Speedball

Re: The Life and Death of Speedball The Speedball Saga, Part VII: The Grave As the sun hit the thin strips of pavement between the plots, the dew began to evaporate. As it did, a close look at the horizon revealed the beginnings of the wavy lines that indicate how hot was going to be. “You don’t mind, though, because you’re dead,†Joe thought. It wasn’t long before he showed himself. He was one of the two visitors Arclight could count on. Not as reliable as Arc’s grandfather, who would just sit, wringing his hands, crying. But Joe came as often as he could—about once a week when he was in town. Passers-by immediately felt badly for the Joe, talking to a gravestone like that. But he told Arcs the stuff the dead man would want to know about, how his old friends are doing, what they’d been up to, and whether or not everyone thought that Wildheart had finally given it up to Impetus. In the winter, Joe would walk along the path to the plot quickly, leaving footprints in the snow or slush. The prints were far apart and notable for the fact that the tread on his shoes had been worn away, leaving just a flat print without the small peaks and valleys other shoes—like Arclight’s grandfathers’, made. He walked so quickly that one might have worried he would fall, slipping on the ice or snow. Others, walking more cautiously, did. If Joe was close, he would appear behind them just in time to save them from a nasty spill and an unpleasant visit to see their loved ones. If he was too far back, Joe would just walk up to them to make sure they collected themselves and the flowers they would inevitably be carrying before their fall. They would offer quiet thanks and Joe an even quieter ‘you’re welcome’ delivered with a wince that indicated he wasn’t here to talk to anyone who was going to talk back. They would immediately, without question, understand. It wasn’t winter anymore. In fact, spring never seemed to appear before summer came that year. One week Joe had been wearing his old ratty NYU sweatshirt, hands stuffed in pockets as he walked, a black watch cap covering his fuzzy head. He kept his hair short to avoid having to wash it too often. The next week both hat and sweatshirt were gone. Joe ran his hand over his head as he walked and one might have guessed that he was growing his hair out a bit. It could have been that he had finally found a place where he could shower regularly. His partners would certainly feel grateful, since they no longer had to keep biting their tongues every time he stood upwind of them. As Joe continued his slower than normal approach, he had a look on his face that he’d had only once before. It was on a tropical island in the middle of the pacific where there was sun and a beach and glorious blue water. That had been a fun couple of hours and the last time the whole team had been together—at least until the funeral. Everyone had been quiet, but Joe seemed to take the death especially hard, given that he and Arclight had known each other only briefly and not even well during that time. It was only after he began his visits regular visits that one could understand why. It had turned out that the same man who had put a bullet in the back of Arcsilver’s head and kidnapped another hero and essentially forced Joe between killing the hero or seeing the rest of his team die—along with God knows how many others. Joe had killed Kid Fantastic, not knowing what else he could have done. The two deaths, Arclight’s and the Kid’s, both of which he felt responsible for, had driven him to indulge his heroin habit in monstrous quantity. More than once he had shown up with his works in his pockets intending to give himself the hot shot right in front of the headstone, as a sort of apology for leaving him to die. Something had always stopped Joe from taking the hot shot, but he had always indulged at the grave if there weren’t to many people around. At one point, he brought the old fighting wraps he had asked Arc’s grandfather for. Though neither Joe nor the grandfather had understood it at the time, the wraps had probably saved Joe’s life when he got them in the mail. They had given him a way to turn his grief and guilt and anger in an outward direction, instead of in, though a needle. He began to use the wraps to clobber thugs exactly the way Arclight used to (without the dead man’s style, of course), except that Arc been flying at the time and Joe was running. He had begun bringing the wraps with him instead of the works which indicating, perhaps, that this uncomfortable obsession was running its course. He had bruises on his knuckles and forearms occasionally, betraying that he probably hit that last thug harder than he should have. Every once in a while he ran into someone—or something—that just wouldn’t give and some of the bruises were from being inexperienced. Joe still had a lot to learn about how to use his speed in combat and he remarked on this a lot when he came to see Arclight. In fact, he wished he could have asked the dead man for pointers, or at least that when he did ask, that someone would answer. Some visits were better than others and as he walked towards the grave for the last time in the rising heat one could have mistaken the balls that he tossed in small circles in the air as he walked as a sign of jocularity. In fact, as he drew closer, the tight expression on his face revealed that the juggling was a sign of anxiety more than anything else. He knelt, still absentmindedly juggling, which strikes anyone as strange. This was a man with not just one habit, but two. After a moment, he mumbles something about having to take off for a while, needing to go see Molly out in Las Vegas. The Kid let Joe know where she was, and he had finally screwed up the courage to go see her in Vegas.

