9: BONUS EP - Unsung Heroes

you can hear his leather pants squeaking. He has a shaved head and a beard dyed bright red. He wears a metal gauntlet on one hand, and he accents his look with a gold grill over his teeth and a pair of mirrored sunglasses. Well, I just think aviators just say to me, douche bag. When I see people in aviators, I don't don't you don't you think they look douchey? I do. They're like trying excessively hard to be cool,

So I adopted that as my own. Tamer Lane took his name from a Turko Mongol conqueror rampaged across Central Asia in the fourteenth century. He would leave piles of humans heads outside of cities that he was going to sack and lay siege to, and I think he left a clear message. So he was a good inspiration for me. But tammer Lane doesn't only take inspiration from ancient warriors. As a child, I was a huge fan of Mr. T So he was a little bit of an inspiration

to me as well. And in his more introspective moments, timmer Lane would say his persona came from even closer to home. Was there some sort of Nietzschean monster within us all, some sort of Carl Young's belief in the shadows cell? Yes, I would say that the disconnect I had with my own family and my own father helped

create this character. Also my disappointment in society, trying to be a good citizen, trying to do the right thing and get a nine to five job and work forty hours a week and be an obedient servant of the fascional capitalist system. I think failing at that. And again my disconnect from my family, Yes, helped create this character. As you might have gathered from his voicemail, an affinity for bloodthirsty warlords timmer Lane identifies as a real life

supervillain and a bit like Rex Velvet. He sees it as his duty to offer a kind of meta commentary on the superhero world. I was at home one day and I was stroking my beloved pet, and I noticed on the news the story came on about real life superheroes, and mostly it would seem that these real life shoulder here spent their time handing out sandwiches and warm socks. And I thought to myself, what arrogance. How dare they go around calling themselves real life superheroes when they set

the ball so low. So I said to myself, well, ourself, you all a real life super villain by comparison. So from that day forth, I made it my goal to become the best real life super villain I could become. Timmer Lane isn't above his own heroics when the moment calls for it. One time, he says he got into a fight with a Wolverine impersonator at a nightclub. It was a party and he was like squirting tequila into a to the mouths of miners, and he had a microphone.

I thought it would be a good idea to take it from him, So I took his microphone and began riding through the nightclub, saying, a super villain's up in here running this bitch. He didn't like that he tackled me from behind. His other hobbies include protesting aginst what he calls his enemies insurrectionists, fascist Republicans, Christians, even dare I say. He also runs a supervillain YouTube channel where

he reviews fast food. Alright, guys, this is the Derek We Yeah, he starred in short films and he does charity work. My charity has saved the chips dot org. Being that I am an anthropology major, I have a very close affinity to our chimpanzee cousins. We didn't get to hear from tamer Lane in the main series because tamer Lane isn't a part of the Seattle superhero scene.

He's from Miami. He's just one of many people all over America and the world who've taken up a cape or mask, or in this case, a pair of leather trousers and joined the real life superhero community. And the course of making the superhero complex, I met a lot

more than just Phoenix and his crew. So in this bonus episode, I wanted to fire up the Batmobile one more time and take you on a whistle stop tour of the rest of this wild world and the folks like Tammer Lane who inhabited I'm David Weinberg and from the teams at Novel and I Heart Radio. This is the Superhero Complex, Episode nine, Unsung Heroes. One person who got to know the real life superhero world as well as I did is writer and broadcaster John Ronson, who

we heard from an episode four. John hung out with real life superheroes from across America, but like me, his introduction to this weird and wild world start it in Seattle, in true Phoenix Jones style. The first time I met him, he was in the emergency room. I got off the plane in Seattle and got a message that he had been shot. I think I was stabbed. My first thought, of course, was a shift. I've just traveled Britain and he's been stabbed, So that's how empathetic I was after

a twelve hour flight. So I got to the emergency room and he's there in the superhero outfit of the emergency room, and he had been stabbed. But it's like it's okay. You know, I was stabbed earlier tonight, but I'm gonna go out and patrol some more. And I'm like, are you sure? And then the doctor came in and asked him about his family doctor, and he named his pediatrician, and I said, are you a child? But it turns

