Here's a little bonus story for any reader out there looking for something escape into over the holiday season. This one's my love letter to comic-book creators, which I penned well before ever reading Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Klay. But if you like mysticism regarding inspiration and where ideas come from, or if you like comic-book lore or the writing of comic-book-famous writer Grant Morrison's trippy takes on archetypes and heroes or if you were a fan of shows such as the Twilight Zone or Amazing Stories, then this could be the yarn for you.
Because, really, where do these characters, and these ideas come from?
I try to answer that in "The Red Avenger Dies".
The Red Avenger Dies
By James K. Moran
Late one hot and sticky night, Ron
Philip killed Manson Groves.
He
had wanted to kill him for years, and finally, beer and nicotine and dopamine
swimming in his system, he did.
The task was easy, since he employed
his best weapons: the stub of an HB-lead pencil, a jar filled with greyish
water, a set of different-coloured paint brushes, and a Pink Pearl eraser he
applied for sentimental reasons. Finishing the heinous act, Ron leaned back
from his sheets of two-ply Bristol paper featuring panel boxes resplendent with
art.
“My God,” he said. “Finally.”
Manson Groves, aka the Red Avenger,
was dead.
Ron rubbed his eyes with his palms,
careful to keep his lead-and-paint smudged fingertips from his eyes. This trick
he learned years ago, sketching rudimentary comic book heroes with his boyhood
pal Jack Simon.
Ron sighed, his blood warmed by the
beer he had drained from the empty bottle on the side table.
Granted,
he thought, comic book characters don’t
retire for long. He knew this in his heart. Yet, Ron still hoped to lay to
rest his indelible contribution to the medium’s history just long enough to
retire from his corresponding 40 years in the business. Ron’s fingers, which
formed into a claw for his craft, sometimes ached, particularly after a
marathon drawing session. His peripheral vision was spotty. His right wrist and
his ring finger told him about forthcoming rain before the weather forecast
did.
But
his creation was beyond such pains after years of crime-fighting. The hero was
not fallen-out-of-the-panel-with-an- “Ahhhhhh...” dead. The hero was
mortally-wounded-and-shot-three-times-and-fallen-from-a-collapsed-building-after-defeating-the-Scrawler-and-saving-Pagegirl-Franky-Knox-who-then-finds-his-body-and-inherits-his-legacy-dead.
Ron
knew the rules; he had played with them for decades.
An
injury? Pshaw! Nothing! A bullet wound? Two? The hero would heal! A fall from a
five-storey building? He’d land in the nearest garbage bin. But all these
things, topped with collapsing beams, a fallen villain, a found body, and a
handed-down legacy? That could be the End.
No—it was the end, Ron thought.
He opened another beer, assessing
the sculpted abdominals, shaded pieces of wreckage and the rivulets of tears
shining on Franky Knox’s cheeks. Ron felt like he had just ended a forty-year
marriage that had soured somewhere in the middle years.
* * *
“Now, that was classic,” Carrie
Fanworth told Ron, rising from behind her managing editor desk. Her eyes, he
often thought, could seduce or reject anyone with a glance. “I haven’t seen
that sort of demise since the early 80’s.”
She leaned on her desk, close enough
for him to detect the scent of jasmine, something sweet, and also something
strong: coffee.
“Really.”
She held his gaze. “You know how I
am with compliments.”
“Sparing.”
“Miserly.” She tilted her head up.
“The Red guy’s a big property. I know he’s really your property, but it’s like, well, he’s taken on a life of his
own.”
“Not you too.” Ron groaned. “Jack’s
been on about that again...”
“What you fellas do on your own time
is no more my business than what I do at the Velveteen Habit on 14th Street every other Thursday.”
“Fair enough.” Ron pondered how
little he knew about Carrie outside of work, aside from her legendary drinking
bouts at the Velveteen Rabbit, the bar down the street.
“But the next time you decide to
expand your minds on a week off, I’ll definitely commission another Mandora
mini-series or a year-long Dr. Calgari story arc. The fan mail for both titles
was outrageous. If I open one more envelope that reeks of patchouli in this
lifetime...”
“Agreed.”
“But seriously, Ron. What did you
guys really do in the Mojave Desert
anyway?”
“Those are rumours.” Ron flashed
what he hoped was an enigmatic—and not lecherous—smile. “Let’s just say that
Steve Englehart and company have nothing on us.”
“Slouches,
all of them,” she replied. Carrie nodded toward the wall on her right side
displaying framed comic book covers. “Not like you have had much to show for
it.”
Quicksilver
Comics showed a proud history of sales and characters. The Tenebrous leered,
gimlet-eyed, from under his fedora in the 1940’s. Max Reeves, Detective,
wrestled a Nazi spy on the wing of a B-17 hurling toward a cliff. Aslavak! Heir
of the Vampires brandished his knife-like incisors before a semi-naked virgin.
Imigan the Traveller leapt at a scaly monstrosity in a misty land. Dorius posed
with one knee-high-boot planted on a pile of Greek soldiers, her mane of hair
whipping behind her. Wind Rider soared, propelled by his jetpack, while thugs
from the 22nd century pursued him. Omnivaxx, the Android Hero, swung
at a giant snake coiled around his steely torso. And the Mandora spun ropes
made of light around an evil sorcerer.