Re: The Life and Death of Speedball The Speedball Saga, Part VI: Speedball: The Things You Find… It was February in New York City and Joe Dellasandro hadn’t adjusted to the cold. It didn’t help that he hadn’t been inside of a heated space for longer than a couple of hours in the two weeks since he hit town. Occasionally he slipped into the subway to warm up. Talking his way past the booth attendant was getting easier with practice. Since becoming a junky, Joe had had lots of practice coming up with excuses and he considers the ones he tells to thaw himself out pretty benign in comparison to some of the others. Going down into the subway kept him warm and often juggling for the tourists could make him some money in Times Square. But eventually he got sick of the feeling that he was back in the carnival and tried to figure out a way to make money that didn’t make him feel like a freak. He did his best thinking while walking around and when he forgot himself he bent over and picked up small piece of the ever-present rubble off the street to juggle with. On bad days, he continued—walking and jugglng and sometimes talking to himself, for hours. He loses track of time until his habit reminds him that he has an appointment. The appointment can be with any number of young men looking to sell brown powder in plastic bags. Usually he went uptown, often to a building that hadn’t seen paying tenants in a couple of decades. He went to these buildings and went to work. Joe had no job, but he did have a boss. He got up in the morning and got to work on time to make sure his boss didn’t get angry with him—because when Mr. Horse gets mad, he gets even. Making sure he didn’t get sick is Joe’s job, he supposed—it was just a pity that it didn’t pay better. It was a particularly warm January day when Joe was wandering through the Lower East Side. It almost felt like he was back in Arkansas, though the dumpster he just passed and the smell that came out of it reminded him that just wasn’t the case. There just isn’t anywhere on earth that smells like a New York City alley. He liked the Lower East of Manhattan because it seemed more…real to him than the rest of the city. The people don’t slap on the pretense that other New Yorkers seem to use like cologne to keep the rest of the city at bay. He could walk into a bar and know that nobody cared what he was wearing or that he’d never had a savings account—or a checking account for that matter. He figured that this was as close to feeling at home as he’d get this far North. That thought stopped him in his tracks and he dropped the small rocks he’d been juggling: why the Hell would he want to feel at home when he got out of that place the first chance he got? Weird… Turning his thoughts to more practical matters, Joe wondered about the vacant lot he found himself facing. How is it, that in the middle of the richest city in the richest country in the world, there are these huge areas just…sitting? He got closer to the fence surrounding the lot and looked through, scanning the mounds of dirt and chunks of concrete. He saw cans—old beer and soda cans that up here in the north will bring a nickel apiece. Is wasn’t much, he shrugged, but considering he had a grand total of 35 cents in his pocket and only a few hours before he’d need to come up with the 10 bucks to score his next dime bag, he figured that maybe he could double his money in a minute or so. Thankful that his dope habit hadn’t affected his ability to climb a fence, he practically vaulted over, landing after a flip that in earlier days earned him a place in one of the few family owned circuses still traveling the States. The floors under those circus tents weren’t covered in broken glass and old tires, though, and Joe stumbled. Grasping onto some rebar sticking out of a large piece of concrete, Joe stopped his fall. In doing so, he jarred his shoulder painfully and the rebar, acting as a lever, shifted some of the concrete, sending it sliding down a small hill. Joe smelled what was under the large piece of concrete before his eyes had a chance to register what it really was: a body. He stepped up to it and bent down with a grunt, thinking that he shouldn’t sound so old when he’s so young. This isn’t the first body he’d seen; being a junky has gotten Joe some experience in this department, though it hardly helped his resume any. He thought back briefly to the couple of ‘friends’ he’d seen lying in pools of their own sick, needles still sticking out of their arms from a hot shot—junky slang for a lethal dose. Several million years of evolution told him to just turn around from this body and forget about it—get away from potential trouble. This impulse to flee struggled briefly with the part of Joe’s brain in which Junk had set up shop. It was this latter part of Joe’s brain that told him to wait, to examine, to search in order to make sure there was nothing of value on this body. After all, this person no longer had any use for what ever he might have been carrying. There was no real contest and Joe’s junk-self kicked his sensible self squarely in the *** and told him to get to it, already. No forensic scientist, Joe was not familiar with the term ‘blunt-force trauma’ but he knew a crushed skull when he saw one. This poor bastard’s helmet did him absolutely no good whatsoever and the piece of concrete that Joe inadvertently moved would have crushed the hood of an SUV besides. Strangely, the guy looked to have been dressed in old army clothes—the old olive drab that was popular back in Korea and had enjoyed a surge in popularity when kids started protesting the Vietnam war. He knew this because of the stories his father would tell and the pictures he would produce after the inevitable half-bottle of Jack Daniels had disappeared after every meal. It was this image and not the body in front of him that made Joe shiver. Regardless, Joe got to work in earnest, patting the body down for something that might have escaped being crushed. Bent over the body in what might have been a foxhole if it had been a different time and place, a small cascade of rocks and dirt fell onto the corpse’s chest and Joe noted that it sounded…wrong—like rocks hitting the undercarriage of a truck speeding down a gravel road. Eyes narrowing suspiciously, brain again ignoring the voice telling him to get away, Joe tapped the corpse’s chest and found it strangely unyielding, even for someone who’d been dead for a bit. He lifted aside the jacket with the large pockets and underneath saw the dull gray of a flak jacket plate sticking out from one of the pockets of the vest. It was lucky, Joe decided, that it had been so cold, or else the smell would have been worse and the rats would have been quicker to rip through the cloth on heir way to fresh meat. As it was, he had trouble shifting the body, rolling it around to try and get the damn flak jacket off him. A passerby would have been horrified, since scavenging of this kind is rarely witnessed in modern America, but this thought never even occurred to Joe, intent as he was at completing the task at hand. What did occur to him, though, was what he might get for the jacket at the army-navy store about half a mile away in the East Village. The possibility of comparative riches had, for the moment, brushed off the light tug of habit on his shirtsleeve. He could have been looking at a hundred dollars—more money than he’d held in his hands in a couple of months at the least. In his excitement and resultant carelessness, Joe tugged hard enough at the coat covering the flak jacket to rip one of the oversized pockets and out fell a dozen or so small glass vials. Shocked as much by the fact that the vials didn’t break on impact as he was that he missed them when he rifled the corpse’s pockets, Joe just dropped the heavy load to bend over again and take a closer look at just what these vials held. They were labeled ‘TAC—dose: 1 mg in suspension’ and one of them had a slip of paper wrapped around it with a rubber-band. Unfurling it slowly, like it was somehow a last will and testament to be read solemnly, Joe’s jaw drops when he realized it was a prescription—with no name or date filled in. Joe had found the junky mother lode, the junky grail: what appeared to be an open-ended supply of whatever this TAC stuff was. He held one vial up to the dim midday sun and shook it. The glass glinted responsively. He looked back at the script, searching for a clinic address and finding the one down-side to the deal: he had to get himself up to East Harlem whenever he wanted to fill it. He’d be the only white guy for blocks around, probably, and easy for the cops to spot as a junky. But Joe decided that between whatever was in these vials and the flak vest, his luck had just shifted dramatically. He smiled and shoved them into his own pockets, warmed from the inside out by the thought of their promise.