out you can. He was like, twenty three and you can be with you pede addition to the twenty four, apparently in America. I did say to him, look, you've just been stabbed. Are you sure that you want to patrol? Like I can honestly wait till tomorrow. No, He's like, no, fib ing out. A couple of nights later, they went on the patrol where they had ultimately faced down the crack dealers in Belltown. But before that epic showdown, John said Phoenix was clutching its straws, trying to find crimes

to thwart. Phoenix saw somebody pass the back to someone else. How he went yacht sie right across the road and said, it's got its stupid superhero fits, Sir, can I see that baggy? And it was it was pretzels, And he was like so disappointed. I was jealous that John had even this experience while on patrol with Phoenix, I wasn't so lucky. We never even encountered a bag of salty snacks being exchanged suspiciously. Comparing notes on Phoenix Jones wasn't

the only reason I wanted to talk to John. He spent a lot of time with other different real life superheroes too, and I was curious to learn what he made of the whole scene. He told me in his experience, they fell into two camps. You've got the sort of Phoenix type ones who are into the costumes, and sometimes they even have like the special weapons like the web gun or the grappling hooks, So you've got that sort of which Phoenix was the clear like leader, and they

all looked up to him. He had the best costume, He was the most charismatic. That lot were quite camp. I remember we were looking at this group of crack addicts that they wanted to break up at the best stop at three in the morning, and the crack addicts were looking at us and the superheroes we like murmuring to each other, and the crack addicts were presumably thinking, you know, what are they saying to each other? And what the superheroes were saying to each other was, oh,

I love your black and yellow color scheme. The yellow really pops. So they were So you had that genre her superhero who were all pretty delightful, even though I didn't agree with what they were doing. But then you had this other sort who I thought were much worse. John told me he met some superheroes who represented the second camp when he was in New York City. He went on patrol with the group called the New York Initiative, and they loved him feeling deeply uncomfortable. They were barely

superheroes at all. What they really were. With the Gilantes, they didn't make much of an effort with the color scheme. It was more just balaklavas, and they wanted to break up drug dealers in Washington Square Park. But it was only when they ran towards this guy with lights, like flashlights.

I mean, they were terrifying this guy. They surrounded this guy and they had like like floodlights and we're like lit him up, and the poor guy was like running away, saying, you don't know me, you don't know anything about me, you don't know why I'm here, you know this? And I was on his side, and this guy was selling weed to the students at n y U and they did all of that. You know, it's terrifying the life out of this poor guy with lights and shaming for weed.

Now a few years later, weeds legal and you can stand in Washington Square Park and smoke weed and the police are fine because it's legal to do it. So out of a bad vibe with them, I thought they were very unpleasant because after My Peace came out, this one guy who was the ringleader of the New York Crew, it was like really angry. It was like, you know, let's get ronson. And remember somebody said to me, oh, he's really troubled. I never encountered this type of superhero

in Seattle. Everyone I talked to seemed to be more of the Phoenix camp, well meaning folks who seemed to have their hearts in the right place. Is But John wasn't just uncomfortable with the real life superheroes he met in New York. He thinks the whole movement is flawed. I don't believe in real life superheroing, Like I don't think it's something that people should do. Look at the real place of a flawed too, but they're flowed in a different way. And quite often when we tried better

the justice system, we bring new problems to it. You see that with social media shaming, and I think you see it with the real life superhero So one of the main things is just that they're they're too into it. And when you're too into something, that's when that's where the problems starts. That's when you commit miscourages of justice. So that was my main animus was that there were two into it. They were into the fame. It was like a badge of honor to to thwart a crime.

And I don't think crime fighters should feel about crime that way. It should be both pragmatic and by the book. Yeah, I found this to be true for Phoenix Jones as well. I think his desire for fame and compulsion to find crime don't serve him well in his attempt to live up to the ideals of a superhero. But despite John's reservations about the real life superhero communities crime fighting tactics, he told me that Phoenix was his favorite. Out of

all the heroes he met, Phoenix was the best. I mean, that's why you're doing him. He was just the most charismatic, funny, charming. Inevitably, then some of them will be like angry and troubled, and he didn't feel like that some of them would be like nerdy, um kind of misfits. And I think Phoenix was a misfit, but not in a kind of