And
if you looked there, Boom!, you were back in the forties with gangsters. Or
Swish!, you coasted over an Arctic landscape in the fifties. Or Zap!, you were
drowning in the space-blasted mists of Jupiter. Or Wham!, you stood
shoulder-to-shoulder with the Red Avenger, staring down his nemesis, the
beady-eyed Scrawler, on the roof of a skyscraper, backing the fiend toward the
edge.
“Slouches,
no,” Ron said, breaking the weird spell the images always cast over him. He
looked at Carrie.
“You
work reminded me of the heart-and-soul type of stories around in the 40’s
before the Comics Code ruined all the fun,” she said, looking past him.
“Fast-paced, with consequence. Yet you resisted that temptation to be gritty or
sentimental.”
“A
starred review in Publishers Weekly,
then.”
“Don’t
get too cocky, now, kid.”
He
raised his eyebrows. Is Carrie
paraphrasing Star Wars?
“I
wouldn’t rule out the possibility of an Eisner Award,” she said. “Now let’s
talk about what’s next.” Carrie cleared her throat. “I’ll lay a clue on you.
The Red Avenger. He chases, dodges, flies by night...”
“...to
stop evil in its plight! Uh-huh?”
She
rolled her eyes. “Do I have to spell it out for you? The Scrawler is dead. His
evil metal gloves laid to rest because of the final battle.”
“Indeed.”
“There’s
only one problem.” Carrie ran her fingers along her temple, shrugging like she
and Ron shared an inside joke. “The Scrawler’s death is one thing. But the
Crimson Avenger’s is another. How are you going to convince your readers that
he comes back from all that?”
Thing is, I’m fine with
the idea of resurrecting the Red Avenger,
Ron thought, going out for lunch. I just
don’t want to be the guy who does it.
Ron
had to walk this thought out, and did. On the sunny sidewalk of the bustling
metropolitan street, he passed a kid, about eleven years old, wearing a Red
Avenger T-shirt. The “Flies by night!” phrase appeared in bold red letters
alongside a silhouette on a rooftop backlit by the full moon.
Ron
felt like someone was observing him, a discomfiting impression that he couldn’t
shake, glancing around at the passers-by on their way to their day’s
appointments, whether small victories or failures. Even a few minutes ago,
alone in the bathroom, wondering how Carrie would take his ultimatum about the
demise of his four-coloured ex-wife, Ron felt eyes on him from somewhere,
despite the empty stalls. He had stared himself down in the mirror. The Red
Avenger had always been married to Ron’s career and vice versa. Ron detected
that flowery hand soap scent he always liked. He practised saying I’m out, Carrie. Someone else can buy me out
and take over.
Ordering
his lunch, Ron felt no different about being scrutinized.
“What
can I get you, Ron?”
“My
regular, Marty.”
“Eh,
you got it, buddy. And that’s quite the thing you did in your latest comic. I
mean, even if not everyone liked the twist ending.”
“What
do you mean?”
“Well,
I read my boy’s, right? So he’s kinda upset about the whole thing. He thinks
the Avenger really died! Can you believe that? Nobody really dies in comics,
least that’s what I told him. I mean, I thought they killed off Captain Marvel
back in the 1980’s because of cancer and, man, I didn’t like that. Maybe that’s
a bad example.” Marty whistled a low note.
Does everyone read comics now? Ron thought.
Marty
poured coffee from a jar into a mug on the counter. Ron shifted his attention
elsewhere. Marty’s Deli was quiet, for which Ron was thankful. The unassuming
space of a few tables and large front window was the reprieve he needed.
Too
many people had approached him in the past, wanting autographed comics,
drawings, T-shirts or a quick sketch. In San Diego a few years ago, he and Jack
were overrun by hordes of fans. Some even stole souvenirs—a handful of HB
pencils, a dirtied napkin, and Ron’s nameplate from the signing table. Comic
book conventions became a nightmare of camera flashes and endless requests. His
hand would cramp up from the hours of signings or sketches. He felt like fans
were always pushing him for something more.
Ron
lit a cigarette, inhaled, and exhaled. Filling and emptying his lungs relaxed
him. The smoke rose and faded, he fancied, like clouds in a drawing. When his
cigarette was a stub, Ron extinguished the butt in an ashtray in front of the
counter. He had hoped it would be that easy, hadn’t he?
Behind
the glass counter, Marty assembled Ron’s food with an artist’s skill and
technician—rye bread, grainy mustard, piled high with pastrami, a side of wedge
fries, and a halved sour pickle.
“Here
you go, buddy,” Marty said, placing the lunch plate and coffee mug on the stainless-steel
counter.
Someone
cleared their throat behind him. With a glance, Ron saw that other clientele
had lined up.
Ron
was halfway back to the office when the panic attack seized him.
He
halted.
A
UPS truck pulled out of the delivery laneway on his left. Ron ducked in, placed
his palms hand against the cold concrete wall.
Just what am I doing
exactly? he thought.
Sometimes
he felt like he was creating in the void from where all things came from. Other
times, like now, he realized that many, many readers, like Marty for instance,
enjoyed his creation. Did he have a right to take its life, and rob them of
their pleasure?
Egomaniac,
he thought. Clarisse was right to leave
you. He took several deep breaths. His belly roiled, full of food and
coffee. But breathing helped. He stood upright.
