by Seth Jacob
“Fight me. The only way that you can truly know a man, or in your case a disrespectful boy, is to face them in combat. If you are the Titanson, I will know.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me. Fight you? This is fucking ridiculous.”
My entire superhero career has been built on the foundation of a very simple rule: never fight villains that are more powerful than you. I learned my lesson when I put on a mask for the first time and got my ass handed to me by The Whimsy. If you want to survive as a superhero, you have to choose your battles carefully. You want to pick fights with villains that you know you can beat. These crimefighters that think they can go up against absurdly powerful villains by themselves because they have this childish, romantic idea of the “honorable” superhero? 99 times out of 100, they die. They die in horribly gruesome ways like having the valves of their heart turned intangible by The Immaterial Man. They end up torn limb from limb and burned to death by people like Dragon General. Always fight villains that are weaker than you. Trust me, if you want to have a lengthy superhero career, you don’t want to be a hero.
“Okay, Anhur. Let’s do this,” I said to Anhur, and every rational part of my mind was wailing in protest. Agreeing to fight Anhur, a man who could juggle airplanes like ping pong balls, was an insane violation of my one simple rule, but I just couldn’t help myself. If he knew anything about my father and whoever had taken the box that held his life’s work, then I just had to know what it was.
“Ha! Don’t worry, boy, I shall go easy on you. By the end of the night, you’ll only be in a hospital and not a grave.” Anhur was filled with glee, and he practically skipped over to the Silver Scribe to set up the fight. I started sweating bullets as I watched him demand that the Silver Scribe arrange a match immediately. The surrounding superheroes erupted into a frenzy of placing bets on Anhur. Crystallor had a look of horror on his rocky face. My heart was pounding in my chest like a jackhammer and I could barely register what was going on around me.
Before I could get a chance to come to my senses and back out of the fight, I was ushered through the crowd of clamoring superheroes and towards the ring in the center of the room. I saw Crystallor angrily arguing with Silver Scribe as I was pushed through the open gate of the ring, but Silver Scribe had already taken his bets and he wasn’t calling off the fight. I stepped onto the blood-spattered rubber padding of the ring, and Anhur followed me in. He closed the gate behind him, and the light of a force field flowed through the fence like a wave as the door slammed shut. Some minuscule part of my mind realized that the fence surrounding the ring was reinforced with a force field that kept the destructive, superpowered cage fights from demolishing the building.
Anhur stood in front of me relishing the borderline hysteria of the cheering crimefighters around us. Anhur looked like he lived for this. He started twirling his spear around and shouting back at them and pumping up the crowd even more. I suddenly felt a stifling heat in the room and I couldn’t catch my breath. There was an unbridled joy in Anhur’s eyes as he soaked up the fervor of the audience, and then he abruptly stopped his terrifying, guttural screaming that was riling up the spectators. The room quieted down slightly, and Anhur pointed the blunt end of his spear at me. He just looked me right in the eye, and that moment seemed to stretch out for an eternity.
Then Anhur charged at me and swung the blunt end of his spear at me. I instinctively leaned back and out of the way of the wooden rod, and Anhur backhanded me in the face with his free hand. I was thrown from my feet and against the force field infused fence which lit up with pulses of energy as I slammed into it. I fell back down onto the rubber padding of the ring and I felt like I had just been hit by a bus. Anhur laughed that booming laugh of his, and then he swung at me again with the spear like he was trying to hit a home run and I was the baseball.
I quickly sidestepped out of the way, and that first hit to the face had jostled all the shock out of me. My mind was racing, I was desperately trying to come up with a way out of this situation I had foolishly stepped into as Anhur viciously swung his spear at me again. I jumped over the spear and pivoted in mid-air to dodge as Anhur threw a punch at me. I landed on the rubber mat and I jabbed at Anhur’s midsection while he was over extended from his punch, and it was like bashing my fist against a brick wall. Anhur laughed again, and this time the crowd of superheroes outside the ring laughed too as I pulled back my fist in pain.