Re: The Life and Death of Speedball The Speedball Saga, Part V: The Conversation Joe lay on the warm metal of the roof and looked up at the stars. There were a few clouds moving slowly from the South and every once in a while it would look like millions of stars were going out—or like ink was spilling across the otherwise bright night sky. As he lay there, he thought about what it would be like if the sun went out. What it would be like to feel that cold? Joe hardly remembered what it was like to be cold. He had dim memories of being in a Wal-Mart for what seemed like hours once when he was a kid and his father had taken him shoe shopping. The air conditioner there had made him cold, dressed as he was only in shorts and a t-shirt, both of which he’d outgrown the summer before. Joe kept looking up at the sky and wondered what it was like to feel the cold of a darkened sun. Below him, Megan and Imps were talking. “So what do you think of him, Imps?†It was Megan’s voice. She was talking to Impetus, whom everyone called Imps. Both were funny names, no matter which one you were talking about, but Joe would’ve needed a suicidal urge to call Imps on it. The man was huge and had no sense of humor—at least that Joe could tell. This last part, plus that fact that he was black, made Joe wonder how Imps and Megan were together at all. “You know what I think, Megan. I think he’s trouble. I think you made a big mistake letting him stay on. Molly was right—the kid’s a runaway. I reckon he ain’t even 18.†Joe, the ‘he’ they were talking about, had been with the group—they called themselves the Mavericks, for about a week. He’d been hired on as one of the new sideshow attractions—the juggler. “You might be right, Imps, but you saw him throw those pins around when he was working yesterday. He’s the best thing we’ve come across in a couple of years.†Megan’s tone betrayed that she wasn’t really looking for her boyfriend’s permission, just cooperation. It was, after all, her carnival and not his. She was the strongest, most forceful woman Joe had ever seen and their physical presence was probably the only reason why nobody had ever objected to a black man and a white woman being together in the deep, rural South. The objector would have needed a shotgun and a getaway car to escape this experience whole, Joe decided. “That may be, babe, but we take him across state lines tomorrow when we head to Mississippi and you’re talking about federal time.†Joe couldn’t imagine anyone—Imps included, calling Megan ‘babe’ without getting knocked flat. Still, she must have brushed it off since he continued, “besides—there’s something else I don’t like. He’s nervous. I think maybe his nerves are going to screw something up inside him and when they do he’s going to make mistakes. Big mistakes.†“Yeah…I see that too, Imps. Maybe we should cut him loose tomorrow. I dunno. Lemme sleep on it.†The conversation ended with this and the lights went out. Joe lay on top of the trailer, staring at the stars. More of them were going out, blackened by the inky clouds. All those suns extinguished and all those people cold. Joe knew what it was like to feel cold now, abandoned by light. Sitting up, he wiped the windblown tear that had run down his temple into his ear. He swing his legs over the side of the trailer, careful not to knock his old shoes against the side and jumped down, silently. He was past the window in a second and anyway, the shades were down, obscuring Megan and Imps’ view. Joe got up from the crouch he had landed in and walked off to gather his stuff.