A
voice sounded down the littered lane.
“Well,
if you’re not gonna’ give that to me, I’ll just take it.”
He
looked down the alley. A clean-cut, youngish man in denim and a bomber coat
spoke to a middle-aged woman.
She
shrank away, her purse strapped around her left shoulder. “I don’t think so,”
she rebuked. “Get away from me.”
She
saw Ron.
The
other man grabbed her purse strap. The short-haired man stood a foot taller
than her.
“Afraid
not,” he said, shaking his oval-shaped head. “I’ll take this off your hands.”
Ron
stepped toward them. He had drawn many shaven-headed, nose-pierced, tattooed,
leather-wearing criminals. But none of them looked so, well, average, he
realized.
Villainy has many faces,
he thought, cringing while quoting his own copy.
“Get
away from me!” the woman said, pushing the mugger.
“Jeez,
why you being so rough?” he replied. “Now I have to defend myself.” The thief
yanked her off balance, extracting the purse. She lurched forward.
The
man turned, clutching the purse to his chest with one hand. Now he saw Ron.
“What are you looking at?”
“You
want a second opinion?” Ron rebuked.
“Give
me back my purse,” the woman said with surprising firmness.
“What
she said,” Ron added.
The
mugger laughed, walking toward him. “Huh. Right.” His face changed. “Hey, I
recognize you. I saw your photo in a magazine. About the Red Warrior or
something.”
Ron
sighed. Media coverage had always been generous about his decades-old
hero. As an indirect result, strangers
often picked fights with Ron simply because he chronicled a courageous figure.
Still, he felt plenty courageous as the stranger closed in. He smelled onions
on the would-be thief’s breath.
“Give
me back,” the woman said, “my goddamn purse. Now.”
The
mugger raised his eyebrows, surprised. He switched to Ron.
“Finders
keepers, ‘Crimson Avenger’,” he said to Ron. “Come on, let’s see how tough you
are in real life.”
He
swung his free fist at Ron.
Returning
to work, after giving details to the arresting officer, Ron maintained that he
gave the mugger a chance to back out. But once the thief jumped him, Ron had
only to choose from a selection of defences. In the dive bars that he and Jack
used to frequent, he had practiced his other art.
He
passed through the double glass doors into the reception area. Carrie and a few
others waited for him at the front desk. Their applause was a little much.
“It
wasn’t enough publicity for you already, pal?” Jack Simon said, slapping Ron’s
shoulder. He stared impishly over the rims of his hip, rectangular spectacles.
The
rotund Harry Wilson stood back, grinning. “It appears no evil is safe!” he
cackled.
“You
told them?” he asked Carrie.
She
shrugged. “After you called to say why you were going to be late, it had to be
done. It’s not every day that our star creator stops someone from being
mugged.”
“She
held her own.”
“You
too,” Carrie said. “Besides, you don’t look as bad as I thought.”
“No?”
he replied, and she almost touched his tender left eye.
It
hurt to blink. Otherwise, he was in far better shape than his assailant. The
arresting officer had slapped Ron’s back. “Stops evil in his plight, eh?” said
the black, 275-pound sergeant with a grin. “But you coulda’ been hurt, sir.
Glad you weren’t.”
“Not
bad at all,” Jack said now, smiling ear to ear.
Carrie
poured Ron a glass of red wine. They all toasted him.
Harry
tittered over his tulip-shaped glass. “How’d you do it?”
“Oh, Ron and I did some martial arts training
back in the day,” Jack interjected with a wink. “Hey Ronnie—I called our
Aki-Jitsu teacher and told him.” He brushed a stray lock from his forehead. The
remainder of his greying hair he had tied back in a ponytail.
“Shaddup,”
Ron replied. “Just don’t tell Clarisse,” he added, referring to his third, and
most recent, ex-wife.
“Yeah,
it’s probably safer to tell our old teacher than to tell Clarisse.”
“Why,
you little...!” Ron lunged toward him. His half-glass of wine threatened to
spill over.
Jack
retreated, knocking over the standee of their trademarked hero.
“Whoops,”
Jack said, glancing at the decoration, his eyes huge and round. “Sorry there,
big fella.” He set the Red Avenger upright.
He
glanced at Ron. The culpable look on Jack’s face was too much. They both
laughed uproariously.
* * *
Ron
scrutinized the completed pages. The caped man in red tights gripped his right
shoulder. Nowadays, they called the muscle-hugging material Spandex, but Ron
missed calling them tights.
A
man’s shadow fell across the protagonist. “SURRENDER, AVENGER!” read the word
balloon stretching from the shadow’s head.
The
following panels were shot, counter-shot between the protagonist and
interlocutor.
“NO.
NEVER. NOT WHILE YOU’RE STILL...FREE.”
“HA!
HOW HEROIC. PATHETIC. YOUR SPIRIT NEVER BREAKS, DOES IT?”
“HOW
MANY PEOLE HAVE DIED BECAUSE OF YOU, SCRAWLER? HOW MANY INNOCENTS?”
“A
FEW SCORE. WHOEVER HAS STOOD IN THE WAY OF MY VISION. I STOPPED KEEPING TRACK A
FEW YEARS AGO. BUT NOW YOU JOIN THEM.”
