David REALLY liked the Justice League, which was Superman, Batman, Aquaman, Flash, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman and the Martian Manhunter. He was really into DC comics. I mean I still liked Batman and Flash, mostly because they had some really neat villains, specially Flash. Two of Flash’s villains, Mirror Master and Doctor Alchemy, were my favorites. I seemed to be more into the badguy characters these days than the goodguy ones, though I wasn’t sure whyM. Maybe just because David was so into the goodguy ones.
I was also starting to get into the MARVEL comic superheroes more, specially Spiderman, and Doctor Strange. Sure they were goodguys, but they weren’t so “goodie two shoes” as the DC superheroes were. They had their own problems, like I did. Spiderman was still really just like an older kid, more like me, who had a difficult life because his mom and dad had died in a plane crash and he had to live with his aunt and uncle. MY mom and dad hadn’t died, but they had gotten divorced, and it felt like we weren’t a regular family anymore. And Doctor Strange had been in a car accident that messed up his hands so he couldn’t be a surgeon anymore, so he got into all this cool magic and mystical stuff instead. I couldn’t be a regular kid from a regular family anymore, so maybe that was kind of the same.
David was always drawing pictures of the Justice League guys and talking about how neat they were, which was kind of annoying, I guess because they were all so “goodie two shoes”. So when I got annoyed I would imagine a group of super VILLAINS that could be against the Justice League, like be the other team. There was already the “Crime Syndicate” in the DC comics that was on “Earth Three”, which was kind of like our Earth, “Earth One”, but evil, because badguys were in charge on that Earth instead of goodguys. But that was basically just badguy versions of the Justice League goodguy characters. I wanted to make my OWN supervillains with their OWN group that I decided to call the “Crime Society”.
So I told David about my “Crime Society” idea, and he liked it. I told him it would include my two favorite DC supervillains, Mirror Master and Doctor Alchemy from the Flash comics, but I was going to think up the rest of the guys in it.
“Really?” he asked, like maybe he didn’t think that I could do something like that, make up good badguys, good supervillains, that weren’t kind of lame. But I thought I could do it, and I wanted to do it to show him what a big kid I really was.
The first supervillain I had thought up was kind of like Batman’s villain Catman, who I thought was really neat. Mine was “Ratman”. He was kind of scrawny and thin, and didn’t have that many superpowers, but he was really really smart. And he wasn’t school smart, but he could figure out how to do things in ways that nobody else could. His one special power was that he could turn himself into a tiny rat so he could get through small pipes and sneak into any houses or buildings from underground, and also escape the same way. Nobody thought he would be a bigtime supervillain, but he had managed to find other supervillains and create this group, this badguy team, called the “Crime Society”.
So I told David about Ratman, and how he had managed to recruit all these amazing supervillains into his group. He flipped a piece of paper on his drawing pad against his knees and then turned it sideways.
“Okay”, David said, but making a face like he wasn’t sure that WAS okay, as he started to draw with just a regular pencil on the new piece of paper, “You wouldn’t think about a rat.”
“Yeah, exactly”, I said, “That’s what makes him so cool. And he’s the one who thinks up the Crime Society to get revenge on all the people who think he’s just a weakling.”
“Does he have a uniform like Batman and Catman?” he asked, still drawing on the new piece of paper, “I could try to draw him for you.” David continued to draw as we continued to talk and I thought about that, trying to imagine what Ratman might look like, and finally nodded.
“But what color?” he asked. I don’t think I had ever really seen a real rat, just a couple on TV, but our TV was black and white.
“Maybe gray”, I said. He wrinkled his nose.
“Maybe”, he said, looking up in the air, thinking, “But Batman is gray… gray and dark blue. Maybe Ratman’s suit should be light brown.”
“Yeah”, I said, “I guess. His costume shouldn’t be super flashy, but probably like Batman and Catman with the whole suit and that whole mask thing over the nose and eyes and head…”
“You mean a cowl”, David said, “But with pretend rat ears instead of bat or cat ears.”
“Yeah”, I said, “But no cape. Not for Ratman. Too flashy!”
“Okay, but maybe a tail?” he asked. I hadn’t pictured that.
“I don’t know”, I said, “Catman doesn’t have a tail even though cats do.”