Re: The Life and Death of Speedball The Speedball Saga, Part IV: The Nightgown Joe rolled over again and sighed loudly enough to make her stop snoring and half-turn, asking if he was all right. “Fine,†he assured her. “Go back to sleep.†He paused long enough for her to do so and continued “Go back to sleep, lie there and be beautiful.†She didn’t hear him say this, though it would have done her good to hear it and he knew that. Trying to find a way to resolve himself to sleep, he focused on her breathing instead of her body, as he had been. The breathing came regularly, like waves on the beach in the town he was from—and to which he’d return, and moved his head down a bit so that it rested against her upper back. His ear, cool from the early Spring air in the bedroom, pressed lightly against the warm hollow between her shoulder blades. He listened more carefully to her now than before and felt himself taken in by its slow rhythm. Just above where his chin drew away from her middle back was where her green printed nightgown (he hated the word nightie and refused to use it, strangely) began its horizontal cross-section of her spine. It was, when he saw it on her, the most beautiful piece of clothing he had ever seen. He had seen it in the bathroom minutes earlier hanging loosely on a white plastic hook and thought nothing of it. This beautiful piece of silk or rayon owed more to her than she to it though she would never know this and he would never bother to tell her. Undeniably, she would be the favored party in any comparison, but this would also remain unsaid. After he first saw her wearing the thing as she walked towards him, he tried to decide whether she wore it for him or not. He was already in her bed when she emerged from the bathroom, hoping for something just like this without knowing in advance how persistent the image would be. It wasn’t this image, though, that years later he would try to recall. He never had to try—it was just there, unwelcome. Instead he tried to remember the sound of her snoring. It was the only thing about her that came to mind when he tried to think bad thoughts about her—and he tried often. He did this to understand why it was that despite all her beauty he couldn’t feel more strongly about her. He tried, briefly, and failed. It would have occurred to him, if he had cared to delve that far, that he had simply not tried hard enough or long enough. He had failed to give himself the chance to appreciate anything but her beauty, even when he knew that her beauty wouldn’t fade with age and that there wasn’t any reason to rush away. Her beauty wasn’t that way like it was with the women he knew or glanced at in the city. He failed almost willfully and with certainty because in many ways he just wanted to keep watching and finally he was too tired to stay awake.