gamer type. I mean, I'm sure he is a gamer, but he wasn't like one of those sort of nerdy guys who just spend two long sign front of his computer and decides to buy and outfit go out into it on the streets of what There were other superheroes who were like that, you know, a little out of shape, and you could tell that they were just passing through. I asked John if he still thought of Phoenix that way even after his conviction on drug conspiracy charges. I

was genuinely startled and saddened. Like like everyone, one of my least favorite things is hypocrisy, and obviously the first thing you think as well as her hypocrite. But mainly I just felt sad, like I know from spending that time with Phoenix that he's a sweet guy. He wants to do good. You know, Phoenix is a very unique person. He's this sort of weird kind of specialness to him. It feels like it's a little sullied now because we wanted him to be He was setting himself up as pure,

and we wanted him to be pure. John said that compared to the New York superheroes who just seemed angry and vengeful when they chased down drug dealers, Phoenix had seemed a lot more idealistic. In fact, John said when they faced off with the crack dealers on the patrol we heard about an episode four, he really felt Phoenix was genuine. The conversation that I overheard with the crack data was like, I've got no choice. This is how I feed my family. I've got no choice. And Phoenix

was like, sir, you do have a choice. It was like, you know, trying to be a positive. Influence said, I'm sure that was real. That was part of what attracted him to us was that he was innocent and sweet and pure, and yeah he was goofy, and yeah there were definitely some bad sides to what he did, getting too into it, but there was a kind of goofy. This sort of purity to him. Had the problem with the drug allegation is that it's not pure anymore. It's

like hypocritical And I heard that. Now people yeah, hypocritic at him as he walks down the street in Seattle. Now, my guests is that there's a complicated set of circumstances as to why he ended up in that situation. But the problem is no one likes hypocrisy. That was the same problem I had with Phoenix. But John said that for all Phoenix's flaws, there was still one moment that stuck in his mind. My last memory of Phoenix were all of these kids just gathered around him like so excited.

Oh my god, it's Phoenix Jones. It's Phoenix Jones. And though he was a celebrity. As I walked away, I looked back and I saw these kids with Phoenix, and I thought, well, he's no different to a superhero. He's giving these kids the same joy that a real superhero would. So he is a superhero in a way. For all the ups and downs in Phoenix's superhero career, there's no denying that he has genuinely inspired people along the way,

and not just in the US. The superheroes John met and the ones I've spent time with in this series so far are all based in America, but since the heyday of the Rain City Crew, the real life superhero movement has gone international. It's time to meet the Cape Crusaders, who are fighting crime all over the globe that's coming up.

America may be the birthplace of the classic comic book superheroes and the country where the real life superhero movement found its feet, but all over the world there are thriving pockets of superhero activity. Who knows, maybe there's even a Mask Avenger in your neighborhood, sneaking out late at night in a cape and mask to ward off muggers or clean up the streets. So first stop on our Superhero World tour is Japan. I guess there are about

party heroes in Japan. This is Clean Panther. She wears a blue, red, and black kimono and a futuristic yellow panther mask that covers her whole head. Japan has the biggest real life superhero scene I encountered outside of America. But whereas the groups I met in Seattle were into crime fighting and homeless outreach, the big focus in Japan is picking up litter. That's how Clean Panther got her name. My main activity is clean up Tongue. So named Clean

and also combined with Panther. I love Black Panther, the Marvel superhero Clean Panther and her superhero crew go on litter patrols, picking up trash in Goya, Japan's fourth largest city. They're just some of many heroes with names like Hell Hero, Clean Arrow and Maroons Sparrow, who gear up in fantastical

masks and buddy armor to tidy up their cities. For Phoenix Jones, a patrol that isn't focused on taking out bad guys as a patrol wasted, so I can imagine he wouldn't fit in too well with the Japanese scene, but they do have one thing in common. The real life superheroes of Japan are great at social media. They post videos of themselves cleaning up their towns, shot like an action film with a comic book movie soundtrack. Over

in Europe they have their own superheroes too well. Of course, I can give you my real name, but um I go the Colonel Spider. The Incredible Spider is from the Netherlands. He likes to keep his superhero activities on the download, so he asked us to disguise his voice. I want to protect myself and UM, I don't say that I worked outside with the law, but sometimes it really has its benefits to not work specifically by the law, A

warming he says. He divides his time between online vigilanteism and real life street patrols, and his costume is a tribute to his favorite superhero, Spider Man. He was basically the one character that really inspired me to do more, to do all this um, and it's also a symbol that people trust, people feel safe around Spider Man. He wears a red suit with a white spider on the chest over stab proof armor and a homemade protective spider mask.

