Wednesday, October 10, 2007
The ones they don't make comics about
I roll up onto the stage. Lots of eyes pointed at me. Morbid curiosity; they all want to see. I turn on the mike.
"Hey. So. Question for the floor. Have you had one of the drunk driving victims come out to your school before?"
A few nods.
"Any of you drink and drive? No? Or at least, not that you'll admit? Good. Shows that you know what stupid is, at least when you're sitting around bored in a gym."
A couple desultory chuckles.
"Any of you folks not want to be here? Show of hands. Who wants to be just about anywhere else than sitting in this fucking gym?"
A couple brave souls risk the wrath of their teachers by raising hands. Time for the freak show.
"Me neither." I raise my right hand, good and high so everyone can get a look at the skin as it drips and runs down my arm like warm wax. Some kid in the back retches up. Bastards always schedule me for after lunch. I drop my arm and bring it back inside my envirochair before I lose any bits. That's never fun.
"Where I want to be is working a desk job somewhere, or going for beers with the gang, or maybe raising a family, or just about fucking anything other than living in a damn envirochair. And you know what? I'm one of the lucky ones."
"Every year in this country, about 3000 folks hit some kind of transformation. They get bit by a radioactive spider, or get exposed to gamma rays, or fall in a vat of weird chemicals in an industrial accident or something like that. I'm here to remind you that not everyone gets to be your friendly neighborhood Spiderman."
I cue the projector, which starts to show statistics, interspersed with some pretty gross pictures. I mean, I live with the fact that I melt at room temperature, and I still can't stomach some of those shots.
"Of those three thousand or so, fully 95% die either immediately, or within months. 75% of those are no longer identifiable as human by the time they are dead."
"The remaining 5% can live. Usually with some pretty damn expensive equipment. Of those, some, like me, are the lucky ones. We can still think, talk, get around after a fashion. Of course, no sex when your dick melts from friction, but still, better me than him." I jerk my head in the direction of the screen, where some poor screaming bastard is on fire, but not getting burned up. "He committed suidide. Hung himself with an asbestos rope that his wife smuggled in. Can't say as I blame him. Or her."
I turn around and roll off the stage. Can't say I envy their teachers this afternoon. Of course it'll all wear off - teenagers always think they're fuckin' immortal. Six months from now, one of these dumb kids is gonna throw himself into a reactor, dead certain that he's gonna be the next Molecule Man.
Some days I don't know why I bother.
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This was sparked by seeing the Sandman's genesis in the most recent Spiderman movie and thinking "What are the odds, even accepting super-hero physics, of that actually ending well?" And just a general fascination with the underbelly of shiny-happy comic worlds. Spiderman and Molecule Man are trademarks of Marvel Comics, used without permission or apology, yadda yadda yadda.
James
Labels: geekery, I think too much
posted by James at 12:06 PM
3 Comments:
Mmm.... interesting.
Very cool. I like it.
Makes me think of Lex Luthor's Everyman project in DC's 52. He could give anyone super powers.
Cool!
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