Who Writes This Stuff?

Hammerspace paces back and forth as he excitedly shouts into a cell phone at someone called Fumigator. The side of the conversation I can hear is disappointingly vague. I’m only able to pick up a few blurry details that weren’t reported already on television, but this much is certain: El Malo Grande is dead.

El Malo Grande, the hulking and terrifying figure at the head of the Global Crime League, was killed this afternoon in an altercation with unknown assailants at his volcano fortress on Tibia Island in the Central Pacific (approximately forty kilometers southwest of Skull Island). Eventually Hammerspace hangs up the phone and I’m able to get his inside perspective on what happened.

“Somebody freaking whacked him while he was tanning by his pool. They dropped right into his fortress and whacked him! Fumigator thinks it was Graveyard Kill Team One. He heard Malo killed a few of them before they got him.”

Hammerspace begins a long explanation (at my request) as he mixes tea in his kitchen. “The GCL is the ultimate brotherhood of evil-doers. There are usually eight or ten of them and different guys are in or out at different times, but they’re the biggest, baddest, most famous villains out there, real legends – guys like Doom Machine and Mr. Meltdown, household names. Everybody wants an invite to the GCL. They run the show in the world of supervillainy. They’re kind of like CAA or The William Morris Agency in that way, only not quite as vicious.”

For the record, the current GCL line up consists of: Mr. Meltdown, with his ability to turn anything he looks at to mush,  Principal Uncertainty, the ex-high school administrator who can be in two places at once and walk through walls, Doom Machine, an alien cyborg with a massive complement of built-in destructive devices, Dark Pope, the infallible supreme pontiff of the church of atheism, The Schrodinger, who is immortal as long as no one is looking at him, Ghettoblaster, able to project massive explosions by beatboxing, Osama Bin Laden, and, until today, El Malo Grande, the invincible and super strong Latino leader of the group.

“The Graveyard, and this is the stuff you won’t read in the paper, is a super secret organization that conducts operations all over the globe. They do some policing of the super beings occasionally.”

So they’re kind of like Interpol, but for supervillains?

“Are they like Interpol? If Interpol will make you watch them murder your infant to get information about security threats and laugh at you when you bring up the Geneva convention then yeah, they’re like Interpol.”

So they’re not good guys?

“No. Superheroes are good guys. The police man that helps you find your mommy when you’re lost is a good guy. Graveyard are definitely bad guys. Well, I guess they’re good guys when they fight us because we’re the bad guys, but they play both sides of the fence too. And these are the scariest guys out there.”

And they work for?

“Nobody knows. Well, I mean obviously they know, but – it’s an expression. You know what I mean. I think they’re Americans or maybe NATO or something because they have a lot of fancy gear. You know those stories you hear about black unmarked helicopters buzzing cattle mutilations and stuff? That’s them. Skullface told me he thinks they work for the lizard people, but he smokes a ton of weed and sometimes paranoia is an issue for him.”

The lizard people?

“There aren’t really lizard people. Well, unless you count Fumigator. Is an alligator a lizard? I’m not sure.”

An alligator is a reptile, and what Hammerspace says about the Graveyard is completely uncorroborated by any reputable sources, although some details are occasionally backed by supermarket tabloids. News rags like that are full of reports of  black, unmarked helicopters, secret societies and government cover-ups, and they also run headlines claiming the president is having an affair with a space alien. Although I’ve heard the name Graveyard thrown around here and there during my research, I’m far from convinced there is actually such a group. The evidence is sketchy at best. Reports are nearly all second or third hand, and even The Toxic Shocker, whom Hammerspace met in person and claimed to have worked for the group, has a reputation for making ridiculous claims to pump up his social stature. There’s no good reason to see this as anything more than an urban legend imagined by bewildered super people to explain that which they have no control over.

I’m deeply fascinated that a supervillain would put stock in a myth like this. Normal people fear the boogeyman (real or imaginary). Peculiar is the idea that the boogeyman checks under his bed for something even scarier before he goes to sleep.

“Anyway, this is huge. With El Malo Grande dead there’s going to be a major shake up. The GCL will be out for blood after this, and lots of guys will be pulling off the most ridiculous stuff they can come up with trying to score creds to impress them so they can get a spot on the team. All hell could break loose pretty fast.”

Getting street cred in the world of supervillainy is no easy task. Anybody can hold up a bank or tie a pretty girl to some railroad tracks, especially if they have decent super powers. The GCL doesn’t bother talking to villains unless they’ve become a household name by themselves. Usually villains have to trigger an event that has some sort of global implications to gain that sort of status. Doom Machine got his invite after he broke the Scarlet Avenger’s spine and left her a paraplegic (she was healed by undisclosed means after a year on the sidelines). The Schrodinger summoned a planet eating monster from another dimension into the middle of New York City to get invited (superheroes eventually teleported it to Soviet Russia, where it was eaten by the planet). Osama Bin Laden… Well, you already know what he did to join the team.