Re: The Life and Death of Speedball The Speedball Saga, Part III: First Date He hardly knew what to think of the whole thing. It was like he was working, but he got to walk around more than usual and neither of his hands was tossing a ball into the air. Instead, Molly had his left hand shoved into her sweatshirt pocket with hers. It was a curious feeling to be on a date in the middle of this place. The middle of the fair grounds was no place for the two of them, he decided for the millionth time in the last minute. And along with that his brain told him “I’m boned. I should’ve made sure the truck was working before we met up.†Molly had walked up to him that morning as he pounded in a tent stake. Joe and Imps, another roustabout, had been talking about the night ahead—whether business would be good. The weather had been kind—dry and hot. It brought people out of their houses, made them want to drink lots of pop and go on rides that took their minds off how their shirts stuck to their backs. Joe’s mallet stopped on the upswing when he saw Molly’s shoe point at him like an accusing finger. He looked up at her, her head framed by the sun like Mary in a church painting. “You’n me, we’re gonna go out tonight. Megan gave us a night off on account of the good business lately. You figure out what the Hell there is to do around this burg and get the truck from Imps,†nodding in the man’s direction. There wasn’t a hint of question in her voice. It was just the way things were going to be. Joe stood up just in time to watch Molly turn and walk around the side of the tent, where she’d come from. He looked over at Imps who was already starting to laugh. Joe had never seen Imps laugh before and wasn’t sure he liked it. It was a low, powerful laugh, even when he was doubled over as he was, hands on his knees. Between gasps and more laughing, the big man turned to Joe and asked “you have any idea that was comin’?†And when Joe just shook his head like someone trying to clear water from his ears, it sent Imps into another round of booming laughter. “She’s gettin’ more like Megan alla th’ time—and that means you’d better be careful kid, or she’ll eat you alive.†Pulling his hands off his thickly muscled thighs and straightening up, Imps reached into the vest pocket of his carpenter’s jeans and drew out his keys, tossing them at Joe. “Check the sparks. They’ve been givin’ me trouble. An’ f’r God’s sake, don’t get ta drinkin’ and then drive m’truck. It’ll be your *** if ya do.†In the hours that followed, Joe had done everything he could think of to prepare. Everything except check the spark plugs on Imps’ truck. When the old beast wouldn’t turn over, he started pounding on the dashboard and then thought better of it when he imagined the huge man’s hand wrapped around his throat. He just got out of the truck, walked to Molly’s door and told her they weren’t going anywhere on account of the truck not working. He expected her to be angry, slam the door in his face. Instead, Molly half-shrugged and said “Well, I guess you’ll just have to show me a good time right here at the fair. Seems like we won’t be the only folks around. Let’s take a walk.†They had wandered from one end of the fair to the other until after sunset, playing video games in the game tent and eating cotton candy. When it was finally dark, Joe suggested they take a ride on the ferris wheel. Arcs was running it tonight and owed him a favor. As they skipped past the line and into one of the swinging buckets, Joe began to sweat. Arcs took one look at the dumb smile on Joe’s face and knew why he and Molly were there. Everyone knew it was only a matter of time before Molly had just clubbed Joe and dragged him off to a cave somewhere. As the two of them rode up to the top, above the tree line surrounding the fair grounds, the huge wheel groaned to a stop, stranding the two of them alone. Joe was only 17, but he wasn’t so dumb that he didn’t know what was supposed to come next. He breathed deeply, put his arm around Molly, and looked off into the distance. He wondered if she would taste like cotton candy when he kissed her.