In
the next panel, the Scrawler brandished a gleaming metallic glove and snatched
off the Avenger’s cowl.
“MANSON
GROVES?” the Scrawler exclaimed. “THE PHOTOGRAPHER? I’VE BEEN FIGHTING AN
INFERIOR ALL THESE YEARS? A JOE AVERAGE?”
The
red-clad figure stood in three cascading panels.
The
Scrawler swung at him, panel-for-panel, delivering a blow to the head, brow,
and stomach. By the fourth panel, the villain thrashed the Avenger against a
wall. In the fifth, back against the textured red brick, the Avenger caught the
Scrawler’s right fist.
“I’LL
NEVER GIVE IN TO NAZI SCUM LIKE YOU...”
The
Avenger pulled the Scrawler by the arm, slamming him face-first into the
brick.
The
Scrawler, stunned, palms against the wall, turned to the hero.
A
muscular arm rocketed from the dark shadow, without an accompanying sound
effect. The Scrawler reeled in still-life grimace.
In
real life, Ron rubbed his palms together. He had saved these last panels. After
all, they depicted the last appearance of a beloved flagship character and his
nemesis. Depending on how long the Scrawler stayed six feet under, these sheets
could be worth more than a commissioned piece, certainly.
Ron
removed the sheets from the board and set them on the side table beside his
ceramic ash tray, paintbrushes and coffee mug. He pulled out some blank drawing
panels.
Now what? he
thought. Take Carrie’s advice and
continue the legacy? Or tell her that the dream is dead? The dream of
making a hero so immersing that a reader would gladly pay a
dime-on-up-to-four-fifty for pulpy pages chronicling his exploits.
No, there is no Red
Avenger now, he thought. It was time to create a
new hero, a new gimmick, a new age. But what hadn’t the business done already?
Some young kids had already rebelled and left one of the two big houses to
start their own company.
But
Ron already knew the answer to the first question. Ron Philip would do what he
always did—what he loved.
He
closed his eyes, and breathed in memory, recalling the smells of tobacco,
chewing gum, and newsprint. If he tried hard enough, he could see Carl’s Smoke
Shop. Back then, though, he could barely see over the long storefront glass
counter filled with cigars and novelty whoopee cushions and rows of candy bars
and hard candy. At the back of the shop, in front of the magazine shelves, a
metal rack stood, displaying comic books. “Hey!! Kids, Comics!” proclaimed the
red-white-and-blue sign atop the rack. There, the 10-year-old picked up a title
and began his life’s great adventure.
A
bustling man in a red cape leapt to the rescue of the oppressed. That guy in
the bat-suit and dark cape confused him, though, because he was powerless, and
looked like a bad guy. Ronnie also adored the big green guy wandering the face
of the Earth, from Easter Island to Russia to Canada to China to the American
Southwest. He tried to stay out of fights, but someone always provoked him. He got
pretty mad about the whole deal sometimes. Still, the jade giant often helped
many people, his trademark purple pants torn always staying intact from the
knee upward.
Ron
didn’t do sports well, but he could read better than anyone in Fourth Grade.
So, while other kids played soccer or ran around at recess time, Ron preferred
an alternative three-colour adventure as a daring kid who could swing on
home-made web-lines from rooftops. So began his heady days of page-flipping,
word-balloon-reading and drawing-adoring.
“He
fights, dodges in his flight, to snatch a nap or fly a kite!”
At
the sound, Ron resurfaced from his past.
Jack
crossed the threshold of their shared studio. They divided their time between
here, Quicksilver Comics, and their own residences.
“Sorry
to interrupt,” Jack said, removing his coat and placing it on his chair in the
other corner of the room. He saw the sheet. “Reconsidering?”
Ron
glanced at the paper. A sketch of the Avenger’s battered fist emerged from a
pile of wreckage. The sleeve was shredded to the elbow.
How did I do that without
knowing? he thought.
“Oh,”
Ron said. “I’m planning on...“
“...I
know. Keeping him dead. Tell Carrie yet?”
Ron
scowled. Jack, despite his hippie demeanour, knew how to ask Ron the toughest
question.
“Didn’t
think so,” Jack said. “I’m guessing that your recent heroics bought you a few
days’ grace, tops. She’s going to want something soon.”
Ron
sighed heavily.
Jack
placed a magazine on Ron’s side table. “You see this?” The Red Avenger’s stoic
profile filled the Time Magazine cover.
“Sure
did. All six pages.”
The
feature writer had done an admirable job, too. They succinctly ran down the
hero’s late 1930’s/early 1940’s heyday, his reinterpretation for the
straight-laced mid-1950’s, the psychedelic 1960’s, risqué 1970’s, and grim
1980’s. Hitting all the right cultural notes, the reporter returned to the
current, widely popular “demise story arc”. “Has this four-colour icon finally
met his end?” the reporter wrote. “Have his adventures, too, ended? Previous comic
book legends have, with few exceptions, passed on only to return in new
incarnations and, in turn, produce record sales. On that note, this journalist
withholds judgement until the next issue.”
“It’s
something to think about,” Jack said. “The sales on the ‘death issue’ broke
records. It’s probably the biggest single-issue print run sellout since that X-Men comic.”
“When
they killed off Jean Grey?”
Jack
nodded, waited a moment. “You sure you want to do this? It’s been a good ride,
Ronnie.”
