"Bobby, you go to school today! I don't wanna be getting no calls from that vice principle again!" Mary Boone shouted up the stairs towards her foster child's door. She clomped back towards the kitchen to her breakfast of bacon and eggs, and turned down the heat on the boy's oatmeal on the stove. And yer breakfast's gonna get cold soon, get going!"
Bobby Wright was lying on his bed, dressed in his lucky red shirt and his second best pair of blue jeans, rereading one of his favorite issues of CAPTAIN AMERICA. It had been given to him when he was eight years old by his foster father at the time, Ben Carza. He had liked the Carzas, but when Kathleen Carza had gotten pregnant with their own child, they gave Bobby back to Social Services. He closed his blue eyes, trying to remember them better. At twelve, he had trouble remembering all the foster homes he had been in, they tended to blur together.
Bobby had been with seven other families in the past four years, but still hoped he would be adopted permanently. However, he did not want the Boones to be the ones. At 12, he knew it was less likely each year to be adopted. That's what the older kids in the weekly group therapy sessions had said, and he had no reason to doubt it.
He had been told his birth certificate had said he was born in Metro General Hospital in Queens to Brandi Wright. In 12 years he'd been moved through all 5 boroughs of New York City. The Social Services people had sent him to Yonkers this time.
He ran his fingers through his blond hair, his favorite gesture of being annoyed. "Captain America wouldn't have to deal with this junk," he muttered. "I bet when HE was 12 people wanted him." He turned the page, knowing by heart the words on the next page, saying them out loud as he read them.
POW! The Red Skull was knocked to the ground, the poison gas gun knocked from his hand. The ruins of the control panel for the mind control satellite were in the background of the panel. "YOUR EVIL SCHEME IS FINISHED, SKULL! YOUR NAZI CRUELTY CAN NEVER STAND UP AGAINST AMERICAN TEAM WORK!
The next panel showed Cap's partner, The Falcon, slapping the bright red, well-labeled "Hate Ray Satellite Self Destruct" button on the wall. "WE DID IT CAP! WE SAVED THE USA JUST IN TIME!"
As Cap handcuffed the Red Skull in the next panel, Bobby did his best to do a deep, evil, echoing voice. "FOILED AGAIN! BUT I SHALL RETURN… AND NEXT TIME…"
'WE'LL STOP YOU AGAIN!" Captain America, Falcon, and Bobby Wright replied in triumph.
"Come eat yer oatmeal and go to school!" Mrs. Boone shouted again from downstairs.
Bobby walked five blocks towards the local school, and then ducked through the yard of a vacant house and around to the back porch, to his favorite place to stash his school backpack on days he decided to ditch. "I'm not in the mood for a science test today. I can make it up Friday during detention anyways," he muttered to himself. Now where to go on his day off?
First stop was the magazine stand in the strip mall a quarter mile away from the Boone house. The owner Mr. Jewell saved day old newspapers for Bobby and the occasional comics with the covers stripped off that normally were thrown out when they were a month old. It was a fair trade for washing Mr. Jewell's car every weekend.
Bobby collected his haul, promised to sweep up the store later for a soda, and went to go through the day's haul at the nearest bus stop bench. Daredevil had been photographed fighting The Enforcers after they were fleeing an armored car robbery. The Avengers had been in Mexico repelling an attempt by some aliens to steal and entire Aztec pyramid. Bobby read that article twice, and tried to memorize the photo of Iron Man doing a flying tackle on a "Stone Man from Saturn," whatever THOSE were. The Daily Bugle had yet another long story apologizing for blaming Spider-Man for a series of penthouse robberies that had been the work of the Stilt Man. There were no pictures, but there was a lot of detail about how the Stilt Man had framed Spider-Man for it all that was fun reading.
The longest thing was the issue of Now Magazine that Mr. Jewell had saved for him the evil super-scientist Elias "Egghead" Starr had just died a few weeks ago. He had been a master criminal since before Bobby was born. It seemed like he'd come up against every superhero there was, and there were a lot of good stories in his obituary about the battles he had been in with Hank Pym, Spiderman, Hawkeye, the Defenders, and on and on. He'd been in a lot of the comics based on real events. "I wonder if they'll do more comics about the Yellow Claw now?" Bobby asked aloud.
The interview with Luke Cage, Power Man was his favorite of the bunch. Cage was explaining how "Heroes for Hire" was a business for people that needed help that the police couldn't do, and that private detectives couldn't handle. "We aren't just private detectives. We are superdetectives!" Cage was quoted as saying. The story described how Cage and his partner, the "Iron Fist" had been hired by the United Nations to provide security for high level meetings between the leaders of the countries Dhakran and Khotain, wherever THEY were.
"If they're super detectives, I wonder if they could find my real mom," Bobby muttered to himself. The social workers had told him all that was known about his mom was that she was a teenager who had given him up because she didn't think she could give him a good home. The New York Department of Social Services had been trying to find him a permanent home and an adoptive family ever since he was six months old. Maybe now his real mom was ready to be a family, and would want him back.
