Have Cape, Will Crusade

Superheroes: This fellow is only a good blurb away from joining the ranks of our unofficial saviors of the streets. iStockphoto.com

 

by Marc Hirsh

There's been a lot of talk in the past year about how we're in the middle of a cinematic superhero boom. But what's gone mostly unnoticed is that the two most successful films in this supposed trend — The Dark Knight and Iron Man — don't technically involve superpowers at all.

Batman augments intense fight training with fancy gadgets and psychological gamesmanship, remember? And Iron Man is just a dude who solved a particularly tricky engineering problem.

Even the costumed crimefighters of the eagerly anticipated Watchmen have no actual extra-human abilities. (What about omnipotent physics-experiment-gone-awry Doctor Manhattan, you ask? Well, he doesn't wear a costume, silly.)

Does this say something profound about the current American zeitgeist? Who cares? But it means wonders for you, Everyday Person In The Natural World!

Sure, you might not be able to fly or stop bullets or have multiple conversations in multiple timelines on multiple planets, but you can certainly throw on a cape and a mask in the hopes of striking fear in the hearts of evildoers. (Although it's important to remember: you still can't stop bullets.)

And it turns out that a number of folks have been doing exactly that. We know this thanks to the fine people at the World Superhero Registry. Here you'll find profiles of confirmed and semi-confirmed folks with slick monikers and stylized duds (and the occasional severe Rorschach complex) trying to make a difference on the streets.

The Registry gives a quick summary of a number of real-life superheroes, listing "Region" and "Identity" but not, sad to say, "Powers." Wouldn't you scroll down in the vain, irrational hope of seeing it followed by anything other than the word "None," just once?

Five of the greatest self-appointed superheroes we found, after the jump...

An absence of superpower claims doesn't mean that there aren't some choice pleasures to be found, however. Here are five reasons to check out the site and start walking the straight and narrow:

1. Entomo. Even if we ignore the fact that his proclamation to evildoers — "Hear my buzz, fear my bite: I inject justice" — makes him sound as obliviously overheated as the Tick (which was at least intentionally funny), there's this choice quote from his website: "A stylized SIGMA is my symbol. SIGMA, because I sum up all the powerful, silent and venomous small creatures inhabiting this world." That's right, folks: Entomo has built his superhero philosophy around the fact that he's a math nerd. Watch out, evildoers of Naples!

2. Green Scorpion. Frankly, this guy's not even trying. His battle cry is "I am here to chew gum and kick ass, and I'm all out of gum!" — awesome, yes, but not even remotely original. He seems to have a dim understanding that "The Green [Something]" is a good thing to call a superhero, but the closest his costume comes to the color in his name is a dark ecru that borders on olive drab. (Now, "Dark Ecru"... that's a superhero name.) And he's affiliated with the group The Justice Society Of Justice, which is too self-reflexively ironic for this sort of thing, as well as being unimpressively derivative. Let's see if he can defeat the Evil Phalanx of DC Comics Lawyers.

3. Doktor DiscorD(TM). Wow, is this guy ever terrific. To start with, you'll note that he has placed an actual trademark at the end of his name. He's also yet another member of aforementioned redundancy crusaders the Justice Society Of Justice. And check out this quote: "...We dont [sic] care about victimless crime like drug use or people buying prostitutes. the [sic] kind of CRIME we're talking about is the kind that makes little old ladies afraid to leave their houses." (Little old ladies being notoriously tolerant of hookers and junkies.) So keep that in mind: Doktor DiscorD will look the other way if you try to buy a speedball. But God help you if you try to infringe on his intellectual property.

4. Tothian. You've gotta give the guy credit: His archenemies are Omar Al-Bashir and Osama Bin Laden. Might as well aim high.

5. Angle-Grinder Man. Quoth the registry, "Angle-grinder Man patrols by night looking for unhappy drivers who have been clamped and then sets their cars free." You got it: His primary mission is to cut the boots off of the vehicles of parking violators, which strikes me as distinctly illegal. I don't know about you, but it sounds to me like this guy's on the wrong Web site, because — and it thrills me to announce this — we've got ourselves an honest-to-goodness supervillain here. Help us, Green Scorpion!

7:56 AM ET | 01-13-2009 | permalink

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