He even builds his own Spider Man inspired gadgets, like a d i y web slinger. I got some what shooters with the fluid that has like apers mixture in it, so if somebody were to attach me, I can like simply pepperscrate him and they wouldn't see it. Like it's it's all covered into suits. So people want to see you come in. The Incredible Spider has a pretty defined aesthetic, albeit one that borrows heavily from one of fiction's most well known superheroes. It's not easy to come up with

your own superhero identity. Sometimes it takes time to refine it. There's also another Dutch superhero who went through a lot of different alter egos before he ultimately landed on the perfect alias. My first alias I've used was Blue Tornado. I was called Blue Tornado because those were the only

two English words I knew back at the time. After that, it was Black Shadow, then Green Assassin for a while, and I just jumped to my closet, like, what, what's the most superhero combination of clothes I have right now? And there wasn't all black suit. And that's when I started Shadow Panther. And Shadow Panther was the alias I've actually got arrested with because they thought I was trouble. This was a few years ago, when Shadow Panther was

around seventeen. I was walking through a bark because the killer clown hype was raging. Back then, if the killer clown hype passed you by, it was an international hoax that got a lot of traction. Around two thousand and sixteen. They were rooms and news stories about evil clowns popping up all over the world who supposedly preyed on children, and it was like, Hey, I'm going out there in the bark trying to get killy clowns. And I had this like a huge iron barrow with me to protect myself,

you know. And this couple of guys came by and they asked me what I was doing, so I just started explaining. So the two guys called the police, who weren't impressed. And what I would give to have been there to see Shadow Panther decked out in his full costume, explaining to the cops that he was there to fight off killer clowns. I tried to mimic like a panther's face, but it kind of was like like like a shnake face. Um. It had like little teeth at the mouth opening and

stuff and safety goggles in it. It was completely made of trash backs and dark tape. That run in with the cops was basically the end of the Shadow Panther era. Now he's known as Blood Slash, and he says he's

given up on ridding the world a killer clowns. I'm there to help people out with small things, pointing the directions and stuff, and if trouble is going down, I'm trying to be there, to be one of the people that has their phone in their hands, calls the alarm number that kind of thinks I have to say to me. The name blood Slash doesn't really say I'm your friendly neighborhood helper Warden. But maybe it won't be the final

alias this intrepid hero tries on for size. If he ever decided to take up the good old iron bar again and head to Seattle, I think blood Slash would find a kindred spirit in Midnight Jack. After all, once upon a time, Jack was just a guy in a mask hiding in a bush with a baseball bat. Over in Mexico, the scene is a little different. Mexico is home to one of my favorite offshoots of the real

life superhero World. Meet political scientist Jorge Kane is a k A. Jorge studied urban planning and transportation in college. When he was growing up in Mexico City, he discovered his true passion in life, road safety. We built cities for cars, motorized CDs, metal machines in the streets, killing everyone literally. Jorge struggled to get other people as fired up about infrastructure as he was. You know it could be boring to talk about pedestrians with people, and nobody

will read the academic paper about pedestrian road safety. Then one night, Jorge and his best friend went to catch a Lucha libre wrestling match. It was something they did all the time, but that night was different. Jorge watched the mask luchi door fighters throw each other around the ring and they're gleaming costumes, and a crazy idea popped into his head. We need to do something fun. Uh, why not after the match we buy a cape and a mask and go out to the streets to fight

for the rights of pedestrians. And just like that, a new hero was born El po that's Spanish for the pedestrian. For his first few outings, Lato wore a five dollar cape, but then he got an upgrade. A brother helped me with the design of the mask. It's a crosswalk with a pedestrian. I told my grandmother to help me design my cape, and my cape has white and black stripes, just like a pedestrian crosswalk. With his new supersuit, Lao set out to brave the onslaught of rush hour in

