese for “way of the warrior,” and the name of the moral code the samurai lived by). While combing the streets for crime, he wears street clothes \u2014 and a ballistics vest.
\nRecluse, too, has been donning plainclothes of late, “trying to observe and report more,” he says. “I knew Bushido way before I ever donned my Recluse mask; he saw what I was doing and he wanted to do it as well. We patrol from a vehicle with a video camera and only get involved if it’s an immediate danger to someone or someone’s property.”
\nBasilisk, inspired by Batman, cruises around the Taunton area. You’ll recognize him as the guy wearing a trench coat, goggles, a hood, and gloves. He met Civitron online, and the two now meet regularly to get coffee and discuss life, or to go look for wrongs to right.
\nBasilisk says he views himself as “a servant of the people. I take this goal very seriously,” he says. “Basically I want to be myself and I want to make a difference.”
\nIf any bad dudes venture farther north, specifically in the Lewiston and Auburn area of Maine, they’ll be entering Slapjack’s turf. Slapjack says he first adopted his persona for the online role-playing game City of Heroes<\/em>. But after hearing about other real-life superheroes, he decided it was time for his character to move from the virtual world to the real streets to watch for crime and help with charity work.
\nHis look is inspired by the classic comic-noir hero The Shadow. They both wear a fedora and trench coat, and Slapjack has a mask with a spade and a diamond over the eyes. He sometimes carries metal-framed playing cards that can be tossed like throwing knives.
\n“Slapjack is the complete opposite of who I am,” he says, reflecting on his costumed persona. “I’m a really happy-go-lucky type of guy. I am very social and open, and Slapjack is like the darker personality. He is more secretive, more opinionated, he’s let his mind go and it really is like a Clark Kent\/Superman or Bruce Wayne\/Batman type of thing.”
\nThere are numerous other heroes in the region. Among them: The Beetle of Portland, Maine, who couldn’t be reached for comment; someone calling themselves “Samaritan” from Providence, who recently contacted Civitron, and said he had been walking his beat for the last couple years, unaware of the larger RLSH movement; and the retired Ms. Kismet of New Bedford, whose MySpace page notes that “I carry a backpack, which hold[s] a great number of useful superhero things, like . . . alcohol-based hand sanitizer (it does the trick without promoting bacteria resistance).”
\nInstrument of the people
\n<\/strong>Civitron’s heroic name comes from the Roman civi<\/em> (of the people) and the Greek suffix tron<\/em> (instrument), and describes how he sees himself. He is of Puerto Rican and Italian decent, with the build of a runner and someone who takes his martial-arts training seriously.
\n“Something I say all the time is that I’m not really Civitron alone,” he tells me later by phone, as he watches over his neighborhood. “Civitron is a creation of everybody in my life who helped me get to this point.”
\nThis eclectic hero-forming collective includes Civitron’s mom, whom he credits with teaching him to be a strong person, but not a “tough guy.” “He’s always wanted to save the world,” she says.
\nCivitron’s partner, Jennifer, is also supportive of him. Their six-year-old son has even adopted his own superhero persona, Mad Owl, complete with a brown-and-gold owl costume.
\nBut other than the father and son having secret identities, the three actually seem like a pretty normal family. Jennifer goes to school for biology. Civitron \u2014 who has a very warm, Zen-like personality, almost constantly smiling \u2014 has worked as a counselor, and currently is involved with a day program for autistic patients.
\nWhereas many comic-book superheroes are reviled in their communities, Civitron has legions of fans. They include the former RLSH Green Sage, a friend from New Bedford who has retired his own hero costume but still supports Civitron’s efforts, and Tem Blessed, a positive-message rapper from Providence who has collaborated with Civitron on a food drive. The two plan to work on projects together in the future.
\nCivitron says his first meeting with his sensei, Rebelo, was in a comic-book store. Rebelo is proud of Civitron and his colleagues.
\n“His actions make others aware that they can act heroically, too,” says Rebelo. “Helping a food pantry, picking up litter, distributing food and clothes to the poor \u2014 these are actions that so many people have given up on. You hear so much about not being a snitch, about not getting involved. There’s a famous quote from Charles Barkley, ‘I’m not a role model.’ Civitron is saying the opposite<\/em> of all that \u2014 that he is<\/em> a role model. He wants to be involved and do something positive.”
\nDon’t expect the New Bedford Police Department to build a bat-signal anytime soon, though.
\n“We prefer to be the only costumed crime fighters out there,” says Lieutenant Jeffrey Silva, a police spokesman. He says the department is aware of real-life superheroes, but they have yet to cross paths with them.
\n“Although they might be well-intentioned, we don’t endorse citizen patrols, because we don’t know the level of training,” says Silva. Even so, he concedes that any help to police is welcome.
\n“Anytime someone wants to get involved and help police, we see it as a good thing, so long as they don’t work without police participation. We prefer people to be the eyes and ears of the police.”
\nBut what about the strange costumes?
\n“Well, fortunately, we’re not the fashion police,” states Silva.
\nSo what is the payoff for dressing as a superhero and running through dark and dangerous alleyways in the moonlight? Slapjack says that the realization that he is trying to do something positive is his reward.
\n“Knowing that you are going out there and being proactive and helping makes you feel good about accomplishing something,” says Slapjack. “My father always said, ‘No matter how bad your life, no matter how hard, there is always someone a lot worse off than you are.’ I always took that to heart, and use that as motivation to be better and do good.”
\n“I just see myself as someone trying to make things better,” agrees Recluse, “and I hope that people see me as that.” As for Civitron, he says being a father is a reason he wants to make the world a better place.
\n“I’ll be satisfied in the end if I’m just perceived as doing my part,” he says, “contributing to society and making my community better. I like being real and living my truth.”
\nFor more information, visit the Web sites\u00a0superheroesanonymous.com<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0reallifesuperheroes.org<\/a>. Tea Krulos is a freelance writer from Milwaukee. He can be reached at teakrulos@gmail.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Move over, Clark Kent. All over New England, mild-mannered citizens are suiting up and doing their part to play the hero.
\nBy Tea Krulos from the Boston Phoenix<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11711,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8],"tags":[259,288,490,551,554,1060,1098,1355,1566,1762,1787,1824,1828,1841,1902,2181,2184,2275,2293,2320,2433,2477,2556,2606,2621,2648,3012,3018,3021],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rlsh.net\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1636"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rlsh.net\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rlsh.net\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rlsh.net\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rlsh.net\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1636"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rlsh.net\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1636\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rlsh.net\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rlsh.net\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rlsh.net\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rlsh.net\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}