Bloodwynd in “A Crisis at Zero Hour”

It had occurred to me almost from the moment I joined the Justice League that I was not interested in superheroics. This is not to say that I was not interested in what superheroes do, but that I was not interested in participating in it myself. The team dynamics unsettled me, the constant suspicions, and I never truly felt a part of it.

Instead, I opted to hold my own council. I looked for a more human scale to this business. My powers, such as they are, appear somewhat grotesque to me, when I am not careful. I wonder if they are not inherently a source of potential abuse. I know where they came from, how they were conceived, and as such my sense of duty can at times seem overwhelming, and I have spent much of my life attempting to calm myself.

Last week something terrible happened. It was the kind of thing that could not be undone, only punished, and yet I found myself wondering what else might be done, so I used my powers in an unconventional fashion.

I brought the man back, and I listened to him. It didn’t take any prompting at all, whether from the emotion of the situation or my fanciful outfit, perhaps the fact that we looked so much like each other. He trusted me. This is what he said:

“I refused, at first, to admit that I had made a mistake. The first instinct anyone has in situations like that is to dig in, in the rash hope that if you believe something strongly enough that you can convince others, through sheer force of will, that everything is absolutely fine. Of course, now I realize people believe what’s convenient in the moment. They’re generous when they’re sympathetic. What I was doing there at all, I wasn’t even thinking about, at the time, but now I can’t stop.

“I was desperate. I made a bad decision. Wasn’t the first time, but sometimes bad decisions are all we have, and we were all in the middle of a series of bad decisions at the time, and most of them were also the right ones, and...Still, it was a bad decision, and I wish I could take it back. I wish I could have just talked it out with someone, but some things people don’t really want to talk about. They voice their frustrations. But they rarely have answers. They have anger. But anger isn’t always enough.

“If given the option, that situation would have turned everything around for me. I’m serious. Never again. I know, vows are easy to make. And they’re easier to break. Sometimes you have to break them just to survive, just to have a chance. But sometimes you have to keep them, to survive, to have a chance. Suddenly nothing was more important than the chance to look back and say, Never again.

“I can’t look at what happened and hate. Hate was never really in me. Desperation. Panic. Fear. But not hate.”

Then he was silent. He asked me what happened next. I told he I honestly didn’t know. If there is a relief to the idea of being a superhero, it’s that the job ends at saving the day, even when you’re too late, as I was that day. It becomes someone else’s responsibility, a network on which we are meant to depend, although perhaps there is room for improvement. I looked at the man and I apologized, even though, again, I was too late. He said, after a moment, that maybe it was okay, that maybe I would get it right the next time, that as long as there was the will to do the right thing, that perhaps, in the end, more people would choose that option, and I would no longer, with all my useless power, feel compelled to apologize. He didn’t say another word. He was dead again.

And I was alone. This is how I prefer it. But there are times I think perhaps I am wrong to prefer it that way. There is much good to be done. This business of superheroes often seems as if it accomplishes nothing so much as giving those of us empowered to participate an excuse to parade ourselves. And yet, sometimes the responsibility humbles me.

Assorted Heroic Words: Zenith

the point of the heavens directly over the head of the observer

Marty had always
struggled with feelings
of hopelessness,
and that didn't change
when he put on
a colorful costume;
he had a hard time
seeing
something bright
come out of
a life he found
increasingly worthless,
wondering why he survived,
what was the point
even when he was
a superhero,
an emblem,
hollow,
shallow,
just out of reach,
out of his vision...

The end.

Assorted Heroic Words: Yore

olden times

Marty began
turning to
a different source
of inspiration,
a lost golden age hero
called Wesley Harding,
the Doughboy,
who had fought in WWII
as a volunteer
in the French resistance.

In time he retired
his Sandman look.
He ended up looking
sort of like a Mountie.

Assorted Heroic Words: Xiphoid

sword-shaped

Marty came into possession
of a curved scimitar blade,
which he kept mostly
in ceremony
but now and again
brought it along with him
in costume
for effect.

Eventually its owner
came to retrieve it.