Anhur continued cackling as he started to rapidly swing his spear at me again and again like he was a blindfolded kid at a birthday party trying to beat the candy out of a pinata. I jumped and ducked and dodged out of the way of his wild swings, Anhur was starting to get frustrated by my superior speed and agility as I danced around him, he angrily raised the wooden rod high above his head and brought it down so fast and so hard that I was barely able to bounce out of the way. It slammed into the floor, the blue rubber padding where it struck disintegrated, and the concrete below the padding cracked in a spider web pattern. One blow as powerful as that would definitely knock me out cold, and probably pulverize a few bones in the process. I realized that my only option was to fight Anhur like The Whimsy fought me all those years ago. I was much weaker than him, but taking advantage of my speed was my only chance to end this fight without an obscene hospital bill.
Anhur tossed his spear aside, and I could tell that he wasn’t treating this like a joke anymore. He started throwing punches at me with such ferocity that I was having trouble bobbing out of the path of his massive brown fists. My superhuman reflexes were much sharper than Anhur’s, but every one of his incredibly powerful punches was proving to me that he was easily the strongest person I had ever fought in my life. He missed me with a left hook that connected with the cage, the force field burst into blinding light from the sheer power of the punch, and the shockwave knocked me to the ground. The crowd roared, the wind was knocked out of me, and Anhur raised one of his sandaled feet like he was going to stomp the life out of me.
I rolled out of the way right as Anhur’s foot crashed onto the rubber mat with a bang like cannon fire. I sprung to my feet, maneuvered to the side of Anhur before he could react, and just started pummeling him in the rib cage with rapid fire punches. I put everything I had into that flurry of punches. I hit Anhur’s nearly invulnerable midsection as many times as I could in the minuscule window of time I had before he could react, and after I had landed at least a dozen strikes, each of which could have punched a hole in a sheet of steel, my knuckles were on fire like hot, ground up glass had been injected into my fists. I poured all my strength and speed into that series of body shots…but when it was over, Anhur slapped me away from him and I fell back up against the fence. It was clear that he was barely fazed by my shower of punches. At best, he looked slightly annoyed.
“I am supremely disappointed in you, Spectacle Titanson. I was looking forward to a challenge, not a coward leaping away from me.” Anhur knelt down and picked up his spear. I was backed up against the force field infused cage wall, and the last thing I needed was for Anhur to pick up his little beating stick. I knew I couldn’t keep dodging him in these close quarters for much longer, and that spear dramatically increased his reach. I had to try to stall.
“Oh, so now you believe I’m the Titanson?” I asked. Anhur chuckled at this, and he rhythmically slapped his spear in his hand as he walked towards me.
“Perhaps.”
“Oh, okay. Well, then I’ve proved my point with this fight, haven’t I? I accept your forfeit graciously, oh Anhur, Mighty Slayer of Enemies.” Fury washed over Anhur’s face like the flooding water of the river Nile, and I immediately regretted being such a smart ass.
Anhur feinted left, and I started to move out of his way when he slammed the side of his spear into my shoulder from the right. The pain was so incredible that my whole world almost went black, the fabric of my costume jacket was shredded where the wooden rod struck me, and I fell to the rubber mat.
“I must say, Spectacle Titan
son, you put in a good fight…but the time has come for me to end that fight.” I crawled away from Anhur as he ambled towards me, and the crowd around the cage lost their minds.
Even I was pretty sure that Anhur was about to give me a considerably bad concussion and finish this joke of a fight. I clawed at the rubber mat to pull myself away from him, and something fell out of my jacket pocket through the huge tear in its fabric. I was exhausted and wracked with pain on the right side of my upper body, so it took me a second to recognize the thing as it slipped through the hole in my jacket and fell onto the rubber mat.
It was my father’s Golden Sling. When Ultra Lady gave it to me months ago, I put it in my costume jacket pocket and forgot it was even there. I grabbed the sling and a piece of concrete debris from the small crater that Anhur had made when he brought his spear down on the floor earlier. It was a longshot, but as I got to my knees and looked up at Anhur preparing to crack me in the face with the blunt end of his spear, I knew it was the only option I had left. I slipped the shard of concrete into the leather patch, Anhur thrust his spear towards my head, and I swung that Golden Sling around like my life depended on it. I let go and fired that rock at Anhur’s face with all the superhuman strength that I had left in my beaten body.