Mexico City. He wove through road raging drivers and toxic exhaust fumes with his black and white crosswalk cape streaming out behind him. I pushed back cars that are obstructing the crosswalk. I paint the sidewalks, and I paint crosswalks and bikeways without any pyramids. And my most controversial action in the streets is to walk on top of the cars parked on the sidewalk, because the sidewalk is the space of pedestrians. My mother tells me that I can

get in trouble with the owner of the cars. L has a lot in common with the real life superheroes I met in the US, but he prefers a different label. I don't like to watch the world superhero I feel it sounds pretentious. I don't know, but I like more of In the Spanish the were the luchador. It's a fighter, a fighter of the streets. Lucha libre wrestling started out in the late nineteenth century, and it's famous for its high flying takedowns and masked fighters who wear brightly colored capes.

Each luchador creates their own superhero esque persona. Some of them symbolize good and some embody evil. It's a message that that that we're always have this struggle with the

two sides of humanity. You know, we are all good and evil by nature, and these representation with lucavores, with these wrestlers with colorful masks and capes, and it's a great way to express these internal bottle of human being, just like the real life superheroes who came before Phoenix Jones Elo has his own cape wearing predecessors in Mexico too.

In the late nineteen eighties, a Lucidor in red tights and a gold cape named super Barrio Gomez for affordable housing after thousands of people were left homeless by an earthquake in Mexico City. But l Peotonito's main inspiration was a man named Antonas Mochus. He was a mathematician and philosopher with thick glasses and a sandy beard. He roamed the city of Bogata, Columbia, in red spandex underpants and a cape with a letter C painted across his chest.

It stood for super c v COO super Citizen. His central mission was to use his superpowers of comedy and performance to get people fired up about important issues. He even turned up on TV naked. Apart from his superhero logo and took a shower to protest the lack of clean water in the city. And then he ran for mayor of Bogata. He won the election and he was Mayor of Bogotan. And during his administration, he fired all the corrupt transit police and he hired minds to control traffic.

You heard that right. He hired four hundred and twenty mimes with white painted faces and fluorescent dungarees. They fanned out across the city, mocking people who broke traffic laws and helping pedestrians cross the roads. The result was a fifty drop in traffic fatalities, and this superhero mayor Supercifical, also brought down homicide rates by with his other unusual policies. At one point, he got forty five thousand citizens to

gather in the streets and inflate balloons. They were painted with the image of someone who they felt had persecuted them in some way. Together, the citizens popped the balloons in a form of citywide performance therapy. I had the privilege to talk with him about these and he told me that it's a way to have a civic theater in the streets. You know, people love to see a theater and spectacles in the streets, and that's a great

way to send a message in a peaceful way. And and then I decided, like, we need a pedestrian superhero in Mexico City. This is a world I desperately want to live in, one where our philosopher mayor where is a cape to celebrate the humble citizen. A city run by a visionary leader who hires hundreds of mimes as traffic police. What a beautiful sight that must have been.

Why can't we have that? I would even settle for a world in which one of my elected officials was a real life supervillain, like, oh, I don't know, lord Mole, I've got an old Russian tank commander's helmet and a big overcoat and goggles obviously, because Mole is a mole. He's short sighted, but he needs the glasses on the goggles because he also is a scientist. Despite his supposedly

villainous persona, Lord Male is actually a good guy. He spends a lot of his time out on the streets of Birmingham, England, doing homeless outreach or charity fundraising with his son, who is also a real life superhero. My son Andrew was being called electro Kid by the other heroes because of all of the treatment that he had in hospital for a ain tumor, and then electro lad as he got a bit older, and then he became

proton because of the proton beam therapy. So our favorite organization to raise money for is the Birmingham Children's Hospital. Lord More runs a real life superhero collective called the UK Initiative. It's part of a larger superhero network called The Initiative, which exists all over the world. Got groups in Australia, New Zealand, Europe, Africa, South America, and obviously the UK. As it turned out, two of the leaders were only a few hours away from me, just outside

of San Francisco. So what's it like to run the real life equivalent of an international Avengers squad? That's coming up. If the real life superhero movement has a spiritual home, it's a bakery in the Bay Area called Superhero Desserts. You'll find it in a red brick building with a glass fridge out front full of cakes with elaborate fondent toppings. Inside, it's cozy. There are fairy lights hanging up and photos on the walls of people dressed up in superhero costumes.

