by Seth Jacob
“This isn’t fair. I created a pun masterpiece for you to die in, and you don’t utter a single word? This whole goddamn thing was about words!” The Punster punctuated each sentence with punches to my face, and I drifted in and out of consciousness. All I had to do was let him burn himself out.
“This isn’t how the game is played!” The Punster hit me again and again and again, and every punch was weaker than the one before it. All I had to do was stay alive long enough for the SUHP to run its course. All I had to do was keep my eyes open just a little longer.
“…just say something…” The Punster begged, and he raised a swollen fist that was cramping up into a knobby claw. He lobbed it at my face, and I swatted it aside.
The Punster had come down from his SUHP high. He flopped against my chest and clutched at me to stay upright. He was just a weak, crooked old man with frail, broken bones. It was over.
Finally, I said something.
“You’re going to prison. There’s nothing else to say, Punster.”
I grabbed him by the collar of his purple turtleneck, and I dragged him out of the circular room.
“Prison? Please. No one will testify against me. No jury will convict a nice senior citizen like me,” The Punster said as I pulled him through the narrow passageways that led to that circular shrine to my father. I felt extremely lightheaded. I couldn’t stay conscious for much longer.
“I’ve got money, Spectacle, I’ve got millions. I’ll get all the best super-criminal law attorneys. They’ll get me out of any charges you throw at me. They’ll say I’m a demented old man, they’ll say I didn’t know what I was doing…” The Punster said, and he kicked and struggled while I dragged him around the corners and turns and bends of the widening maze hallways. I had no idea where I was going.
“You walk out of here with me alive, and I’ll never stop, Spectacle. I’ll get out of prison eventually, and I’ll come for you. I’ll come for you and the people close to you, and I’ll never stop,” The Punster barked at me. Bloody spittle flew out of his mouth. I paused, and yanked him up towards my face.
“I’m not playing your game anymore, Punster. I’m done. You want to hound me for the rest of your miserable life? I don’t care. That’s on you,” I said, and my pulse pounded in my head as I spoke to him. The Punster saw that I was blacking out, and he smiled, but I saw something too. I saw a trail of my own blood on the floor.
“A clew,” I mumbled as the darkness slipped in at the edges of my vision.
The Punster kept ranting at me, he kept berating me and bargaining with me, but his voice faded to a dull hum. I followed my own bloody footsteps to the hallway of screens that glorified my own drunk face, I followed the red puddles across the artificial beach and past the birds sticking out of the painted wall by their beaks, I followed the trail through the SUHP fog filled corridor, I followed it up the stairs and out of The Punster’s labyrinth, I followed my blood all the way to the exit of Amaze Toys with The Punster in tow, and then, on the super-battle devastated streets, I lost consciousness.
There’s only so much a superhuman constitution can take.
Chapter 19: Renovation and Relaunch
The Kirby Museum of Superhero History was originally the Wertham Superhuman Correctional Facility. It was one of the first prisons designed during the superhero boom of the 60’s, when SUHP was popularized and spread throughout the nation like a virus. Millions of people were taking this new drug, to expand their consciousness and transcend their physical limitations with temporary superpowers, and a tiny but significant percentage of these soupheads unlocked their dormant superhuman potential. Thousands of superhumans were being born every year. The Wertham Superhuman Correctional Facility was built to deal with these people. It was constructed to imprison some of the most physically powerful people who ever lived in a time when society was new to superheroes, when we didn’t yet understand what it meant to be superhuman. The building stood for half a century, and we tore it down in half an hour.
It took over a year, a lot of bureaucratic red tape, and an extremely generous donation from the Superb 6 charity foundation, but they rebuilt the museum. This time, it wasn’t constructed to incarcerate newborn superhumans whose only crime was not knowing how to control their abilities yet. It wasn’t built to lock up soupheads whose powers were only temporary, who sobered up in prison cells and served out hard, long sentences because we still had more misconceptions about SUHP use than truth. This time, it wasn’t built on a foundation of fear. This time, the Kirby Museum of Superhero History was built to remind us of our potential. It was built to show us the great and beautiful things we are capable of, to remember the terrible and horrific things we have done so that we might not repeat them, and to memorialize the fallen.