The shard hit Anhur’s forehead and exploded into a fine mist of gray sand. He missed me with the spear by centimeters, I felt the wooden rod graze my hair, Anhur looked dumbfounded as little flecks of concrete fell off of his dust covered forehead, and the audience gasped. Anhur pulled back his spear, presumably to try to pound me in my beautiful face again, and then he went a bit cross-eyed. He raised a hand to his forehead, and a little bit of blood oozed out of the spot where I had nailed him with the rock. Anhur looked at his blood covered fingers in absolute disbelief, and then he looked down at me. I looked up at him with a sheepish grin.
“This is…no one…no one has spilled god-blood since the last great Horus War. I…I forfeit! All hail Spectacle Titanson!”
Anhur grabbed me and hoisted me to my feet. He thrust my arm up into the air, which hurt like a bitch given the fact that he had just bashed the shit out of my other shoulder, but I didn’t think that was exactly the right time to complain.
“All hail Spectacle Titanson, son of Jack Titan! All hail Spectacle Titanson, the second coming of the Man of Myth! All hail the Mighty Spectacle, he who draws blood from gods!” The entire crowd of superheroes groaned in collective disappointment. A lot of them were downright furious with this result and boos filled the small room. Clearly, not many of them had bet on me.
“Whatever you say, man,” I spit out through a bleeding smile, and Anhur helped me hobble my way out of the cage.
“I haven’t seen a mortal wield a sling like that since, well, since your father and I met, all those years ago,” Anhur said as he helped me out of the cage and down the steps. I was struck by the sincere nostalgia in his voice.
“Are you out of your goddamn mind? What the hell is wrong with you? Are you trying to get yourself killed?” Crystallor said as he clomped up to me with his giant, quartz feet through thick clusters of superheroes who were complaining to Silver Scribe about the outcome of the fight.
“Your friend fought honorably, Crystal Golem! You should be proud to call yourself a comrade of the Titanson,” Anhur ruffled my hair with one of his giant brown hands that he had just been trying to break my skull with only minutes earlier.
“So…you were close with my dad, or…?”
“Ah yes, our bargain. I did know your father quite well, Titanson. Our battle has shown me that you are truly his rightful heir, and I would be honored to tell you the stories of Jack Titan’s greatness. The Man of Myth was like a brother to me, and his son deserves to know the truth.”
Anhur launched into a series of stories while we watched several more superhuman brawls. In the Flasked Crusader, Jane sold me pretty lies about my father like he was a saint in a golden mask. Anhur didn’t bullshit me at all. In fact, despite lying about being the Egyptian god of war, the man didn’t seem to be capable of saying anything other than exactly what was on his mind.
He told me about their first team up in the early 60’s against Mistress Gorgon, and how Jack Titan’s sexual relationship with the serpent haired woman almost got the both of them imprisoned in a block of her supra-stone. He told me about how he had actually invited Jack Titan to be a founding member of the Superb 6, but he flat out refused because he thought “this superhero team thing is never gonna take off”. He told me about their battles with The Shill and his gang of corporately sponsored hench-CEOs, and how Jack Titan’s incessant goading of The Shill caused him to launch a targeted advertising campaign that made the general public believe that the Man of Myth was a cross-dressing communist. He told me about the countless times that Jack Titan dealt with The Punster’s psychotic schemes, and he told me how much my father hated that pun obsessed supervillain. Anhur told me that he thought Jack Titan’s boundless hatred of The Punster impaired his judgment, and maybe even fueled the fire of their rivalry when it could have just fizzled out, if only he would have let it.