Ron
was silent, a time-proven counter-technique with Jack. He glanced at the framed
comic book above his desk, a golden age Red Avenger issue. The scarlet figure
clutched a panic-stricken villain by their lapels. At the bottom of the
illustration, white lock letters declared ‘NOW EVIL HAS NOWHERE TO HIDE!’
Jack
stood beside him. “Buy you a pint at the Rabbit?” he asked.
At
the ”Habit”, Jack switched tact on their third round. They sat in a corner
across from the bar under dim lights. The stereo played “Don’t Fear the
Reaper”.
Jack
watched Ron over the rim of his martini glass. “That reporter was fishing for
details about our little retreat a few years back, you know.”
“What
else is new?” Ron had long since established a rule with reporters—what he and
Jack did during their famed week away was off the record.
“Did
you say anything about our ‘Mojave Desert Escapade?’” He quaffed back his pint
and motioned to the passing bartender to bring another.
Jack
smiled with his eyes only. “Not a thing. Twenty years back, it was a great
publicity stunt to say that. Boosted sales, piqued reader interest. Hell, they
treated us like rock stars at conventions...”
“...a
record amount of fan mail from the hippie set rolled in,” Ron said with a
smile.
Little do they know that
we never went near any desert, Ron thought. But the rest is true. We started in-town,
then visited a remote cottage. You’ve
never been the same, friend. Doubt I have, either.
“I
know that look, Ronnie.” Jack glanced around. A few pretty women in their
mid-twenties, in skirts and blouses, passed behind him en route to the
restroom. He leaned forward. “Because I thought I had a cosmic glimpse into the
creator-creation symbiosis, that the things we create, our art, could possibly
live and breathe in another parallel universe. That what we perceive as our
‘art’ is, in fact, an alchemic deal struck with the Creative Well of Infinite
Time...”
“I
know, I know.” Ron winced. He had cringed the moment Jack had first uttered his
theory.
Back
then, they peered with blood-shot eyes at the lake. The sunrise kissed water,
water kissed sun. It was impossible to discern between the two. Marijuana,
peyote and beer swam in their bodies.
Ron
only remembered waking about the same time as Jack. They were wrapped in the
cocoon of a two sleeping bags zipped together, Jack peering at him mystically.
“What?”
Ron asked fuzzily.
“Did
you ... did you just experience what I did?” Jack said, his face alight, his
eyes wild.
Ron
could only nod.
“What
... just what in the hell was that?” Jack asked.
Ron
sat up, shifting the sleeping bag they passed out in. But the hard wooden
planks of the deck underneath him had afforded Ron comfort as though he had
slept on a feather bed.
“Where
... the hell were we?” Jack asked.
The
pleading in his voice was such that Ron must answer, immediately. Still, he
delayed. He snatched the water bottle from beside him, then a third-full bottle
of whiskey. He returned both to Jack.
“We
were, we were in the—well—in the place where it all comes from,” Ron said.
Under
his eyelids swam visions. Contortions of energy, vivid and alive, sprang and
decanted from a source beyond known Physics. He had danced with them. Danced
with Jack, too, he remembered, grinning.
“A...
a creative Well of Infinite Time,” Jack replied, handing the bottle back. The
bottle clinked in Ron’s palm. “The place of all ideas that have ever been. Ever
will be.” A hysterical whisper.
He
knew this was true. But Ron was already feeling rooted to the cold dock. Birds
piped far off. The morning dew sprinkled his brow.
They
had seen where ideas come from, and returned, changed. Part of the energy was
in him, now, he knew. He must create and share it. The ideas, the swirling
ideas and dancers and prism-ranging ideas, had asked him as much. But he
couldn’t articulate this thought.
He
shivered and looked down. He was butt-naked.
Jack
scurried out. He too was naked and leapt up and released a manic holler of joy.
Ron
snatched up his nearby clothes, in a heap, and dressed. He stood up.
Without
hesitation, he and Jack embraced, two wanderers back from a journey, one still without
clothes, but carrying the trip with them still.
From
the pit of his gut to his slowly beating heart, Ron felt changed. He could not
predict that his newfound outlook would alter him, from how he framed a panel
to how he felt about his marriage.
Jack,
sitting across the table at the Velveteen Rabbit, confirmed Ron’s idea from
that morning. But this confirmation rattled Ron then almost as much as now.
Admittedly,
Ron never felt as alive as when the Red Avenger did. Once, an enemy poisoned
Manson Groves. Groves needed a week to recover. Likewise, Ron took a week of
sick leave to shake off a debilitating flu.
“I
still believe it, Ronnie,” Jack muttered.
“I
know.”
“If
you...“
The
goateed bartender placed Ron’s beer on the table and left.
“...if
you kill him, I don’t know what’ll happen.” Jack’s eyes glistened. He looked at
the sugared rim of his glass. “Tell me, Ronnie, why don’t you ever want to talk
about this?”
Ron
drank, realizing he too was leaning forward conspiratorially. “It scares me,
frankly. And I don’t know what’ll happen. What it would even be like to live
without this character.”
Jack
stared at him long enough for the Grateful Dead to finish the song. The Verve’s
“Bittersweet Symphony” started up.