I was honored to be invited to the grand opening. When my father died, I probably wouldn’t have been able to get into the event as a plus one. Now, almost two years later, I was attending with The Millennials as a “special guest.” I was pretty surprised when I got the invitation in the mail, but I did make a modest donation of my own, so I guess I shouldn’t have been so shocked.
“Do you think he would have liked it?” Insight asked me as we stood in front of one of the museum’s new exhibits. It was called, “Jack Titan: A Life of Myth.”
“I honestly don’t know,” I said.
It wasn’t the largest exhibit. The exhibit dedicated to Beyond Man was at least ten times bigger. Queen Quantum had an entire floor for her royal gowns alone. But it was good enough for me. It was more than I ever thought would come of my donation to the renovated Kirby Museum of Superhero History. I donated that cardboard box marked “Trophy Room.” I kept the dozens of spiral notebooks that my dad wrote in, but I let the museum have everything else in that box. I expected them to use maybe one thing from it in a section of the museum devoted to obscure and forgotten superheroes. They used everything.
They had Jack Titan’s silver breastplate enshrined in a glass case in the middle of the exhibit like a centerpiece. They had several versions of his Golden Sling that showed the evolution of its design, from early on in his career when it was just a couple of scraps of fabric, to the end when it was a monogrammed, gilded weapon tailor made for his hand alone. They had his Golden Wreath in a little glass cube next to a copy of the newspaper with the headline that named him “The Man of Myth.” They even had all of his photographs arranged in a gallery along the walls.
There were dozens of the pictures that he collected in that cardboard box framed up on the walls with little metal plates giving you dates and information about them. It was a tour through costumed crimefighter history that showed a side of these people that we don’t get to see much of anymore. It showed that these people, these iconic superheroes who have saved the world more times than we even know about, they were all young and irresponsible once. Even the founding members of the Superb 6, they all liked to have fun, to be silly and reckless and party more than they should. They were just like the rest of us.
You could see Jack Titan posing with a souped out Sleight of Hand when he was still in his hippy, psychedelic wizard phase. There was a black and white photo of Doc Hyper and Jack Titan with their feet up on a coffee table at a Superb 6 after party, before the speedster had too many sneaker endorsement contracts to be caught drinking in public. There was even Jack Titan with his arm slung around Anhur, who hated to be photographed unless he was punching someone, both of them grinning and covered in ash after their first fight with Mistress Gorgon. You could see Jack Titan as a young man with the widest smile on his face. He was younger than me in a lot of these pictures. You could see him on the cover of Spandex Magazine, before he first fought The Punster, showcasing the rising stars of the superhero community. You could see my dad with so much promise and potential gleaming in his eyes behind his golden mask, before everything went bad for him.
“I didn’t really know him,” I said, and Insight leaned her head against my shoulder.
�
�I’m sorry, I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation…wish I could turn down this Ultra-Hearing of mine, makes me feel like I’m constantly eavesdropping on everybody,” Ultra Lady said as she walked up to us with a champagne glass in her white gloved hand. The reception for the opening of the museum was going on all around us with hundreds of people, most of them superheroes in full costume, mingling and conversing. The opening ceremony for the New Kirby Museum of Superhero History was a big publicity event for the Superb 6.
“He would have absolutely loved this, Spectacle. You have to know that,” Ultra Lady said, and I believed her. Joe Metal looked at her with huge, starstruck eyes.
“Thanks,” I said, and Ultra Lady smiled before gliding back into the throngs of people.
She was so at home schmoozing and networking with the superheroes and press packed into the museum. It was easy to see how Ultra Lady became the youngest member of the Superb 6 in the team’s history. Not only was she incredibly powerful and talented, it seemed like she personally knew every single one of the costumed crimefighters and bloggers and journalists. She plucked the last shrimp wrapped in bacon off of a passing hor d’oeuvre tray at super speed, and then she hovered through the crowds back to us with a look on her face like she forgot something important.