Assorted Heroic Words: Watchman

a guard

Marty never stopped going to school,
following the shooting;
what he did,
and he couldn't imagine
anyone doing any less,
was become painfully
aware
and stood vigilant,
and that he saw
as his most sacred duty,
but it also meant
he was paying attention
perhaps for the first time
to everyone there,
meeting them
for the first time,
so in a way
it made him better,
a little more human,
forming new affection,
not less.
It's just,
such attention
comes with a price.
You lose yourself
in the bargain.
Such is selflessness.

Assorted Heroic Words: Ultimo

in the month preceding the present

For someone
constantly reliving
a specific
moment in time,
their second thoughts
dwell
on the period
immediately preceding it
as what life was like
before it.

Marty, for instance,
before the shooting,
had been acting in a play
based on
The Last of the Mohicans,
in which he was cast
in an incidental role,
a random soldier
with few lines,
and all he could think
was how pointless it was.

After the shooting,
of course,
he longed
for such
simplicity.

Assorted Heroic Words: Verisimilitude

the appearance of truth or reality

An attitude Marty was
eager to adopt
in his new career
was verisimilitude,
the ability to speak
truth to power,
to hold those in power
to the words they speak,
not merely in the facile
"fact-checker" domain
but in the manipulative
self-serving
self-aggrandizing
manner
designed to humiliate,
to silence opponents,
the kind of speech
so eagerly embraced
by those who don't realize
what they really support
because the confluence of modern agendas
has become toxic
rather than
uplifting,
a curious phenomenon,
a peculiar institution
of public discourse.

Assorted Heroic Words: Trace Element

a chemical element, as iron, copper, etc., essential to nutrition, but only in very small quantities

The thing Marty understood,
from reading comics,
about his own nature,
was that it was okay
to be a minor superhero,
that he never had a shot
at being the most-loved
or most-famous
or best,
but that he could still play
an important role,
that his efforts
could still be noticed
and even
appreciated.

Assorted Heroic Words: Sandman

a mythical person supposed to make children sleepy

Marty gained a younger sibling
late enough
so that he could understand
how difficult
it actually is
to get small children
to fall asleep.

It's one of those paradoxes
where no matter how easy
it becomes
to fall asleep
when you're older,
it appears to be the very last thing
you want
early in life,
as if it's tantamount
to the end of the world
(and I guess it might as well be)
to be caught dead sleeping.

That's a little
of what Marty thought,
eventually,
about being a superhero,
and maybe about
good & evil,
and how people decide
which one to be,
the extreme reluctance
to be good
and the sudden ease
to be evil,
a reverse
of how it's usually thought
to be.

Assorted Heroic Words: Roly-poly

a short, pudgy person

What do you make of our Marty?
What sort of figure does he strike?
Round in the middle,
short as a griddle,
roly-poly,
roly-poly,
roly-poly!

Assorted Heroic Words: Quixotic

chivalrous or romantic to extravagance

Don Quixote
was actually a parody
of his creator's interpretation
of a literary craze from before his time,
a criticism,
perhaps become something else
but not what he became,
not some wild idealistic crusade,
but a fool's errand,
a cantankerous sop.

In his darker moments
Marty wondered if that was after all
what he allowed himself to become,
swept up in a romantic delusion,
a comitragic insult
destined to be misremembered,
a gritique of his times
or somesuch nonsense...

Assorted Heroic Words: Photochronograph

an apparatus for recording very minute intervals of time

One of the mistakes
commonly made about
superhero folk
is that they might be considered
less than damaged,
that taking the law
into their own hands
automatically makes them
noble,
pure,
justified.

But what if
they're not?
What if
you can define them
as compromised,
not by the violence they choose to make
regardless of outcome,
an absence of malice,
purity of intent,
but rather
some unhealthy obsession,
resulting in a categorically
insane perspective?

What would you say
if told that Marty
lived the rest of his life
inside the moments
of the shooting,
that he spent all spare time
measuring and remeasuring
that signal event,
being warped by it
more and more,
fashioning a crude machine
that aided his efforts,
a photochronograph.

Would that negate all his other deeds?
Would framing Marty in such light
be sufficient
to condemn him forever
in the vicious court of public opinion?
Once poisoned,
always contaminated?
A psychopath
pinned forever,
culpable to a crime
he never committed?