“True”, David said, which was a word that I hadn’t heard the other kids his age use, but he was used to talking to older kids like Maryjane’s kids Zeke and Gordon, and my friend Mike when he came over, “But I think he’d look good with a tail. Kind of one that curls up in a spiral.”
“I don’t know”, I said, “Might look kind of stupid. I don’t want him to look stupid. Just kind of plain maybe.”
“Okay, okay”, he said, “But who else?”
I liked the idea of time travel. Going back in the past or ahead in the future. Even though it would be cool to go back in the past and see World War Two or the Civil War or the ancient Romans, I think it would be even cooler to go into the future to see what it was going to be like. I mean you could read lots of books or even see movies about the past and what it was like, but you couldn’t read about the future. Maybe some science fiction books were about the future, but only what the person writing it THOUGHT would be the future, with flying cars maybe and going to other planets or even other star systems in spaceships. A pretend future that was made up, but who knows if it would be like the REAL future. It would be so cool to go into the REAL future and see how things would be different when all us kids were old enough to be in charge of things instead of all these grownups. I was sure it would be REALLY different.
And comic books did a lot of time travel stuff. Some characters in comics were from the future like that “Legion of Superheroes” in DC or some badguy characters too like Kang or Immortus in Marvel comics. And some superheroes, like Superman or Flash, could move so fast that they could go back in time. So I told David I wanted to create a badguy character that could go back or forward in time.
“I’m not sure what to call him yet”, I said, “I was thinking maybe ‘Timeman’, but that’s kind of stupid.” He nodded, like he agreed that name was stupid.
I continued, “Then I remembered dad had that thing that was a clock AND a stopwatch called a ‘chronograph’, so I figured I’d call him ‘Chronoman’. What do you think?” He nodded.
“That’s a lot better than ‘Timeman’”, he said, “So like if he’s trying to rob a bank and he gets caught, he can go back in time and try it again in a different way so he doesn’t get caught?”
“Yeah”, I said, “Maybe stuff like that. Or he can go into the future and find stuff out after it happens in the future, but then go back in the past and know about it before anybody else does. Or maybe he can slow time down or speed it up like in that Wild Wild West show where they drank that stuff that made time speed up for them so they could sneak around everybody else without people being able to see them because they were moving too fast.”
“Yeah that one was REALLY neat”, he said, “All the other people were like frozen in the room and they could walk around them without the people being able to see them. So what would this Chronoman look like?”
“Not sure what colors his suit should be”, I said, “But he should have a mask and like this clock thing on his chest where he could move the clock hands around to change time… something like that.” David was nodding and drawing now.
“No cape, right?” he asked. I shook my head.
“No cape”, I said, “I don’t like supervillains with capes.”
“Doctor Alchemy has a cape”, he said.
“Yeah well”, I said, “I guess cuz he has a hood he should have a cape too, but I’m not big on capes.”
“Okay, good”, David said, nodding and continuing to draw, “Who else?”
“The next guy”, I said, “Actually two guys, I call the ‘Brute Brothers’. They’re super strong like the Hulk, or the Thing from the Fantastic Four, but the two of them only have ONE BRAIN, which makes them really good when they’re fighting together, and the two of them always talk at the same time and say the same thing.”
“Okay”, he said, “But which one has the brain?” I hadn’t thought of that.
I stroked my chin slowly like I was one of those evil wizard guys stroking his pointy beard and thinking. “Nobody knows”, I said, trying to sound like an evil wizard. David smiled and nodded and laughed through his nose like a grownup or a big kid. I hadn’t seen him do THAT before.
Then his eyes twinkled and he said, “Maybe each one has half a brain, and the two halves work together when they’re close to each other, but they’re really stupid when they’re far apart.”
“Yeah”, I said laughing, “That’s a good one.” David seemed way more fun to talk to now than he used to.
“So what color is their skin?” he asked, still drawing as he talked, “And do they have giant muscles like Hulk or rock skin like the Thing?”
“I don’t know”, I said back to him, “I hadn’t thought about that.”
“I like giant muscles better”, he said, “Fun to draw. Maybe make them purple so people don’t think they’re two Hulks. And do they just wear trunks like Hulk or Thing?”
“Trunks?” I asked, surprised he used that word.
“You know”, he said, “Trunks, like swim trunks. Most superheroes and supervillains wear them, except maybe the guy you like, Doctor Strange.”