It's run by Edwina and Mike a k A. Rock and Roll and night Bug. If you catch them in costume, night Bug is decked out in red and black, with a smooth red mask that covers his whole face and black mesh holes over his eyes. Rock and Roll likes to switch up her look, but you might find her with long, bright pink hair, knee high black boots, and a purple cape. There are two of the leaders of a global superhero network with chapters all over the world

called The Initiative. They're also husband and wife, but they didn't start out their real life superhero journey together. I had been doing it without the wife's knowledge because I figured, well, you know what, if they are completely crazy and I go out twice and I'm like, this is not for me, I can just forget the whole thing. Ever happened. Night Bug had heard about some heroes in his neighborhood doing costumed safety patrols and he wanted to check it out.

So one night he pulled on a mask and stuck out to join them. Several patrols later, night Bug figured it was time to let his wife in on the secret, and he said, Okay, you know, I know I told you about this this movie. I want you to come see it's it's called Superheroes. And so we went to this theater, the Roxy in San Francisco, and there were all these weird guys standing around in costume outside, and I thought, while you guys really take these shows seriously,

you're all just done. It turned out the movie was a documentary. I realized, Oh my god, this is about people who are trying to be real life superheroes. And the arc of the movie is beautiful in that you're laughing at these people. At first, you're you're killing them, you know, with with the rest of the audience, and then you see the sacrifices they make, the determination and the just the dedication they have. By the end of it, you're rooting for these guys. I was, and so is

the audience. By the sound of it, they were all clapping at the end. After the credits rolled, some of the people who come dressed up in costumes assembled at the front of the movie theater for the director's q and a night bug said he needed to use the bathroom. The questions, happened? Is not back? Ten minutes later, I'm going, oh,

my gosh, is he okay? I'm looking at my watch and this guy in this costume walks up right to the front of the theater where the other heroes are, and he takes his place, and they go, hey, guys, this is night Book. I went to the back and I was going looking for just any man to go into the bathroom and check out my husband. And then I hear my husband's voice and I go, oh, thank goodness, and I turned around, but it's not my husband talking. It's night Bug. I felt like somebody had punched me

in the gut and I speechless. I couldn't believe it. So that's how I was introduced it. After that, were you like, oh this is great, or you're like I don't know about this, or oh my god, and immediately immediately the same things we're in through my head, Oh my god, how long has he been doing this? How did he keep this from me? And I love this? How can I get into it? Edwena seemed to be known as rock and Roll was pretty well qualified for

superhero work. We've been martial artists and instructors for decades now, and I was the head of security for a night club in San Francisco. It felt like being a bouncer, but for the entire city of San Francisco. These days, Nightbug and Rock and Roll are something of a superhero power couple. They founded the California chapter of the International superhero group the Initiative in two thousand and eleven. Thirteen

More Initiative chapters have sprung up since. As it happens, the New York branch of the Initiative is the same group John Ronson went on patrol with, though a lot of the membership has turned over since then. From their base in California, Rock and Roll and Night Bug have become magnets for a firing superheroes all over the world. We used to get several emails a month from people who are like, oh yeah, I can move things with my mind, you know, Oh yeah, can you demonstrate that?

Oh no, no no, I can't do it over video because no, no, no, there's always some excuse. I think it's a masterpiece of an understatement to say that we get a few. We get like, like, out of ten people, I'd say seven people are just unrealistic about dudes. We don't go out taking down drug lords. It's not what we do. You'll find out really quickly that you don't actually have superpowers.

To make sure their budding recruits stay grounded on this plane of reality, rock and Roll and night Bug run a Facebook page were they and other veterans superheroes offer advice. They even have their own podcast called Heroes one oh one. The initiative wasn't the only reason I wanted to talk to rock and Roll. In night Bug, Phoenix Jones repeatedly claimed to be the only true real life superhero one who was flawless at crime fighting. But as you know,

I had my doubts. So every time I interviewed a superhero for this series, I asked them who they thought was the best example of a real life superhero out there today, and again and again, people told me rock and Roll and night Bug. So I was curious to meet them and find out what they were up to. It turns out it was a lot. They started out doing community outreach to unhoused people in their community. Every

week we were going broke. To put it plainly, we'd make two hundred burritos and you know, every week and then bring them out with socks and water and everything else, and and pretty soon what we can't do this anymore.