Finally,
Jack nodded. “Good, Ronnie. Good.” Jack sighed and crossed his arms. “So ...
who will the Wind Rider team up with instead?”
Ron
laughed so hard that he snorted up lager.
* * *
Ron
heard Carrie from several desks over, swooping between the workspaces, an F-15
jet fighter flying close to ground, ready to let loose bombs.
“Alright,
I want this shortened by four o’clock. And take out the profanity.”
“But
that’s the point, Carrie.”
“Not
in a teen comic, it isn’t.”
“Thompson,
re-draw this page so that you can see Max Reeves’ face as he confronts the
inter-dimensional double agent.”
Ron
looked up to see her, hard-eyed and flush-cheeked, pausing at his desk.
“Harry
needs help finishing the pencils for the Tenebrous Annual,” she said. “The
second story. Could you please lend him a hand? And we don’t have a new cover
for the Aslavak special.”
“Dare
I ask why?”
“Because
we fired the new guy off the book. Any chance you can lend us your legendary
last-minute talents?”
Ron
winked at her. “And here I thought that coming into the office would be a nice
break from sharing my digs with Jack-o.”
“Ah.
Don’t let that magazine coverage go
to your head. That’s a ‘Yes’, then, to both?”
“An
unequivocal one, my darling. And they’re around-the-clock talents. Not
last-minute ones.”
“Good.
And don’t you ‘darling’ me.”
“I
know—darling,” he replied, but she was gone.
Although
it was late summer, the rush was already underway to kick-start new series,
limited series, reprints and fall specials. At times like this, pencil lead hit
the paper, ink transformed lines, colleagues traded a steady fire of banter
over coffee, cigarettes and take-out food, and Ron loved the business. Deadline
pressure fuelled him. He often joked that if someone dangled him out an office
window, he would still carve out beautiful work. Maybe better than ever, in
fact.
Ron
did his job well, dizzily pencilling the Aslavak! Heir of the Vampires
cover. The vampire stood to one side of the lit doorway of a one-storey
suburban home, his cadaverous frame pale and birch-tree thin. A skeleton,
half-stripped of bloodied flesh, lay on its back before him, with outstretched
skeletal fingers clutching for an overturned garbage can. The doorway light
threw a rhombus of wheat-yellow across ribs and gristle. In the doorway, a word
balloon asked, “Ronald? Have you put the garbage out yet?”
Ron
stood, cigarette dangling from his mouth, and walked to Harry Wilson’s office,
where Harry paced around like a man deliberating an appearance in court that
would decide his freedom. His half-bald pate shone under the office lights.
Completed sheets stood on his easel and half-finished ones on his drawing
board. The Tenebrous’ face was hidden under the shadow of his fedora, save for
a gleaming emerald eye.
“Ron!”
Harry exclaimed, seeing him. “You’re just in time.”
Ron
exhaled smoke. “Show me where to start.”
Harry
indicated the second drawing board and stool to the left of his desk. He
briefed Ron about Tenebrous delivering cold justice to an abusive husband.
“Waddya’ think? Can we make it?” Harry’s
pleading tone belied that he was a sprinter, not a long-distance runner, in the
drawing world.
“Harry,
the number of times you’ve said that to me...of course we can make it! Glad to
be of service.”
“Even
though it’s almost five?”
“We’re
gonna’ be here well after five, old friend. Just keep the coffee coming. I
don’t mind staying late as long as our baby looks good. Let’s pull a Wheezy,
Harry.”
“Wheezy,”
Harry replied in an awed tone.
Louise
“Wheezy” Woods had singlehandedly reversed the mid-1970’s sales slump. She
edited, wrote and pencilled multiple titles at break-neck pace, and also
birthed several characters with staying power. Lesley Nelson-F.B.I. tapped the
mid-to-late teen female demographic and older male fan base. But with the end
of the 1970’s, Wheezy, a cigar-smoking, single-malt-imbibing raconteur and
prankster, left the business, without notice or a forwarding address. No one
had heard from her or seen her since.
“Those
were the days,” Harry said.
“They
were. But I know what evil lurks in the minds of men, and we’ll have it all
ready for the morning.”
“Thanks
a million, as usual, Ron.”
“Don’t
thank me yet.” Ron snuffed out his smoke, rolled up his shirt sleeves, and set
to work.
“You
better know what also lurks in the mind of Ron Philip by tomorrow,” Carrie
said, leaning in the office doorway. “We meet at ten.”
Ron
didn’t bother answering. She had already departed to pinpoint other,
higher-priority targets.
At
a quarter of midnight, Harry and Ron finished. They were closing the office
again.
They
stood admiring the amassed panels.
“Thank
you,” Harry said, sighing contentedly.
“You’re
welcome.”
They
toasted a tumbler of Taylor Fladgate port.
The
Tenebrous, popular during the 1940’s, navigates rain-slick avenues dwarfed by
buildings. He faced down criminals who could be people you worked with or lived
beside. In the final panels of this evening’s work, a young female beat cop
tells Tenebrous he disapproves of his cold-blooded methods.
“IF
ANYONE STANDS AGAINST THEIR FELLOW MAN, I STAND AGAINST THEM,” the Tenebrous
says.
The
cop draws her pistol.
The Tenebrous walks down a rainy alleyway,
merges into the darkness. The cop stares after him on the foggy, deserted,
late-night street.