He saved the comics for last. The best of the bunch were some reprints telling the real life adventures of the Fantastic Four. Bobby didn't know if they were the whole story or not, but he loved to read about superheroes exploring space, and other dimensions the most. He never had a place that felt like home, so exploring the unknown sounded like a good way to live. He could understand always looking for a better place.
Bobby rolled up the comics he wanted to keep and jammed them in his back pocket, and threw the rest of his reading material in the bus stop trashcan. He decided to walk to Tibbetts Brook Park and watch the clouds. Anything was better than that spelling test today!
After an hour of daydreaming and cloud watching, Bobby had seen 3 flying saucers, 2 houses, a car, four human heads, one wolf head…. and a very bright light that looked like it was getting bigger. He had time to think A METEOR! when he felt the sound of the bright light slam into the ground about a hundred yards away. Bobby leapt up and ran where he thought it had landed.
"Meteorites are worth money," he said to himself as he ran. "I remember THAT much from Earth Science class! What else… OK, it'll be hot when it hits. So I have to wait until it cools down, then carry it off before anyone ELSE comes looking for it." With some zigging and zagging across the park, he found a six foot across hole that the falling star had pounded into the soil, about 3 feet deep. In the center was… it.
The meteorite was about five inches across, a blasted, black rock, giving off as much heat as an oven. "Not hot as I thought," Bobby said aloud, looking around for a good-sized poking stick. A few pokes without the wood bursting into flame later, he settled down waiting for it to cool enough to try to carry off. He sat, and thought of the comic book stories he had read involving meteorites.
Alien ships were mistaken for falling meteors. But this one looked too small for THAT. All the photos he ever saw of Kree or Skrulls or the rest of the aliens people knew about were human sized or bigger. But maybe it had space roaches inside. That'd be cool to see!
Lots of stories were about weird things from space giving people superpowers. He remembered a few about cavemen becoming immortal from meteors. Another was a superhero with a magic ring made from a meteor that gave him his powers. "It'd be awesome if I found a meteor that made into the next Blue Marvel, or Sentry," Bobby said, feeling the heat diminish as he held his hands close to the mysterious rock. "I bet if I was special, a family would want me. Or If I sold this thing I could get enough to help find my mom…" Guessing it was cool enough to try and carry away, he stood over it, reached down, got both hands on it and lifted. It was lighter than he expected, and felt sort of tingly, like the time he stuck a fork in a toaster when he was six years old…
Bobby Wright heard himself screaming, and then everything went black.
"Doctor! The patient in room 112 is waking up!" a woman's voice called from somewhere close. Bobby tried to open his eyes, and managed on the fourth try. He was laying in a bed, he recognized the smells and sounds of a hospital from the times he had been injured before. The sheets were stiff, the pajamas were itchy, and it was dark outside he saw, looking out the window. What had happened?
The nurse in green scrubs moved quickly out of the room, and a middle-aged woman in the familiar white coat he had seen many times before. Her name badge said O'Neil.
"Ok, good. Being awake is a very good sign. You were found in James Fleming Park, unconscious in a meteor crater. Do you remember being there?" She asked, sounding like a teacher giving a pop quiz. Bobby nodded.
"We need to know your name, where you live, your phone number." He replied. "Can you tell me what day it is, the whole date?" Bobby answered. Next she'd ask who was President or something like that, to see if he'd knocked anything loose in his head when he… when whatever happened had happened.
"Hey, where's my rock?! I was gonna sell that!" he gasped, looking around. "I need that to pay for…" he didn't want to say what he wanted most in the world. "… some stuff I need," he ended quietly.
Dr. O'Neil looked confused for a second, then replied almost kindly, "I'm sure any reward for finding it will be given to you. From what I could tell there was a lot of interest in it. Don't worry. I'll make sure everyone knows you found it. Now do you feel any pain or anything strange?" She sounded like she actually cared, putting Bobby at ease.
There were tests, blood samples, machines that went ping, others that made fast clicks. Finally they said he could eat after one last blood sample. Bobby agreed but he wasn't happy. He was hungry, he wanted his rock back, and as the medical technician approached with the needle, he thought "NO!"
The needle bent against the skin of his arm, as if his body was made of steel. Confused, the young man attempted again with another collection needle. This time Bobby thought to himself "NO MORE JABS." The needle passed through Bobby's arm as if he was a ghost. Stunned, the technician tried to touch Bobby on the shoulder, and his hand passed through the young boy as if nothing was there.
"I WANT TO EAT NOW!" Bobby yelled.
The next morning, Bobby was in an office with his foster mother Mary Boone, and a doctor from the St. Mary Medical Center who had been introduced as Dr. Lawrence West. West was a bald, worried looking man in a three piece suit. Bobby thought his mustache and goatee was a lame attempt to look cool on Dr. West's part. Mrs. Boone and the doctor were going back and forth about things Bobby didn't care about. He sat there tuning them out, thinking about what happened.