“You don’t like Doctor Strange?” I asked.
“He’s okay”, David said, making kind of a silly face. I couldn’t believe he didn’t like Doctor Strange. He was one of my favorites!
“You don’t like Doctor Strange?” I asked him again.
“I said he’s okay”, he said, still drawing, “But who else?”
“Then there’s this android guy, ‘Equizler’”, I said, kind of thinking him up as I talked about him, “If you try to punch him, or shoot him or blow him up, he has this force field around him that just captures the energy of your attack and then he can send it back at you or even at someone else.”
“Yeah, okay”, he said, still drawing, “Does he wear a costume or is he just metal all over?”
I remembered that “Visible Man” model that our sixth-grade teacher, Mrs Herman, brought to class with the clear plastic skin to show us where all the bones, muscles and organs went inside the human body. It looked pretty weird, but I thought it would be cool for an android to look like that, specially an evil android.
“It doesn’t have any color”, I said, figuring that would shock him, “Its skin is clear and you can see through to all the motors, gears and metal bones inside.”
“Wow, neat”, he said, continuing to draw
“You know what an android is?” I asked him. He rolled his eyes.
“Of COURSE I do”, he said, sounding mad I had asked him, “It’s a robot that looks like a regular human, like Amazo or Robotman.” I was surprised that he knew that.
“How do you know all this stuff?” I asked, feeling like he knew more about all this comic book stuff than I did.
“I look at a lot more comics than you do”, he said, “And I’m always talking to Zeke and Gordon about comics. They read way more than I do and they know EVERYTHING.” Zeke and Gordon were mom’s friend Maryjane’s older kids. Zeke was my age and Gordon was a year younger. I was friends with them too but they spent a lot more time with David than me because they all liked to draw comic book stuff.
“Anyone else?” he asked.
“A guy called ‘Anciano’”, I said, “Who can make things appear from the past, like a hundred ancient Egyptian soldiers on chariots, or a bunch of Tyrannosaurus Rexes, to fight for him.”
“So he would probably wear a long robe, instead of trunks and tights”, he said, thinking and then drawing, “Maybe have one of those helmets like the Roman soldiers wore with that metal part that went down their nose.” I nodded. David knew way more about all that stuff than I did when I was his age. But he read a lot more comics than I did when I was eight, including those Classics comics with stories from regular books about the past. Those Classics comics were really neat because you could find out a whole story from a book without having to take all that time to read the whole book.
“And then ‘Green Death’”, I said, “Who can shrink down to microscopic size, kind of like Atom, but can control germs and viruses and also has her own little microscopic ship that she can fly into someone’s body like in that ‘Fantastic Voyage’ movie that I’ve seen commercials for on TV.”
“Yeah”, he said, “I want to see that. Eddie and I talked about going when we get home.”
“So does she have like a green skintight jumpsuit?” he asked. Most of the women characters have that kind of costume, to show off…” He wasn’t sure what to say next.
“Their figures?” I asked. He nodded, but didn’t say anything more about it.
“Who else?” he asked, not wanting to talk about her and her figure anymore.
“Then there’s this really weird alien thing”, I said, “That can manipulate dimensions, called ‘Dimo’.”
“Dimo’s not even like a person”, I said, “It’s just a bunch of lines in the air in the shape of a cube. And it doesn’t talk with sound but only through your mind, like telepathy, or like you see the words like those movies in other languages with subtitles.” David nodded.
“Just a cube?” He asked like that wasn’t enough, “It should have something that makes it look like some sort of being. Like maybe a pair of eyes in one corner of the cube.”
“Yeah, okay, that’s good”, I said, though it was hard to admit that David had some really good ideas sometimes.
“Easy to draw”, David said, his eyes twinkling, “Even you could draw it.” He was starting to tease me sometimes like that.
“Ha ha”, I said, “Watch yourself, kid.” He nodded, and we looked at each other and smiled, and I suddenly felt really good that he was my little brother, even proud of him somehow, though I wouldn’t tell him that.
“So what kind of powers does Dimo have?” he asked. I hadn’t really worked that out yet.