A kingdom,
a kingdom for a horse,
is all he asks,
a hunchback of the mind,
skeletons thrust into history,
conjured by malice,
by lust for power,
the switch thrown
by greed for a throne,
an iron will
and an enemy
that could never be defeated,
and indeed celebrated
for all time...

Assorted Heroic Words: Obeah

a form of African witchcraft

Marty was introduced to obeah
(pronounced o-bi-a)
by John Bull
before their relationship
soured;
ironically
they ended up
using it against
each other.

Finding items
for this
led Marty
to the nth phone;
the nth phone in turn
led Marty
to the aliens
who had introduced
obeah to humans
in the first place.

Assorted Heroic Words: Nth

of an amount or degree too large to be measured

Marty's greatest asset
was his nth phone,
which never needed charging
and could hold
an infinite amount
of data;
eventually, though,
his use of it
attracted the attention
of the aliens who had left it
behind,
and that caused
an equal amount
of complications
(some of them
were good).

Assorted Heroic Words: Metaphysics

the branch of philosophy that examines the nature of first principles, the problems of being and reality, and the origin and structure of the universe

Marty had spent so much time
reading comics
that becoming a superhero
resulted in some
existential problems,
such as his sudden inability
to see himself as
more than a fictional character.

In some ways this helped him
and in others it got in the way.

He wondered if other callings
came with such pitfalls,
or if it was exclusive
to his peculiar new life.

It only got worse
when he started reading
fan fiction
based on his exploits.

Assorted Heroic Words: Libertine

morally or socially unrestrained

Marty found his greatest challenge
in the Libertine,
who broke all the rules,
who was capable of anything,
who might not even be thought criminal,
who held sway over a cult,
who made him rethink everything,
who came to take all his time,
who alienated him from the superhero community,
who in the years ahead took his family from him,
who made things personal,
who learned Marty's secret identity,
who made Marty question his sanity,
who made Marty question his intelligence,
who called himself Ellah;
Ellah of the mind,
Ellah of the soul,
Ellah of the plains of the earth,
Ellah of the end times,
Ellah of the beginning,
Ellah of all times,
Ellah of madness,
Ellah of balance,
Ellah of reason,
Ellah of chaos,
Ellah of disorder.

And yet finally Marty emerged,
intact, and yes,
perhaps tilting at windmills,
but the mirrors all lied.
He had emerged from his cocoon,
found himself,
found peace,
and that was all that mattered.

Assorted Heroic Words: Knight-Errant

a medieval knight in search of adventure, especially of a chance to show his skill and redress wrongs

One of the biggest decisions Marty made
was to become more a knight-errant
than a vigilante,
to dispense with the idea of a patrol
and instead seek out wrongs
that needed righting;

this had the effect
of freeing up his time
to devote to its particulars
and not just beating people up
(in truth he was not good in a fight,
try and try as he might)

Assorted Heroic Words: John Bull

the English nation or an Englishman personified

Gateway wasn't Marty's only mentor,
but he quickly discovered the other for
the fraud he really was.

John Bull, an English fop
appeared with a hop
after Marty changed his identity
to Grit, hoping to craft a legacy
all of his own.

This was a man
who seemed too grand
but the accent alone
left Marty prone
to fall for John's trap.

Somewhat long story short,
Marty had to abort
and they became enemies.

Assorted Heroic Words: Infer

to conclude or decide from evidence at hand or assumed

Marty's heroic career
almost ended as soon as it began
thanks to his faulty application
of detective reasoning:

he attempted to solve a mystery
through inference
and got it horribly wrong,
or at least couldn't prove it.

This had the effect
of teaching Marty
all about humility,
another thing
superheroes ought
to learn.

Or so he
quickly decided.

Assorted Heroic Words: Hellion

a person who delights in causing trouble

There were two others
called to extraordinary action
after the shooting:
one was Rachel
(whose story is her own)
and the other was Hellion,
who took all the wrong lessons
from that day.

Marty's first heroic triumph
was putting an end
to Hellion's mad rampage,
and in doing so he became
quite a local favorite.