Since last night, he had gotten better at turning super-solid and going into what he thought of as "ghost mode." It wasn't the COOLEST superpower he ever heard of, but he had to admit it was pretty cool. He had tried to walk through a wall that morning and managed on the second try. If he thought about making his body hard as steel, he seemed to be stronger, but at 4'11" he still didn't have enough leverage to lift anything too big yet.
Maybe he could be a costumed hero. If he got to be a partner with Luke Cage as a "hero for hire," maybe Cage and Iron Fist could help him find his mom. He started designing a costume in his imagination as he practiced going from "man of steel" to "ghost mode" fast as he could.
Words passed by in the background as he thought.
"… exhibiting control of molecular structure."
"Any extra money for taking care of a mutie?"
"…need your permission legally for more testing, as you are the legal guardian at the moment."
"Testing? Will that screw up my 600 bucks a month I need to take care of 'im?"
More boring talk. Bobby liked the idea of a cape. Spiderman, Captain America, The Hulk, most heroes didn't wear capes. But he had seen Thor flying over Manhattan twice and that red cape made people notice, like being a living flag. And mask or no mask?
"…cellular damage. It's very slight now, but we don't know what could be ahead…"
Damage? The word jumped out at Bobby as he was wondering about flying and if Thor ever got bugs smashed on his face.
"I dunno about that, Bobby looks fine, don't ya boy?" Mrs. Boone said, barely looking at him.
"I can get a court order, but it will be much quicker if you give permission as his legal guardian right now," Dr. West said in his high-pitched nasal voice. "I've never seen anything like this. I don't think anyone has. Bobby has been given control over the very atoms of his body. But I'm seeing cellular decay that looks like the early stages of leukemia. If that's correct, these new abilities could kill him! Please, I am begging you, let us take action. Otherwise valuable time could be wasted."
"Talk to me after the first of the month when I get the next check," Mrs. Boone said, unconcerned. "C'mon Bobby. Time to go."
He was going to die. And he never had a mom, never had a family. No one was going to miss him.
Screw that! Bobby Wright might not be able to have a family, might have no one to miss him when he died.
But Captain Hero would.
Post script, author's statement.
Modern comic books are pretty much unreadable for me. I remember being 6 years old, reading old copies of the Stan Lee/Steve Ditko Spiderman run and being swept away with it. I watched reruns of the 1960s THE MARVEL SUPER HEROES on UHF stations when I got home from kindergarten every day. I would bug my family to hit three or four different drug stores a month so I could buy all the silver age comics I could find.
I used to be a HUGE Marvel fan. I still defend Jim Shooter to people who bash his time as editor in chief. Secret Wars? Contest of Champions? The Trial of Hank Pym? Frank Miller's Wolverine? Good times.
Then the 90s. Anti-heroes. The whole "grim and gritty, kill 'em all dark age." Then it got ridiculous. THE CLONE SAGA… oh lord, that was unreadable. ONE MORE DAY, SECRET INVASION, DARK REIGN…. And over at DC, girlfriends, sidekicks, token minorities were getting raped, killed, stuffed into fridges on a regular basis.
You know… for kids!
The deaths of Cassie Lang, Gertrude Yorkes, BOTH Wasps, Captain America, Spiderman, on and on, all cheap drama.
It took me back to the first comic book death that really pissed me off. Comicvine has the whole original summary here captain-hero/4005-10298/ but here's the short version.
Introduced in POWER MAN AND IRON FIST #111, NOVEMBER 1984, issue titled WHO IS CAPTAIN HERO?
A 12 year old kid gets handed the chance to be one of the most powerful superheroes in the Marvel Universe. He's an orphan, he just wants to belong, to have someone care about him after being alone his whole life. And the one thing that makes him special will most likely kill him.
I LOVED it. Yes, sure, it was pretty much the SHAZAM! Captain Marvel with leukemia, but it got to me. When it came out in November of 1984, I planned on someday writing for Marvel. And I had an idea for a series with this new character that I just KNEW would sell well.
He appeared five times in POWER MAN AND IRON FIST, and when the book was abruptly cancelled in September of 1986 with issue #125… they killed him off, as well as killing off Iron Fist, and sending Power Man on the run, framed for Iron Fist's murder in a really stupid plot twist. Also torpedoing my submission package I dreamed of getting Jim Shooter himself to approve and shout HIRE THIS KID!
So now, almost 30 years later, I've decided to show a few readers on just what I would have tried to set the comics world on fire with back in the late 80s. Along the way it'll be one long WHAT IF? story. If I stick with it long enough it'll be a alternate reality, general, in character, SOME original characters but mostly minor and major Marvel Universe characters, anti-"grimdark"
If anyone else out there misses the Silver Age, let's bring it back!