At the time, Rock and Roll had been watching a lot of The Great British Baking Show, and so I was baking so much that my friends were going, you know, if your family is getting sick of all the sugar and you can't do anything with it, why don't you just have a pop up, take the money and do something good with it. Oh my god, there you go. That's how the Bake Superhero Desserts was born. Of their profits go to fund superhero community outreach events. Every month.

We had fifties people the last time, sixty people the time before, and they all got together wearing superhero costumes and making burritos and things together. They also carry out safety patrols, run free self defense classes, and according to their website, they've personally collected eleven thousand used needles from

the streets of California. When I talked to Rock and Roll and night Bug about the Seattle superhero scene, they told me they were close with Evo and Crystal Marks, and they were big fans of Red Ranger two, but they were less complimentary about our old friend Phoenix Jones to be perfectly blunt in Phoenix knows this. We've said it before to him. Phoenix has a kind heart. But

Phoenix has made a lot of really bad decisions. It's sad that he's the biggest name you see, but you know, we don't want people thinking the rest of us are

like him. Rock and Roll and night Bug definitely fall into the category of superhero that Phoenix derisively calls real life sandwich handlers, though at times Phoenix has apologized for these types of remarks and said he wants to be able to get along and work alongside all types of superheroes, but then he'll launch into a rant about how people who give out food in costumes are assholes. So it's hard to take him in his word when he claims

to be above the petty superhero in fighting. Rock and Roll and night Bug told me they are interested in doing this work for glory or fame, another accusation Phoenix often lobbs at other superheroes. We try to hammer it into the community. Look, it's awful if you think about it, to want to be someone's hero, because you're essentially hoping that someone will have the worst day of their life. So for you to want to be, oh, I I want to rescue someone today, just hope that everything's quiet.

And if you happen to be there for someone that's great for you, you not so great for them. I think that is probably an ideal attitude that any superhero should have when they head out on a patrol of their community. At the end of the day, I would say that I'm a supporter of the real life superhero community. I think if you're judging real life superheroes solely on their ability to fight crime, I would say the movement

as a whole has underdelivered on that promise. But I personally never had any experiences with the kind of superheroes John Ronson met, the ones whose hearts did not appear to be in the right place, So my take is a little different than his. I don't see the movement itself is flawed. I think any movement will have its bad apples, the ones who seem to be doing more harm than good. But at least in my experience, I think the vast majority of real life superheroes do way

more good for society than harm. It's hard to quantify just how much good they do but attempts have been made. A study at the University of Sydney looked at real life superheroes and found that, on average, they spent nineteen hours a week on superhero activity, which I assume is way more time than most people spend volunteering to help

their own community. And I love the idea of every town having its own unique superheroes, its own home team, so to speak, instead of a superhero monoculture dominated by the large corporations that control the intellectual property of DC and Marvel. I'm all for the diversification of the superhero universe, and I wholeheartedly support people's individual expression. Who doesn't love

seeing a kick ass homemade costume. I wish there were more of real life superheroes and every city for kids to encounter out in the wild, for the good humanitarian work they do, and for the sheer joy of having eccentric characters roaming the streets, living out their own fantasies of what it means to be a hero. The Superhero Complex is hosted and written by me David Weinberg and

reported by me Amalia Sortland and Caroline Thornha. Production from Mamalia Sortland and Caroline Thornham, Sean Glenn, Max O'Brien and David Waters are executive producers. Fact checking by Andrew Schwartz, Production management from Sharie Houston, Frankie Taylor and Charlotte Wolf. Sound design, mixing and scoring by Rob Spate. Music supervision by Nicholas Alexander and David Waters. Original music is composed

by Paul Housden. Special thanks to Peter Tangan, Willard Foxton, Matt O'Mara, Katrina Norvelle Beth and Macaluso, Oran Rosenbaum, Shelby Shankman and all the team e t A. For more from Novel, visit novel dot Audio