"Phil!"
Doris came into the diner shouting. I was sipping coffee and reading the paper.
"Phil! Oh Phil! Thank god you're here!"
It was the early morning, the sun just came up.
"What is it Doris? What's happened?"
"It was so...it was…"
"Steady Sweetheart. Take a deep breath"
"I was near the waterfront, but there was this man, Phil ! this big eerie looking naked man! He had an unconscious girl. The police said he kidnapped her from the hospital! The Police...They shot him! But Phil...The bullets didn't hurt him at all.
He picked up a police car ,and threw it! He threw the car!
He looked at the cops like they were a nuisance to him.
"The police...They saved the girl...but the naked man just swam away...without ever coming up for air."
The Diner owner chose to speak up.
"Aww Criminy! I been hearin this "Sub-Mareener" story all mornin' He busted a power plant, went flyin' over central park, It's all a load of Hooey. It's one O' them Orson Welles tricks...A bunch O' bunk suckers believe"
Someone agreed with him
"Yeah"
Doris tried to defend herself.
"But...I was there! I..I saw it!"
"Just a trick little lady" said another customer.
She looked at me for support.
"Phil?"
"It's okay, sweetheart, you saw what you saw."
They all agreed that she was wrong and it was nothing and I wondered how long they could keep it up.
Not that long as it turned out.
Manhattan seemed like the whole world to us sometimes, but it was an island, and the Marvels among us didn't exactly hide.
"Melted that poor man's car."
"Caught a dangerous maniax, they say! A gang of hoodlums in special flaming suits."
"And where'd they get that idea"
"Not natural"
"...That horrifying face…"
"Stopped that racing scam a few weeks back."
"Just what he wants you to think"
"Whole subway tunnel was flooding"
"...would have drowned for sure"
"..Saved us all"
"Who's to say he didn't start the flood in the first place…"
"..Ripped right through steel! Shifted tons of metal and glass...and do we just say thank you to…"
"Don't like those wars at all…"
And when you came right down to it. The island wasn't that big.
I was eating at the Nighthawks Diner with Jonah and a few others.
"Now, now where's that easy wit of yours that cheerful contempt for the world and everything in it?"
Jonah had a rebuttal practically rehearsed.
"Look at this story! "Human torch flies medicine to trapped town!" pfah! The things these freaks do...making joes like you and me look like pikers...and we just lap it up! I'd like to lock them up and throw away the key!"
There was a blonde haired man next to me. He had a red shirt under a dress shirt in jacket.
"That's"
Then the entire left side of his face burst into fire.
"Enough!"
His entire body was engulfed in flame and he turned to leave.
"Food here's lousy anyway."
A burning, smoldering hole was left in the glass. The employees moved to pour water onto the embers. Jonah and I could only stare in shock.
"Not that big at all"
It around then, that I finally got my chance to Europe, but…
"You're turning it down? Phil.. You've been begging for this for months!"
"I know mister Goodman, and I can't explain it. I'd rather just stay for now."
I looked over to the boar near me. There was a picture of Namor on it and a Daily Bugle headline reading "SUB-MARINER ESCAPES DEATH IN ELECTRIC CHAIR!". The Police realized that the Sub-Mariner often came to the aid of women in peril during his occasional visits. The Police woman Betty Dean was recruited to lure him into a trap. It succeeded and chemical weapons proved to be sufficient in incapacitating the Prince. Everything was going so well. He was kept drugged up until he went to the chair. Instead of frying him like a fish, the Electric Chair only woke him up, allowing him to go on a rampage and make his escape back into the ocean. Below that article was an article covering the robot Electro, one more closely controlled by his creator. The Government had openly endorsed the project.
What could I say? The city had changed somehow and things just didn't seem right anymore?"
Still that's how I felt.
It's not like there hadn't been mystery men before, the Shadow, the Phantom Eagle, even as far back as the Rawhide kid...But this was different. These new creatures, they were more than human.
And with Doris and he mother all a twitter over wedding plans…
"What do you think phil?" Pink or mauve?"
"Ah..whatever. They're both fine."
"Phil, is something wrong? You've been jumpy as a cat all evening."
"It's nothing. I'm fine. I'm going out for a smoke."
As I smoked on the porch I began to wonder.
"How was I supposed to be a husband, maybe a father, in a world where any moment a monster could come crashing through your wall?"
Marvels, I called them, and that's what they were. Next to that..what were we?
Before they came,we were so big, so grand, we were americans...young, strong, Vital! We were the ones who got things done, but we'd gotten smaller. I could see it in those same faces...faces that had once been so confident, so brash.
I saw, I think it was the Angel, leap across two rooftops, others saw it as well. He cast a large shadow.
We weren't the players anymore. We were spectators. We were waiting for something without knowing what it was.