Re: The Life and Death of Speedball The Speedball Saga Part: Bright Lights, Tent City Joe arrived at the fair grounds much later than he’d wanted to. He’d have preferred to look around first, but now he had to get straight to work. It was 10:30 on Sunday night and things were already winding down. In fact, it must have been the last night of their gig because the carnies were already striking the less popular booths. They drank Budweiser longnecks while packing up, the labels of the bottles peeled back by broken, gritty nails of the men and women who complained that this town was even worse than the last. They hoped aloud that the next would be full of suckers who’d never heard of weighted ball-toss games or men who ‘guess’ your weight, simply waiting to write down your answer on a scrap of paper with pencil lead shoved under their thumbnails. Joe could tell from a glimpse that these hopes hadn’t yet been fulfilled, but in a way he admired the determination to keep trying to find the perfect town of suckers. As they worked they listened to a pastiche of music that betrayed where and when they were all from: The Allman brothers, Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen, and John Lee Hooker. The music came from four different directions, occasionally drowned out by the music from the rides that tinkled sugar-sweet tunes that belied the terrifying nature of the rides that spun in various directions at furious speeds. Joe couldn’t see the sources of the music, hidden as they were by walls or tent flaps, but he knew what the stereos looked like. They were old, they had paint splattered on them and if they had two tape decks one of them, for sure, didn’t work—and hadn’t for years. He knew because that’s what was sitting in his old room at home and these people were just like he was. Its like they were all related. Joe walked along and looked for the ticket booth and when he saw it he swiveled his body almost like he was marching on a parade ground and made for it, picking up speed as he walked. There was an arc of light bulbs framing the plexi-glass shield between the ticket seller and the only customer in line who was arguing with the woman inside. The argument ended before Joe got there and the girl went back to counting money from a beat-up gray cash box. He head was angled down and the bangs and sides of her shoulder-length page-boy haircut conspired to hide her face. She muttered something and Joe mistook this for her noticing his presence. “Hi. Where’s your boss?†He thought this was the best way of beginning—getting right to the point and all. “Oh, for Christ’s sake. I told you she’s not going to give you any refund…†the girl’s voice trailed off as her head rose from her counting. She’d thought Joe was the last customer who’d thought to intimidate her into acquiescence. She looked at the expression on Joe’s face. It was one of utter confusion mixed with something else she couldn’t quite name. “Uh, sorry†she recovered. “What’cha want with Megan?†her eyes narrowed as her brain maneuvered her face quickly into a guarded look. Joe smiled as disarmingly as he knew how to and was only partially successful. The small chip in one of his front teeth helped his cause. “Well, I reckon that’s between me and Megan, ain’t it?†He waited for a moment to see how his teasing would be received and got only a raised eyebrow. “Alright—I’m only funnin’. I’m here to see if y’all could use some help. Think you could raise Megan on that box ‘a yours?†he said, pointing a hand at her radio. In the hand he carried one of his juggling balls—he hardly ever put them down any more and the girl’s eyes stayed on his hand longer than they might’ve otherwise. As he stepped back and turned around to take another look at the midway, the girl looked at him as she picked up her hand-held, asking for Megan to come to the booth. As she looked, she took in the details: Joe’s old army duffel bag he’d bought years ago; his dirty jeans red with clay that didn’t even have a mark in the back pocket where anyone who had one would carry a wallet; the tired-*** running shoes that were held together with that dull gray duct tape. This kid was poor. His folks were poor and his kids were going to be poor. It was practically genetic. “Megan’d be crazy if she took this kid on. Lookit ‘im—he’s a runaway for sure. Still, there’s gotta be more to’m that it looks—there can’t hardly be any less.â€

