My name is Marshall Conrad and Batman is a damned
lie.
I know this because when I first started this
crime-fighting gig, I was expecting to cleverly engage a costumed super villain
and it didn't happen. It still hasn't
happened and I've been at this for over ten years now. Because bald headed
megalomaniacs whose weapon of choice is a freezing ray or homicidal mimes that
squirt acid out of a fake flower exist only in the pages of comic books, what I
do is largely a form of crime prevention.
If you're thinking that I dress up
like McGruff the Crime Dog and
deliver lectures to children about the dangers of talking to strangers, give
your head a shake. I'm not a superhero despite what
the newspapers have been reporting, and I haven't been called on to save the
planet. I'm not even sure that I could save the planet
if the opportunity were to present itself. My preference is to work on a much
smaller scale, so if you're disappointed by this fact,
deal with it.
If journalists are reporting the news as opposed to
fabricating it, you will have successfully typedwww.greenfieldsuperhero.com into the address bar of your web
browser, leading you to my thought-provoking blog. Much of what you're about to read will sound like it came straight from
the pages of fantasy novel, and you'll no doubt continue to question the
believability of the mainstream news media whose focus has been on the small
City of
I'm
sure you've heard about the one-million dollar bounty on my head courtesy of The National Monitor--who
hasn't? Ever since the Drudge
Report broke the story about
the rescue of Congressman Byron Aldrich's wife after she was
kidnapped from the family cottage at Crystal Beach, the City of
It wasn't just the rescue of Mrs.
Aldrich that grabbed the attention of every media outlet in the country--it was
the grainy photograph of a man floating high above the roof of the
WTF???
REPUBLICAN CONGRESSMAN'S WIFE RESCUED BY SUPERMAN???
Charming.
Homeland Security is on high alert, Fox News persists in reporting that I'm an
Islamic Terrorist, and people are selling t-shirts with the slogan "I Can
Be Your Hero Baby" with the now infamous snapshot.
I know the identity of the person who captured my image
with her cell phone, and I'll be contacting her
shortly to express my displeasure. If that picture hadn't
been fired off to Drudge, Marilyn. Aldrich's story of being
whisked off into sky by a man with glowing eyes would have been dismissed
as the hysterical ranting of a traumatized political wife. Better yet, I would
be snoring in my bed instead of writing this blog to set the record straight.
Necessity required that I find and rescue Mrs. Aldrich
because the person responsible for her kidnapping fully intended to murder her
at
I discovered the barn where she was hidden that night
around
She told me the kidnapper would be returning to the barn at
By the way, while I appreciate the kind words from
Congressman Aldrich thanking me for saving his wife, he didn't
get my vote last November because he is a Republican. Please don't
take this personally Congressman, but you people scare me the hell out of me.
As this is my first ever attempt at blogging, I am mindful
that what I am writing is going to piss off comic book enthusiasts.
Good.
You're a troubling pack of nerdish kooks who seriously need to
get a life.
There's more to living than watching Star-Trek reruns and counting down the weeks to
the next comic book convention. Try organized paintball or maybe find a
girlfriend instead of locking yourselves away in your mother's basements and
posting your fantasies about Seven
of Nine to alt.startrek.borg.
Yes, Jeri Ryan is hot, and the good people who produced
Voyager gave her that tight-fitting bodysuit for a reason--to get people like
you away from your role-playing games long enough to watch their program. I
should add that your obsession with errors in
If you feel like sending me hate mail because you're lumped with the "trekkies", suck it up--I
won't be reading your comments because I don't have an e-mail address. You can
try snail mail, but don't hold your breath waiting for
me to respond because it's unlikely that I will survive what is about to occur
in the next twenty-four hours. Even if I miraculously do pull through, which is
doubtful, I won't receive your letters because my
mailman is an asshole.
Frankly, I don't understand
Unfortunately, video games bear little resemblance to how I
spend most evenings and fighting crime isn't all that
glamorous. While super-strength or the ability to teleport yourself eight city
blocks might sound attractive, you have to remember that until last week, most
people weren't psychologically prepared to see a grown man floating in the air
without mechanical assistance.
You're no doubt wondering why I sound like a prick, and you're
probably troubled that I'm not offering myself as an inspiring role model for
others. Why
the hell is that my job?
I've created this blog to
explain the why you'll be seeing
While you're at it, kindly
remember that popular culture often portrays crime fighters as God-like beings
who swoop down from the sky to thwart a criminal mastermind's evil plan with
seconds to spare. Movies and fantasy novels suggest that my kind represents the
very best in humanity while ignoring that much of humanity is a cesspool of
twisted people with addictions to everything from porn to crystal-meth. I'm not a hero--I'm just a guy from
You'll see the pedophile that lives down the street busily
preparing a lesson plan for his third grade class while the little boy he
molested grows up to become damaged goods. You'll
learn that your golfing buddy regularly beats the crap out of his wife and that
she's mastered the art of disguising a shiner with liquid foundation while he
jokes with you about missing that last putt on the ninth hole. Frankly, it's depressing.
I have no wish to motivate others with a sense of community
responsibility or to act as a mentor for at-risk youth. I like to come home
when my work is done, and more often than not, I just
want to go to bed. I'm a solitary person by choice and
the only person whose opinion I value nearly as much as my own is Walter's--and he's a cat.
I don't possess an excessively
muscular physique that should be immortalized in marble, though I do look good
in my outfit. It's not a
costume, got that? Spandex tights aren't
practical, and because I work exclusively at night, primary colors generally
attract gunshots or worse, cops. I hate cops.
Don't get me wrong, I completely respect their profession, but
they have the bargaining power of a union and are paid for protecting you
whereas I'm on my own. When it's teeming rain outside,
they can take shelter in a squad car and watch everyone else get soaked. If it's the middle of January and the weather office has issued
a wind-chill advisory, they can crank up the heat while I zip around town
freezing my ass off.
There are over fifty thousand people who live in
Grim Geoffrey, if you're reading
this, you should know that I look forward to finally meeting you. It's been a helluva ride, hasn't it? I'm
sure you believe that kidnapping Mrs. Aldrich and dispatching your herald to
kill eight people was a nifty way of spreading fear throughout the community,
but the netherworld is a big place and human souls are not food. Your remarkable ability to produce
a sterile crime scene on eight separate occasions may have befuddled the
Greenfield County Sheriff's Department, but don't take
a bow just yet. I still have a few tricks up my sleeve, so expect to be
dazzled.
The summer solstice will soon be here and I've left instructions for a news release to go to CNN along with conclusive proof that a
flying man resides in