Ron,
feeling like someone was watching him, was relieved when Jack hollered outside
Harry’s office door.
“Who
is up for a run to the Rabbit?”
Ron
and Harry turned to see Jack leaning against the jamb. “Up for a pint,
guv’nors?”
Harry
glanced at his watch. “Aw, jeez, I gotta get home.”
“We’ll close shop,” Ron said. “No
one’s waiting for me.”
“I appreciate it. Thanks!” Although
Harry made motions to hug Ron, he slapped Ron’s shoulder hard instead.
They
approached reception together. Jack pressed a stainless-steel flask into Ron’s
hand.
“We’ll kill the wabbit, kill the
wabbit,” Jack sang.
Harry
walked ahead.
“Sounds good to me, Jack-o.”
Harry yelled.
They
stopped.
“What’s the matter, Harry?” Jack
said. “You change your mind?”
They passed the reception-area
couches and pushed through the double doors. Harry had pinned himself back
first against the marble wall between the closed elevators. A man limped past
him.
“Um, guys?” Harry said. “You have a
visitor.”
The
florescent ceiling lights flickered once, twice, and extinguished. The man’s
face was shrouded save for the pallor of a square jaw.
“Hello there,” Ron said. He handed
Jack the flask. “Just a second. I’ll grab a light.”
“Oh, I can see just fine,” the
figure replied.
Ron
and Jack re-entered the double doors.
“Good
night vision, then?” Jack said, holding the door open. “Please just wait right
there. We’ll back in a sec.”
“I
wait for no one. I chase evil in its plight.” He lurched ahead, a silhouette in
the doorway. The backup lights came on.
Ron
hesitated to reply. He recognized the scarlet suit, the broad shoulders and the
emerald eyes reflecting the weak light. He should have. He created them with
Jack over a weekend of endless coffee, cigarettes and Chinese take-out,
sketching on eight-and-a-half-by-eleven sheets of paper. The HB-pencil lead
still stained his fingertips and fingernails when he got carried away.
But this is no comic book,
he thought.
“You’ve
got the wrong place,” Ron said behind the desk. He tried the light switch on
adjacent wall. Nothing. “Fan Expo isn’t until next weekend.” He opened the
top-left drawer, rummaged around, and produced a weighty flashlight. He picked
up the desktop phone.
“I have found the den of evil,” the
stranger said.
Jack
had heard enough. He shut and locked the door and backed away.
The
lock broke with a startling crack as the visitor pushed through the doors.
Ron’s
blood froze.
The
stranger raised his chin, peering from his half-ripped cowl. Tufts of
blond hair poked
out.
Jack,
eyebrows raised, glanced at Ron; Ron reached for the button marked “Security”
on the phone console.
The stranger shook his head,
grinning tightly. He flicked out his right hand. One moment, Jack held the
flask. The next moment, the container was gone. The stranger held it. The
stainless steel flashed as he launched it. With a clack, the flask hit the
telephone receiver, knocking it from Ron’s hand. Pain stabbed at his wrist.
“What the hell?” Ron said, his shirt
and the phone doused in single-malt whiskey.
“You’ll
answer to me,” the stranger said. He gripped his own left shoulder with his
right hand, his bicep a rock. The stranger dragged his right leg behind him.
Bloodied splotches covered his chest. He stared down Ron with a steely gaze.
“How many innocents have died because of you?”
“Is
this some sort of prank?” Ron asked. “Did one of our fans put you up to this?
Or Carrie?”
“You think this is a prank?” The
stranger reeked of sweat and gunpowder. A bruise marked his chin.
Jack stared at him. “Ron,” Jack
said. “Ron, that’s our guy. That’s him—I mean, right here in front of us. At
least I think it is. Is it?”
The visitor spun on Jack. ““How
perceptive, Jack Simon. You would know. You know about the well source.”
Jack
faced Ron. “Told ya so!” he exclaimed. His fervor, though, dissipated on so. He inhaled, the sound of strange
wind bending the sail of a ship set on a course to madness. “The well source of
all ideas,” he muttered.
“You
are both equally culpable,” the visitor said. His eyes bore into Ron.
“Culpable of what?” Ron asked. “Of, of making
things?”
“Of murder. Murdering the Scrawler. But also
in issue 72, the ‘accidental’ death of The Wrangler, who fell into the Hudson
after trying to defeat me. And also the murder of countless others.”
“But...” Ron said. “...they’re all
fictional.”
“Are they? Am I? Because I
assure you that I am no piece of fiction. I walk. I breathe.”
“And talk,” Jack said, “you
certainly talk.”
“And kill!”
Their hero moved fast. In short
order, Jack felt as though a medicine ball pummeled his stomach. Ron now lay
half across the desk. Stray papers flew about the room. His head rang. His
right eye throbbed. The hero clutched Ron’s shirt. The hot breath on Ron’s face
was a mixture of minty after shave and copper.
“But...why?” Ron managed.
A
fist answered. Twice.
He
reeled, caterwauling, hands out. He attempted to right himself. His free palm
found the wall behind the desk. He stopped the world spinning.
Still, Ron could not grasp the sight
before him, breathing in sharp, painful bursts.
“You
don’t understand?” his creation asked. “You didn’t make me, you cads. This...”
he glanced around, motioned at the only real world Ron had ever known, “this is
the fiction. Understand?”