Anhur told me hours of stories about my father, and the man he described wasn’t a flawless hero like the sugar coated legend that Jane used to distract me. Anhur painted a picture of a man whose personal neuroses kept him from being the A-list superhero that he could have been, a man who was as manic, as obsessed with fighting crime, as the supervillains were with committing crimes. Yet there was clearly admiration in Anhur’s tone, there was an appreciation for “a cleverness on par with Odysseus,” “more courage than Achilles could muster in a lifetime,” and something else, an inherent goodness that Anhur tried to convey to me but ultimately failed to put into words. In spite of all his faults, Anhur really did believe that my father was a good man.
Chapter 8: Preservation Devastation
I’m not much of a comic book guy. I’m not much of a reader in general, but I do enjoy some indie comics from time to time. When you spend most of your nights hanging out with people in masks and capes and getting into superpowered fistfights, you pretty much lose all interest in reading superhero comics in your free time. So I’ve been to a few comic book stores to pick up a non-superhero related comic or two, and seriously, Specialized Comics might be the worst place to buy comics in the known universe.
The store is poorly lit. There’s one fluorescent light that works, and the rest of the light in the place leaks in through the cracks of the blinds covering the windows. As soon as I stepped into the store, my nose was blasted with the scents of decaying paper, musty, never vacuumed carpets, and cat piss. The culprit responsible for the cat piss, a morbidly obese black cat, sat on a long box of comics and stared at me like I couldn’t be any less welcome in his territory. No one was behind the counter, which was a cluttered mess of superhero action figures posed as if they were fighting to the death. There were also toys still in their original boxes stacked on the glass counter, preserved in plastic and cardboard like prehistoric insects in amber.
Anhur had confided in me that Specialized Comics was a front for a black market super-tech dealer and ultra-engineer, “The Specialist,” the same guy who regularly repaired his spear. After our long and enlightening conversation about my father, Anhur let me know that if anyone in the city knew about the sale of any of the stuff in my father’s trophy room box, it was the Specialist. I walked around Specialized Comics and looked at the dusty shelves of superhero comics. There wasn’t a single indie comic outside of the cape genre. It was very difficult to believe that this dump really concealed some supervillain’s weapons trade operation.
One row of comics in particular stood out to me. It was an entire section of comics that were about superheroes that I actually knew. I was aware that The Millennials licensed out our team name and likenesses to a comic book company, and I had seen pictures of the cover artwork before, but I had never actually seen a copy in person. I picked up The Millenials #56, encased in a plastic bag with
a rectangle of white cardboard keeping it rigid, and I was extremely amused by the cover. The cover depicted a much more kid friendly version of us, and we were fighting Captain Haiku who looked genuinely menacing, when in reality he was an ineffectual buffoon. The cover read, “Captain Haiku and his Syllabullies March to War!!!,” and that triple exclamation point was seriously on the cover. I swear I didn’t add that in there.
“That issue is actually kind of an investment. A major character dies in that one,” someone said behind me in a nasally voice. I turned around and saw a short, skinny man in his mid 30’s. He was balding, had a scraggly goatee that looked like the facial hair on his chin never really filled out, was wearing a t-shirt two sizes too big for him with a Beyond Man symbol on it, and he reeked of onions.
“Oh jeez…I didn’t recognize you from behind. It’s so cool to meet you Spectacle, so awesome that you’re in my store. My name’s Neil,” he wiped his onion ring grease covered hand off on his cargo shorts, and he extended it to me to shake. I shook his hand and made a mental note to wash my gloves later.
“Thanks, nice to meet you Neil…you said someone dies in this issue? I actually remember this fight with Captain Haiku and you know, no one died…and also, his ‘Syllabully Army’ was like five henchman. Not that much of an army, really.”
“Ah well, the sales on The Millennials have been pretty bad. I mean, no offense. They probably wanted to bump up their numbers a bit by killing off a character, make things a little more exciting you know?”
“Sure, I guess.”
Neil was staring at me in a really weird way as I put The Millennials #56 back on the shelf and started looking at some of the other titles. It was really distracting. I tried to evaluate some of the other books like Doc Hyper #305, an issue featuring the original Doctor Delusion, and Ultra Lady #107, which showed the superheroine teaming up with Queen Quantum. I couldn’t concentrate on the colorful covers with Neil’s bulging eyes aimed at me.