Rant-Man's Notebook

By Jim "Rant-Man" MacQuarrie

Super-Heroes in the Real World

Every comic fan at one time or another wonders what would happen if a real super-hero were to appear. Then one does and everybody has a good laugh. Back in the 1970s, it was Captain Sticky. Today, it's Terrifica.

By day an ordinary office-worker named Sarah, by night the defender of single womens' virtue. Terrifica makes it her business to disrupt the machinations of men who would attempt to have their way with intoxicated women they pick up in bars. A guy buys drinks all night for some young lady, devotes all his charm and energy toward wearing down her defenses, finally talks her into coming to his apartment to "look at his etchings" as your grandpa would say, and then... DA DA DA DAAA!!! Terrifica appears on the scene, advises the young lady about the fellow's intentions, and talks her into going home alone. Seems to me that one of these men could sue her for the cost of the drinks.

It sounds to me like Terrifica has some serious issues, especially when she starts in about how weak and easily manipulated women are. One might be inclined to think that she's actually describing her alter ego and projecting that description onto all other women. But the really great thing about the Terrifica story is that she has an arch-enemy, known as Fantastico. You gotta love that.

Meanwhile, on the other end of the country, there's a Klingon Karaoke Bar. No, I'm not making this up.

We may have found the one bar on earth where Terrifica's services are not required. Perhaps that's only fitting. After all, both the lady and the bar accomplish the same result; men going home alone.

I kid.

Actually, I've been halfway hoping for real super-heroes to appear on the scene ever since that day back in the early '70s when the local paper ran a photo of Captain Marvel.

Funny how some things stay with you. I was a snot-nose kid who liked comics. Not just the ones that were down at the 7-11, I liked reading about the old ones. I was a nut for comics. It started when I sat on the floor at Young's Market and read X-Men #29, featuring the Super-Adaptoid and the Mimic. That was about the same time that Batman conquered television and made comics popular again. I checked out "All In Color For a Dime" from the library innumerable times. It's the definitive history of the Golden Age comics (1938-1950, more or less), and is must reading for anybody with an interest in the medium. I also stood in the B. Dalton Bookstore at the mall for hours on end ("hey kid, this ain't a liberry!") reading Jules Pfeiffer's "The Great Comic Book Heroes," which went a step beyond the other books by reprinting whole stories from the great old comics. Anyway, I was a nut for comics. Of course, the thought never entered my head that such things as super-heroes could really exist. Of course they couldn't. I was a nut, but I wasn't an idiot.

But then one day, I opened up the newspaper (the South Bay Daily Breeze, if you must know) and found a photo of Captain Marvel leaping heroically into the air. I hadn't yet read any of Captain Marvel's adventures, but I knew a cape and tights when I saw it. Here was a real super-hero in the morning paper!

It turned out to be a bit of a goof. There was this airline pilot by the name of William Marvel, and he'd just made Captain, so his next-door nieghbors, a pair of flight attendants (they called them stewardesses then), had made him a Captain Marvel costume to celebrate his new rank.

I was disappointed, of course, but the seed was planted. Super-heroes ought to exist. Unfortunately, they keep turning out to be Captain Sticky and Terrifica.

Sigh.

In other news, I won two Corries.

"What the hell is a Corrie?" I hear you cry. Fear not, I shall explain. There's this website I hang out at called Comic Book Resources. It's about comic books, but you probably figured that out. Anyway, for the last few years, the folks on the message boards and chatroom there have voted amongst themselves on various awards, and this time we snagged two of them.

Why "Corries"? Well, it's like this: When CBR first got started, it was just one board, centered around a then-current comic called "Kingdom Come" by Mark Waid and Alex Ross, a bleak vision of the eventual fate of the DC superheroes. The central character of the book is guided through the events, rather like Ebenezer Scrooge, by a mysterious supernatural being called the Spectre, an embodiment of the wrath of God, who is actually the resurrection of a murdered policeman named Jim Corrigan. The folks on the message board decided to name their award after Corrigan, and the rest is history.

Remember back in the summer when I talked about Camp CBR? Well, the CBR folk decided that my efforts in organizing that event warranted giving me the "Weilander Award" (named for Jonah Weiland, owner of CBR and the company hosting Monkey Spit) for "service above and beyond the call for CBR." It's very cool of them to do that, but the fact is my wife should get all the credit; she did all the work.

The other Corrie was the one awarded to Monkey Spit for being the favorite member site, that is the site owned and run by a member of the CBR Community. We beat out some great sites. Two that leap immediately to mind are Two-Headed Cat and Robot Fist. Both are great sites and very worthy of your attention. It's an honor to be named with them and deeply satisfying to win among such competition, a victory I can only ascribe to blatant corruption in the voting process. Get over to Two-headed Cat and Robot Fist! Tell 'em I sent you.

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