“I’m not sure”, I said, “He… I mean IT can like warp space, or at least the part of space that’s within an invisible box it creates. Maybe make it so if you are inside the box and try to go out one side you just come back in the opposite side so you’re kind of trapped. Or it can make everything inside the box two-dimensional instead of three-dimensional, at least for a moment. I don’t know… something like that.”
“A ‘Dimo Box’”, he said, “Okay.”
“And finally”, I said, raising my finger in the air, “My most favorite one besides Ratman.”
“Wow”, he said, “These are all pretty neat, so…” and he looked at me waiting for me to say.
“Purplet”, I said. Just that, nothing more.
“Purplet?” he asked back, wrinkling his nose as he looked at me. I nodded and did one of those really big smiles like mom.
“She was a very powerful medieval witch”, I said, but didn’t say more, to keep him in suspense.
“Yeah, okay”, he said, like he needed to hear more.
“She was burned at the stake”, I said, “But she was such a powerful witch that she was able to finally conjure a spell to escape into the future with just her head and the upper part of her body not burned up, though no arms. Now she has a levitation device attached to the bottom of what’s left of her body, so she can move around and hover in the air at the same height as regular people.”
“Or maybe Chronoman went back in time to help her escape to the future”, he said.
“Well maybe”, I said, “But then wouldn’t he have gone back to a time before she was half burned up at the stake?”
“True”, he said again, but I didn’t feel he was impressed enough, so I tried to make her REALLY scary.
“Yeah”, I said, “Her hair is all burned up and the skin on her face is half burned off and all purple and rotting. She wears what’s left of an old burned up black coat over what’s left of the top part of her body.” And then to really scare him, “And her eyes are all burned out and you can see the eye sockets of her skull with like bugs crawling in and out of them.”
He shivered and said, “Bleh. I don’t even want to draw that! She’s DISGUSTING!” My friends and I used that word a lot, but I had never heard David or other kids his age say it before.
“She is”, I said nodding, “And her plan is to get revenge against all the people that wanted her burned at the stake and all their descendents.”
“What are descendents?” he asked. At least he didn’t know THAT yet!
“It’s like all the people in your family that are born way after you”, I said, “Like you and I are our grandparents, and our great grandparents, and our great great great great grandparents descendents. Like that.” He nodded.
“I get it”, he said.
“Yeah”, I said, “And Ratman asked her to join the Crime Society before he realized how evil and nasty she really was, and how she wants to wreck everything and just kill everybody. And even after he figures that out, he doesn’t dare ask her to leave.”
“Yeah”, David said, laughing through his nose, “That’s good! Badguys usually don’t work together as well as goodguys. That’s why they’re badguys.” It was neat that David liked thinking up stories as much as I did. He continued to draw for a few minutes and didn’t say anything. I was happy just to sit there and be quiet with him, me thinking about all these characters I’d created while he drew.
“But what are her powers?” he asked, “Like regular witch powers? Black magic?” I guess he knew about all this witch stuff from reading comics or maybe talking to Zeke and Gordon. He drew quietly for a few more minutes.
“Allright”, he said, smiling and looking like he was really proud of himself, “Here they are, the ‘Crime Society’”, and he showed me a picture where they were all standing in a line, well except for Purplet who was hovering. And he drew a cube around all the others with two eyes and eyebrows in the corner of the cube that was Dimo.
“I mean”, he said, “It’s my first try. Just a rough sketch. I’ll do ‘em better next time.”
It was pretty amazing how good he could draw all sorts of comic book characters, the real ones but even the ones I had made up and told him about. I mean I could draw people too, but they didn’t look like real people like his did. He was SO much better at being an artist than I was. I had to remind myself that I was better at doing a bunch of other things than he was.
***
So for the next few days, we talked about the Justice League and the Crime Society, at the beach, in our bedroom or in the yard, whenever we got bored with whatever else we were doing. We specially liked hanging out in the yard because the owner lady's cats would come around and want to play with us, and David REALLY liked that, though I liked playing with them too.
We talked about how the Crime Society was formed and which of the DC pretend cities they should be in. There was Metropolis where Superman was, Gotham City where Batman was, Central City where Flash was and Coast City where Green Lantern was. I said I figured they should be in Central City, because that was where Flash was and two of the Crime Society members were Flash villains. David thought that made sense too.
