Who Writes This Stuff?

It’s almost noon as Hammerspace walks into a Dunkin Donuts on the I-95 for our interview. I can’t help but think the up and coming supervillain is as far from cliché as a supervillain can get as he sits down across from me in his purple rubberized armor and black trench coat. He doesn’t wear a shred of spandex and a cape is nowhere to be seen.

“A lot of guys dropped the cape back in the late nineties. It just went out. And you can’t blame them really. You ever try to ride a motorcycle with one of those things? It’s a real good way to end up like Isadora Duncan. Of course I catch a lot of flak for the black trench coat. It used to just be sort of roguish. Highlander wore a black trench coat. After Columbine it has a whole other meaning, but I didn’t become a professional evil-doer to worry about hurting people’s feelings.”

Is that what you call it? Professional evil-doing?

“Well, that’s a little long winded. I’m a big fan of what works. Supervillain. Supervillainy. Criminal enterprise. Evil mastermind is a good one.”

Hammerspace obviously isn’t shy about his moral alignment. “Why would I be?” He says as he sips a black coffee from a paper cup. “With the kind of nonsense that goes on in the world every day, I think it’s refreshing to have some people that just say ‘Hey, look, we’re evil. We’re the bad guys.’ I mean look at the last three presidents of the United States. Clinton promised to fix the economy, but he just wanted to run the show and get his knob polished. Bush was all hometown, God and country, but he just wanted to run the show and kill some towel heads. Then there was Obama, all about hope and change, but he really just wanted to run the show and, who knows, healthcare, something, something, socialism. This new guy – who knows, but I’m sure it’s the same. At least I’m not covering anything. I want to rule the world. Bam. There it is. It’s on the table. That’s it. No bullshit. And I’m better than those guys because of it.”

And he may be on to something. After two recent high profile scuffs with New York’s most prominent superhero, Hammerspace most definitely has some idea what he’s talking about, even if he is a little cocky. “General Welfare is a fool, a pathetic fool and I will crush him and enslave his beloved city.”
Of course being a super powered scoundrel has left a bad taste in the mouths of some. The mayor’s office officially labeled Hammerspace a threat to public safety last month after his most recent bout with General Welfare, in which a subway train was completely destroyed and a young woman was witnessed falling hundreds of feet from a skyscraper before being swept to safety by the military uniformed protector of freedom. “I said ‘You may have defeated me this time, Welfare, but can you defeat gravity itself to save the woman you love?’ and I threw the bitch off the building. How classic is that?”

Hammerspace chuckles as he takes a bite from a donut with cherry filling. He appears surprised and puts the donut down to curse at the donut shop clerk. The clerk looks like he’s not sure whether to call the police or look for a hidden camera. I defuse the situation by asking the next question.

“What is it that makes me a super villain and not just a villain? I have a super power. I mean, obviously.” I inquire further. “Christ, you’re not too keen on the research part of your job are you?” I explain to him that the question is just for the purpose of the interview because people want to read these things coming straight from him. He gets it. “Well, it’s like this: I can keep anything in my jacket. Whatever it is, I can toss it in there and pull it back out later. It doesn’t necessarily have to fit underneath the coat, as long as I can fit it in there initially.” What he means is that he has a magic satchel, as it is called in the literary world. In the early nineteen hundreds, with the advent of animation, cartoon characters, who weren’t limited by the laws of physics like live actors were, began to pull all kinds of objects seemingly from the nowhere around them; baseball bats, guns, musical instruments, anvils and, last but most certainly not least, giant mallets. This led to the coinage of the term hammerspace – a word for the extra dimension from which all of these objects were drawn. When Bugs Bunny pulls out a huge mallet and uses it to smash Elmer Fudd, he is pulling that mallet out of his hammerspace.

“Yeah. It comes from old cartoons. It’s sort of an obscure word so I figured you would have to be kind of smart to get it and those are the best kind. It’s the clever little names you have to think about for a second that you remember. Some guys just don’t get these things at all. I worked with a villain last year called Deathkiller. That’s trying too hard. It sounds like a high school thrash metal band. We get it already. He’s evil. Whatever. He ended up getting shot by his own remote control nerve poison dart gun. Beginner mistake. It didn’t surprise anybody. Speaking of poison there’s a guy that works for Graveyard called the Toxic Shocker. He even kind of looks like a tampon, but I met him once and he’s more of a douche than anything. Then there’s Dick Detective, do what you want with that one. Saikoziz, because apparently being too dumb to spell is cool. Commander Commando wants us to know he’s really commanding I guess.” I try to skew the conversation back to the actual physics of his super ability but he really likes this topic (and honestly I find it too insightful to exclude – I hope no one mentioned is offended). “Then you have the guys with names that just don’t make sense. The Black Bandit is a white guy. I think maybe that makes him racist, but I’m not exactly sure. General Welfare’s sidekick’s name is Jose Canyousee. It sounds clever at first, but then you meet the kid and you realize it wasn’t intentional. And the titles are all over the place. Everybody’s doctor this or Captain that. Captain Colonics is my favorite. That guy is way too into holistic medicine. I thought about a title for a while but I couldn’t come up with one that had a good sound to it.”

About five minutes later he finally stops talking about how easy it is to get a lordship outside of Great Britain and we get back to the subject of his jacket. He explains that he doesn’t necessarily have to be wearing a jacket, but that he just needs some sort of fold or pocket (something I didn’t know going into the interview). He lists some items he commonly carries around. “Hand grenades, ray guns, and of course the Mallet of Malice.” The Mallet of Malice is Hammerspace’s trademark weapon. He draws the medieval warhammer from the jacket as he talks about it and sets it down on the table. “I got it at one of those festivals where a bunch of nerds dress up in fairy costumes and sell ten dollar turkey drumsticks. It’s not magic or anything. I really don’t even use it that much. I whip it out and wave it around to look cool, but if the shit really hits the fan with invincible super foes I need the heavy artillery, not some replica for forty year old guys that still live with their mom.”

An hour later we’re pounding the sidewalk. Hammerspace stops at a newspaper vending box to get a tabloid that features a tiny picture of him down in the corner. He puts a quarter in the machine but takes the entire stack once it’s open. He drops all the tabloids along the sidewalk as we continue walking. Theft and littering before ten AM. The guy takes his evil doing seriously. A busty girl gives us the stink eye as she passes and both of us give her a good once over. “You get really kooky women in this business,” he says. “I was with this girl for a little while she would crawl around naked on all fours and howl like a wolf around the house. It didn’t work out. The suicide girl look is pretty much a necessity. I haven’t been with a girl who didn’t walk around in torn fishnets since my ex-wife. Normal women just don’t go for the whole evil empire thing I guess – unless you’re really successful. El Malo Grande can’t go to the Quik Stop without taking a supermodel back to his volcano fortress. It’s probably like that with any career really.”
As he drops the last of the newspapers we’re interrupted by a startlingly loud throat clearing sound. Behind us stands a bevy of costume clad personalities with their arms crossed and capes flowing. Superheroes.

Next Week: Hammerspace does battle with superheroes…well, sorta.