Re: The Life and Death of Speedball The Speed and the Fury, Part I By Carol Shultz It was 1972, and "the deal" was in full effect. No sane villain or hero operated in Las Vegas and the ones who came anyway always seemed to disappear before too long. Nobody knew what happened to them, but there were persistent rumors of instructive beatings for the ones willing to clear out and shallow desert graves for those who turned out to be petulant. Speedball never had the chance to get either. Strangely, he'd arrived in town by bus. He'd come not from L.A., like most of the burn-outs, but from the East. He had one of those vague Southern accents that put "home" for him anywhere in a 500-mile radius. It turns out that he grew up in Northern Arkansas, but the only reason anyone ever found that out is because his father showed up to identify the body. A big man, accustomed to roaring through life and most conversations, Joe Dellasandro, Sr. played against type when he stepped up to the coroner's front desk, asking how a relative went about claiming a body. The story that ended with John Dellasandro in the morgue began many years earlier. It is the early fall of 1967 and Joe Dellasandro has brought home his fourth consecutive failing grade of the young school year. It needs a signature, this red 'F,' to signal some minor lesson learned in place of subject matter--some responsibility taken. Joe demurs, knowing that the lesson he will learn is just when to duck the swing and the shiny blue topaz set into his father's high school ring. The ring has always been a point of pride to Joe's father. The first in his family history to graduate, in better days Joe senior promised to give his young son the ring should he graduate himself. Joe thought about the many times his father had recited the promise. But puberty left Joe thin and without his father's linebacker physique, bringing a gradual halt to the tales of glory on the grid-iron (never just a football field, since it was to Joe Sr. a kind of holy anvil on which souls were shaped). Still, Big Joe held on to the idea that little Joe might be a running back or receiver. Neither has the respectability of a hard-working lineman, but it was still football and Big Joe, the Lord knew, was used to being thankful for small favors. This reduced dream had initially borne fruit. His son was fairly fast and it seemed he could catch anything in the air. The problem was what he did once he got hold of it. From early on the boy had a strange fixation on the circus--particularly juggling. For the boy juggling became a nervous habit. Joe Sr. rejected his son's equation of juggling with the older man's habit of biting his fingernails which were consistently gnawed down into bloody deformities. The varsity coach who tolerated the young boy's antics both because of Little Joe's talent and because Big Joe has played for him nearly 20 years before, had lost his patience when Joe had been blindsided while showboating, resulting in a fumble. He had called the Dellasandro house before leaving the field house and told his former linebacker that his son had been cut for the season because he had just cost the school the game. Joe jr. arrived home near midnight thanks to a long bus ride back to town and the failure of any of his former teammates to give him a ride from the school parking lot. Early fall in Northern Arkansas is not cold, but it can be damp and Joe, having no desire to feel either the weather or his aching pride, bought a bottle of the cheapest bourbon he could find from a clerk who knew the boy wasn't yet 18. Neither the younger nor the older was in a talking mood when the flimsy screen door screeched open. Both were drunk. The door hadn't even slammed shut when the topaz cut into the boy's eyebrow and sent him, already unsteady from drink, twirling down at the cheap table which splintered. Before he had a chance to get up, the older man was kicking him while incongruously yelling at him to get up and take it "like a man." It was only because Joe sr. half-tripped on a piece of the broken table that Joe jr. could even get out of the fetal position into which he had curled, reflexively trying to protect the most important parts of his body. He was used to pain from the occasional tackle, so he rolled away from his father, got to his knees, and shot past the old man, up the stairs, breaking the knob off the banister as he blew by. Taking steps three at a time, he nearly flew into his room, slamming the door shut and tipping over the large dresser that was the only thing solid enough in the house to be of value to anyone. Joe loved it now, blocking the door as it was, giving him time to grab the duffel bag from beside his bed. The bag had been packed already, luckily. The over night trip he'd planned to Robbie Beaumont's house wouldn't happen, but Joe jr. wouldn't be sleeping at home tonight, either. Not even bothering to slide the window screen up, but instead kicking the whole thing out, Joe climbed out the window for maybe the thousandth time in his life. It was the thousandth time, and maybe the last, if he could help it. The left side of this head was already swelling. It throbbed and the strange sensation meant he could feel his pulse in his face. When he hung himself out the window and dropped, he hit the ground cursing the old man and promising himself that his life would be better somewhere else.

(Thought I would post a storyline here that I recently posted in Games of Chance, over on Hero Central. It's a little long and not all really about super heroes, per se, but I thought some people here might enjoy) Carol Shultz was sitting at her desk off the newsroom, tapping at the computer. It had been years since she'd thought of the Speedball story, but recent events in Vegas had made her look over the notes she'd made from an old interview. Carol hadn't bothered to chase the story down, make sure the guy's story checked out, but now that Vegas seemed to have a bunch of heroes for real, it had been worth it to knit the man's fragments into a real piece. It took her a couple of weeks of hunting through police and morgue records, talking to VA doctors and old flop-house operators, but she was ready now. Carol continued to type...

Re: Evil Corporations I don't think corporations have figured into any of the campaigns I've been part of, but if you're looking for good background/source material, there's a GREAT documentary called "The Corporation" that essentially puts forward the thesis that corporations are essentially psychopathic/sociopathic entities. It could make for a fertile source of nasty campaign ideas.