I thought Ratman should be in charge of it because he was really smart and had lived in Central City all his life, hanging out in the sewers below all the streets and buildings. David thought maybe Purplet should be in charge, because she was such a nasty scary witch and she wanted revenge against the world so much because she got burned at the stake. I suggested that even though Ratman was in charge, Purplet was always plotting to take over. David liked that, saying that made for a good story.
So when the Crime Society robbed a big bank in Central City of millions of dollars and also took over a TV station and Ratman went on TV to tell all the people in the city that he was in charge, that’s when the Justice League was called in to deal with them. And as we continued to think up the story, and the battle between the two groups, it wasn’t like David just played the Justice League and I just did the Crime Society.
Like with my friend Jake, when we played the Avalon Hill Battle of the Bulge game together, we both played both sides. Just like with Jake, it was more fun that way with David, because even though our two groups were fighting against each other, David and I weren’t fighting against each other, we were working together to think up the story. And we both knew, that like a good comic book story, the badguys got to win sometimes, but the goodguys would win in the end, though the badguys would never be destroyed, so they could come back the next time in the next story and try something else.
David and I did a lot of our story making sitting on the fence on the edge of our backyard. It was one of those fences like on farms or in those Western shows on TV, with those posts and the long pieces of wood in between. It was kind of a stupid fence really, since it only ran along the side of the yard by the driveway, but didn’t fence anything in. Mom said it was “cosmetic”, but that didn’t make any sense, because that’s what she called the lipstick and other makeup stuff she put on her face. But it was fun to sit on, lean against, or even jump over.
And the lady’s cats seemed to like our stories, because when we sat on the fence thinking them up, they would come around and sit near us, watching us and looking like they were listening too. But sometimes they’d come right up to us and even walk under us and touch our hanging down feet with their pointing up tails. And if we wiggled our toes they might even try to attack them.
David and I made a joke that whenever our story was interesting enough for the cats, they would just sit and listen. But if it got boring for them, then they would walk under us and attack our toes so they could have more fun and not be so bored.
***
Mom reminded us that Molly and her mom should be arriving the next evening to stay for the last week at the lady’s other cottage on the other side of her big house in between. I was both excited and worried to see Molly, because I hadn’t seen her in a long time and I didn’t know if she would even like me anymore. I felt like I was so different now than back when she and I were best friends. The last time I saw her was at my tenth birthday party and she seemed kind of different too, and that was over a year ago, so she might be even more different now.
I guess we all changed as we got older, though that was pretty scary to think about. I mean, I didn’t want to change TOO much, because then I wouldn’t even be myself anymore and my friends that used to like the old me might not like the new me. And what if I didn’t like the new me? Would that even be possible? What would I do then?
Neither Molly or I were the same as when we were little kids together before we went to school and she moved away. Back then we wanted to be the same. Back then we just did what we wanted, what was fun and interesting, and we tried to figure everything out for ourselves. Back then we knew what each other was thinking, so we could just sit together without even talking. And back then we didn’t have grownups telling us what we were supposed to learn, and telling us if we were doing a good job learning it.
I mean yeah, I liked being a good student, liked having my mom and dad, my teacher, and my friends thinking I was a good student. But learning wasn’t always fun, though once you learned something that could be fun. Figuring stuff out by yourself or with your friends, that is what you wanted to figure out, was always fun.
That was the exciting part about seeing Molly. Maybe she and I could talk about when we were little, when we were the same or at least wanted to be the same. Then maybe talk about what happened to make us different. Maybe we weren’t as different now as it seemed. And if we WERE different now, maybe we could figure out what made us different.
If all us kids were going to take over being in charge of the world from all these grownups, which had always been what I wanted to happen, we had to figure some things out first. Girls and boys had to figure out how to be on the SAME team and not DIFFERENT teams all the time. At my school, girls and boys had been TOTALLY on different teams, and from what the older boys said in the park, and some of my school friends’ older brothers and sisters said too, it was pretty much the same for the junior high kids at Tappan.
That didn’t sound very good. I was already worried about school starting after we got home from here in Cape Cod, like I had been every year since I started first grade. Now I was extra worried that it was going to be a very different kind of school than elementary school, with lots more classes and teachers, and lots more kids. Plus me and my classmates would go from being the oldest kids at our old Burns Park school to being the youngest at our new Tappan school. It made my stomach hurt to think about it.