Ron retreated further. His jaw was loose,
and he couldn’t seem to tighten anything just now. His knees didn’t want to
stand, his arms were directionless.
Jack
warily approached the Red Avenger. Ron saw that he was also swimming.
“I made you. I made Quicksilver
Comics. My friends made your friends. Imagine if you ran around looking for
super-villains every day of your life. Might get boring, don’t you think? So we
made you, you and your famous life. Just like we made Wheezy.”
“Wheezy?” Jack said. “No way.”
His creation, bloodied, battered, was
more maniacal-looking than heroic. “Oh, yes. She wanted to leave, too. So we
had to go after her as well.”
“Go after her?” Ron replied, backing
between the cubicles.
His
creation limping toward him.
“How...how
did you ‘go after her’?” Ron asked.
“Let’s just say Lesley Nelson took
care of that mission. And now I’m taking care of you.”
He lunged.
Ron
flinched, swinging the flashlight hard against his attacker’s temple. His
creation staggered backward. Ron pushed a rolling chair at him, knocking the Avenger
backward.
The
hero shook his head. “Now evil has nowhere to hide.”
“You’re doing this because I killed
you?” Ron asked. He felt like someone had applied flames to his lower back.
“But you killed my life, in a sense. I’m only known as the guy who created
you!”
His creation stood up straight. The
chest, six-pack and bulging thighs were a textbook drawing of musculature.
“That’s the idea. That’s how I made you.”
“And me too?” Jack said. “Me, too.”
“Yes.”
“But you also had us take Aki-Jitsu,
you dumb-ass,” Jack said, and attacked.
Ron
joined him.
In
the first volley of fists and flesh, the trio felled two cubicle walls, rained
down papers, toppled a semi-functional fax/photocopier/printer, propelled a
stapler, and trampled a corkboard bulletin board.
The
pell-mell separated.
Ron
and Jack bore bloodied brows, dishevelled hair and ripped clothing.
“A noble effort,” their hero said.
A
fist shut Ron’s right eye.
A
heel to the brow snapped Jack backward.
Strong hands clutched Ron’s shirt.
He’s pushing me toward
the office window, Ron dimly realized.
He
felt a thrashing along his shoulder blades, and another. Pain scoured his back,
from neck to kidneys. Distantly, he heard glass crack and give.
Jack stood one knee, a hand out, his
right eye blackening. “Nah,” he said. “You don’t kill in cold blood. Not like
this.”
“This is in self-defense,” their
fictional character replied.
The
hot, sticky night heat flooded in through the open window frame. The avenging
hero hoisted Ron up and outward into what he dimly realized could be his final
night.
Jack, weeping through his injuries,
stumbled after them and witnessed impossibility.
Ron
crashed to the floor. He tried to clear his head. Everything hurt. His back
still felt aflame. He tried standing, stumbling on glass shards and looked up,
thinking Jack was wrestling with their visitor.
Somebody
else attired in red held their hero at arm’s length in the window frame.
She grinned at him from under her
cowl. “Franky Knox, Pagegirl, no more,” she said with thin red lips. “Call me
the Red Avenger.” Her costume was sleeker, modest in the V-cut neck, her auburn
hair tied in a ponytail.
She laughed at Ron’s gawking. “What?
It’s what you were thinking all along, for a successor, wasn’t it?”
Their hero flailed and grunted.
Their new heroine shook her free index finger at the Avenger.
“This
will get us new readers and carry on the tradition at the same time,” she said.
“Besides, once you get into cold-blooded killing, I’m afraid Jack’s right.” She
looked at Jack, standing, slack-jawed. He rubbed his forehead with his palm.
“You become a murderer, whether you’re or not you’re killing a villain or a
good guy.”
“Can’t...get away with this,” her
mentor uttered, kicking.
“Well, odds are you might survive to
fight me again,” she said. “Farewell, Manson Groves.”
“No!”
She dropped him.
Ron staggered to the window with
Jack.
They
stood on either side of Franky Knox.
A
few strong arguments? A hero would rebuke these. A few Aki-Jitsu moves? A hero
would recover. But fatal wounds, another toss from a building, the breaking of
his own life-taking code, a changing readership, a changing comic book history,
and a life-altering shock at Quicksilver Comics? There were things that even
the Red Avenger could not recover from.
Ron and Jack watched their hero
fall.
Dozens
of papers spiralled around Manson Groves like white birds. There was Max
Reeves, Detective! And there was Imigan the Traveller! The Mandora! Aslavak,
Heir of Vampires! The Incredible Wind Rider! Omnivaxx, the Android Hero!
Dorius! Lesley Nelson, FBI! And don’t forget, Pagegirl, Franky Knox, donning
her costume, gazing around the secret headquarters of her fallen hero, her eyes
bright, full of life! The Red Avenger lived on. She would carry his mantle and
deliver a trouncing to any challengers.
The papers parted. The figure hit
the black cement below.
Ron
turned to Jack. They looked at each other like two friends who have just
finished a long adventure together.
No
one stood between them anymore, smelling of jasmine and sweat.
On
the wind, a full-throated voice carried through the night.
“She chases, dodges, flies by night
To stop evil in its plight!”
Franky Knox had made her debut.
The End