“Every guy’s dream is to do some shit like that and end up getting a major crossover. Crossover is a business term. It’s when a bunch of superheroes have to team up to defeat you. The more the better. Schrodinger pulled that off with the monster thing. Scarlet Avenger got brainwashed by Demento. That was huge. He got killed in that though. The biggest was El Malo Grande. It was after he was on the team already. He did that thing where he stole Amazing Man’s powers and tried to launch a nuke into the Earth’s core. He took on General Welfare, The Crusaders, Power Team and The Magician by himself. That’s what legends are made of.”

But now the legend is dead, leaving a massive void that seems likely to be filled by terrifying violence and also a plethora of nagging questions. Who did this (if not the folkloric culprits of Hammerspace’s imagination)? And how exactly does one kill an invincible man? “I wish I knew,” Hammerspace says. “Of course most invincible guys aren’t actually invincible per se. They’re just ridiculously durable. It’s not always easy to tell the difference, but believe me, just because a guy can take a wrecking ball in the face and walk away doesn’t mean he can swim in molten lava or eat a dirty bomb for breakfast. It’s all different. Now your truly invincible guys, there isn’t much to be done with them except remove them from play somehow. You can freeze them or encase them in bronze or something. Stasis fields are a possibility, but they cost a damn fortune. I tried to get one to use on General Welfare. You ever walk into a bank and tell a loan officer you need thirty million dollars to entrap a superhero within a boundary of infinite rigidity and time suspension? There’s no FHA for evil conquerors. You’re on your own in this business.”

Hammerspace watches Pride and Prejudice on the television as I bring back a sandwich from the deli around the block. The sight throws me at first and he has to explain. “Hollywood is too much like work for me. You know I see explosions and guys throwing buildings and flying people every day on the job. When I come home I want to relax with something that takes the edge off. I’m a big fan of Merchant Ivory productions and I have a lot of nineties sitcom boxed sets. I love Family Matters. Frasier is great too. Besides, movies get so much stuff wrong. It’s annoying. I mean, how many times do you see a movie where the main character is a writer and it just drives you crazy pointing out all the things they got wrong?”

He makes a point. In the movies writers are often rich, good looking and charismatic. In reality we have difficulty paying the bills and spend most of our lives alone with a word processor. I won’t complain about the good looking part. At least in my case, they got that right.

“It’s inescapable. The worst is the henchmen. Nobody really has henchmen. I guess a few of the really rich guys do, but I’ve never had a henchman. I’ve never even met a henchman. Can you see that classified ad? ‘Wanted: Individuals to commit crimes in matching costumes for low pay. Will be murdered after too many failures.’ Who’s going to take that job? And what do they put on their tax return?”

He goes on about henchmen for a while before moving to the subject of villainous plans. “They don’t always think these things through in fictional portrayals. Bad guys are always trying to destroy the world in comic books. That doesn’t make sense. We have to live here too. Why would we do that?”

On superheroes. “There’s no way, super powers or not, that anyone can stumble on as many crimes in progress as the superheroes in comics. It’s like every time they walk down the street something happens. ‘Oh look, the bank is getting robbed. I better intervene.’ That doesn’t happen. One of the main reasons I use my super powers for evil is that I get to stir up interesting situations instead of waiting around for them to happen. Superheroes aren’t allowed to do that. It has to be incredibly boring.”

On costumes. “How the hell do people not recognize them? Superman? All he does is take off his glasses. It’s absurd! Nobody in this business is getting by with anything less than two thirds of their face covered. Most do just the uncovered mouth thing like I do, but a lot of guys go full ski mask with just the eyes uncovered. I can think of one or two women that tried that opera mask look, and it’s sort of sexy, but it’s how you end up with large super powered rapists waiting at your apartment when you get home. That’s what happened to Fire Dancer.” Indeed, and you can read about it in her book, Getting By: Life As a Sexual Assault Survivor.

On the few realistic fictional heroes. “There aren’t any I can think of that are spot on. The worst are usually the ones normal people find the most plausible, like Watchmen. They don’t even have super powers. Nobody makes it in this business without super powers. Batman could never happen. It’s ridiculous. Do you have any idea what it’s like to fight people who can pick up a fire truck and throw it at you? I have an infinite supply of munitions on me and it’s still way too hard. That guy has a utility belt and he knows karate. What the hell is that? And I’m not saying nobody has ever tried it. I know they have. None of them last very long.”

Next Week: I love it when a plan comes together.