“Hey, I just want to let you know, The Millennials have been getting the attention of the right people recently,” Ultra Lady said to us in a hushed voice.
“Really? I mean, uh, really. We’ve been killing it recently. That makes sense,” Joe Metal said, still starstruck out of his mind. He was so nervous that he was spilling champagne on his metal gauntlets.
“Yeah, really. Everyone in the Superb 6 has been really impressed. Insight, the way that you’ve gotten involved with the SUHP Addicts Anonymous program…all of the publicity you’ve done for the cause, the charity events for SUHP addiction treatment centers, the amount of awareness you’ve raised around SUHP abuse in interviews and podcasts with the way you’re willing to talk about SUHP so openly, not to mention the crazy amount of money you’ve raised…it’s really inspiring,” Ultra Lady said to Insight, who glowed with purple telepathic embarrassment at the praise.
“It’s not that big of a deal. I had a problem with SUHP. It was a real crutch for me. And helping people realize how serious an issue it is, it helps me stay clean, you know? It’s really nothing,” Insight said.
“Nothing? No, it’s really not nothing, at all. Sleight of Hand, he had a serious SUHP problem in the 60’s. He can’t stop talking about how excited he is about the work you’re doing, Insight,” Ultra Lady insisted.
“…Seriously? Sleight of Hand said that?” Insight asked, and her eyes lit up with radiant, purple energy as she got excited.
“Yeah, he did,” Ultra Lady said, and she waved to the retired Doc Hyper who she had just noticed across the room.
“And Joe, your social media experiment of streaming live video from the perspective of superheroes, almost all day, everyday…well, personally, I’m not a fan. But the Metal Network, your little website and app, you’ve got an absurd amount of people watching the superheroes you’ve convinced to strap cameras to themselves and stream video all day long. What is it now, a couple million subscribers?” Ultra Lady asked.
“4.78 million subscribers, but who’s counting,” Joe answered. He pretended to brush dirt off of his impeccably clean armor, and Ultra Lady laughed.
“Like I said, I’m not into it. I know the Metal Network’s whole gimmick is in its slogan, ‘Secret Identities Are Extinct’, but I still prefer a little privacy. Wait…you’re not filming this right now, are you?” Ultra Lady asked.
“Heh, no, we’re not live right now, Ultra Lady. But we could be if you want––”
“No no, that’s okay,” Ultra Lady said, and she clinked her champagne glass against Joe Metal’s armored shoulder.
“I’m personally not interested in putting my every waking moment on the internet, but the boys in the Superb 6 marketing department, they tell me that it might be the future of online superhero marketing,” Ultra Lady said. She started to say something, but then she hesitated. She glanced around to make sure that no journalists or superheroes were listening, and then she continued.
“Listen, don’t tell anyone about this, but the Superb 6 is expanding our membership. We haven’t done any press or made an official statement yet, but pretty soon we’re gonna be relaunching the Superb 6 under a new name and with a lot more teammates,” Ultra Lady said, and now she was practically whispering to us.
“That’s…holy shit, that’s unprecedented,” Joe Metal said.
“Yeah, keep this to yourself though. That whole thing with The Punster, the way that the Superb 6 didn’t see that he was uniting all of the major supervillains in one organized group, the way that we couldn’t spare resources at the time to deal with him…it was a real failure on our part,” Ultra Lady said, and she looked at me with remorse.
“It’s alright. I mean, we understood that you guys had to prioritize. The safety of the entire world takes precedence over some old dude who likes wordplay way too much,” I said.
“The Punster still writes me from prison, by the way. He sends me a postcard every month, like clockwork, with a new stupid pun. You think he’s still mad that I testified against him?” I asked sarcastically.
“He might be, he just might be, Spectacle,” Ultra Lady said, and she looked at me with those x-ray eyes in the strangest way, like she was equally surprised and proud at how much I had changed since she first went to see why Jack Titan’s son didn’t show up to his funeral.