Re: journal of a hero Please understand that I'm writing in character as a 25 year old man. Thus, yes, he was using the diminuitive to describe Toronto as only a young man brought up in the colonial tradition might. The writer has visited Toronto several times and loves it; the character considers it a "wonderful little city." As far as bumping into an Inuit woman, given that the writer has met one or two in New York, is it impossible for a character to bump into one in Toronto? The writer recognizes that the Inuit people are not native to the area. The character may not. Last, I hope no offense was taken. Certainly none was meant. Just trying to get a feel for what it's like to write for someone who's a decade younger, more naive, and considerably wealthier--and hopefully a bit more stuck-up.

Re: journal of a hero Now that the game's started for me, I thought I'd resurrect this thread. If there's interest and I seem to have the juice for it, I'll start up again. I think I've got a handle on the character, but it's fun writing for him.

Re: Seeds of Change: Repercussions For what it's worth, I think second and third-tiered powers would hoard their meta-humans jealously; the europeans especially, like France and the UK guarding their old-world power via nuclear weapons. ((As a player, I'd still be interested, if there's room for Hurricane. If not, then good luck with the game and all the best.))

Re: Astro City: the Dark Age I'm a huge fan of AC and have been since the first collection came out. I think that "Confession" and "The Tarnished Angels" are amongthe best graphic novels I own. I'm awaiting the collection eagerly when the series is completed. I can't bring myself to read it monthly. That said, I have all the faith in the world that the creative team behind AC will pull off another amazing piece of work. From what I understand, Busiek is sort of introducing the Bronze Age into his story and doing so in a very conscious, dynamic way.

Re: Silver Age-y Sounding Name Help Grudge The Fist Jackhammer Wrecker Mack the Knife Flattener

So I'm flipping through my copy of CKC while half awake and the following occurs to me: The guy has a 2d6 Fiery Damage Shield that's continuous, always on, and persistent. How does he eat? I mean, even if he eats a sandwich in one segment, it still takes an average of 7 body and I can't see a turkey club having more than 7 body. He's got LS: Safe environments, but no LS: No Need to Eat. He can't eat asbestos, because it's poison. Could it be the guy's a supervillain because he's just p.o.'d that he can't get anything but a well-done burger? (is there a HERO equivalent to the old Marvel No-Prize?)

Re: This week on "Champions"... Yikes! sounds like a game gone awry...

Re: Storn's Art & Characters thread. If that boat hits the wrong wave, one of those mercenaries is going to have a nasty case of rope burn in a place he'll have trouble keeping ointment on...

Hey all, I'm curious about the PRIMUS Silver Avengers. Has anyone done a write-up for one? I've looked through my books and couldn't find one. If nobody has a write-up, I'd be happy with any info y'all can provide beyond the basic and/or obvious. Thanks!

Re: Street Level NYC heros

Re: Character question:Savant You might also consider using an activation roll to represent how difficult it is to get the character interested in the project to begin with. (I assume this guy's an NPC? I can only imagine how many Rain Main jokes would be flying around a table every session if this is for a PC...)

Re: Bases and Places I assume you mean Games of Chance, in which you're playing Gaze? Yeah. That base issue just won't seem to settle itself...

Re: Bases and Places It had to happen eventually--ruling the boards was ultimately too much for poor Hermit...

Re: Superhero Football dibs on Tigra!

A game related quandry for you all: A member of a newly established supergroup in Las Vegas (Champions Universe) is speeding off to foil some kind of crime is is driving WAY over the speed limit. The poor hero gets pulled over by the cops, who want to give the hero a ticket for speeding. Protestations about trying to get to a crime scene don't cut the mustard. What happens? It raises a couple (at least) legal issues: When asked for ID, what are masked heroes required to provide? Can heroes own motor vehicles under their masked identities? How do they avoid ownership being traced back to their civilian IDs? I'm curious about how you would/have handled these kinds of issues in your games. Obviously, you could play the whole thing for laughs (a la Reno 911) or this could wind up resulting in giving a hero's hunter a lot of ammunition... Thanks in advance!

Re: Brick v. Powered Armor Hypothetical Yeah, I was thinking about having my PC smack him around until he woke up, taunting him until he tried to fire a shot off, and see it *that* would open up his armor...