“But that’s the whole reason the Superb 6 exists, to solve large scale problems like The Punster coordinating with all the major league supervillains. And if we can’t do that, then…well, we’re fucked,” Ultra Lady said, still in a hushed voice. Joe Metal was paying extremely close attention. He was more focused in that moment than I’ve ever seen him.
“That’s why we’re rebooting the whole Superb 6 franchise. We’re expanding the team to have way more than six members, so nothing like that can happen again. If The Punster can organize an army of supervillains, then we can organize an army of superheroes, right? We’re calling it the Superb Society. And The Millennials is on the shortlist of superteams we’re looking at for membership,” Ultra Lady said quietly.
“So keep doing what you’re doing. I’ll be in touch soon,” Ultra Lady said, she smiled, and then she floated back into the clusters of small talking superheroes.
“You should see your face right now, Joe,” I said.
“This is…I can’t even…” Joe stammered.
“I think she broke him, man,” Insight said, and she laughed.
“This is so huge. I know we shouldn’t get our hopes up or anything…I mean obviously it’s not a done deal yet…but this is sort of what we were always working for, wasn’t it? To be in the big leagues. To be serious, A-list superheroes,” Joe Metal said, and for once, he didn’t immediately return to scanning the social media feeds that his armor fed into his visual cortex. For once, Joe Metal was completely in the moment.
“Yeah. Mr. Mercurial would have said something funny or annoying right about now,” Insight said, and her head glowed with purple energy. You could cut the telepathic sadness radiating off of her with a knife.
“You’re right. He probably would have morphed his face into like, a cartoonish imitation of Beyond Man smoking a cigar or something, too. Wish he could be here for this,” Joe Metal said, and we were quiet for a moment.
“He wouldn’t want us to be sad though, that’s for sure. That silly son of a bitch would want us to celebrate this news. Let’s go to the Domino Mask. That’s what he would have wanted,” Joe Metal said.
“You’re right, Joe. There’s one more thing I want to see before we leave, though,” I said.
“I think I know which exhibit you’re talking about,” Insight said, and the telepathic sadness flowing from her instantly changed into a sort of peace of
mind, a sort of bittersweet sensation that might have been the kind of closure you’d feel at a particularly fitting funeral for a friend.
On the same floor as the Jack Titan exhibit, on the same floor that was dedicated to the many superheroes that fell in the line of duty, there was a metal statue of Mr. Mercurial. It was a little too tall. The color of the chrome they used was a bit off. And maybe his face was a little too angular…but they got his huge, silver smile right.
“I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him,” I said.
“You would have done the same thing for him,” Insight said, and her eyes blossomed with telepathic energy as I felt her read my subconscious mind. I honestly never thought about it, but that purple, telepathic gleam in her eye as she sifted through my subconscious told me that it was true. I would have died to save Mr. Mercurial. I miss him every day.
“Let’s get out of here, guys. Let’s head to the Domino Mask and talk about old times, and tell bad jokes, and be ridiculous and silly as fuck, in honor of Mr. Mercurial. That’s what that shiny clown would have wanted,” Joe Metal said, and he’ll never admit it, but I swear I saw a tear drop down onto that armor of his.
We had a lot of fun that night at the Domino Mask. We told a lot of stories about Mr. Mercurial, and the old days when we used to go to the Domino Mask almost every night. We didn’t drink as much as we used to when we were stupid kids still playing superhero dress up, when we were still too young to understand that being a superhero wasn’t all about partying as much as superhumanly possible, but we drank enough.
We drank enough to shake loose some stories about each other and Mr. Mercurial that kept us giggling until it hurt, like the time that Armadillotron tried to kill him with his armidillodrone swarm because he caught him sleeping with his girlfriend. Or the time that Mr. Mercurial was doing an impression of Supra that made everyone in the Domino Mask laugh their asses off, until Supra happened to walk up right behind him and tap him on his silver shoulder. We even listened to the rough cut of his comedy album, which he was working on before he died, and although some of his jokes were painfully bad, it was good to hear his voice again. That night at the Domino Mask, after hours of talking and laughing and remembering our best friend, I decided to write these memoirs.