The Amazing Adventures of Phoenix Jones: And the Less Amazing Adventures of Some Other Real-Life Superheroes: An eSpecial From Riverhead Books Read Free

of that actually happened,” I say.
    Knight Owl used to be a graphic designer. “There was no promotion potential. I simply existed. It was thankless. I wanted something more with my life.” So he joined the movement.
    There is, he says, a bit of a superhero trajectory. When they start out they make rookie mistakes. Then they hit their stride. Then they not infrequently start to believe they have actual superpowers. Then they burn out and quit.
    The first rookie mistake is to adopt a superhero name that’s already in use.
    “It’s a general faux pas,” he says. “Anything with the words ‘Night,’ ‘Shadow,’ ‘Phantom,’ those dark, vigilante-type-sounding names tend to get snapped up pretty fast.”
    “Have there been any other Knight Owls?” I ask.
    “There was an Owl,” he says. “The Owl. But he ended up changing his name to Scar Heart, as he’d had a heart transplant.”
    He says he chose his name before he knew there was a Nite Owl in the Watchmen comic, so when people online tell him, “You’re a fucking fag and by the way, Knight Owl’s taken—haven’t you seen the Watchmen ?” they don’t know what they’re talking about.
    The second rookie mistake is to “get caught up in the paraphernalia. People should think more about the functionality.”
    “Capes clearly aren’t functional,” I say, “because they can get snagged on things. Is cape wearing a rookie mistake?”
    “If you’re going to do some serious crime fighting there’d better be a good reason for a cape.” He nods. “And grappling hooks. No, no, no, no, no! What? You think you’re going to scale a building? What are you going to do when you get up there? Swoop down? Parachute down? You’re not going to have enough distance for the parachute to even open.”
    Grappling hooks was one of Phoenix Jones’s rookie mistakes. He also had a net gun, but on one occasion it backfired and ensnared him and he fell on the floor and had to be cut loose by the police. So now he leaves it at home.
    Then, at the other end of the trajectory, are the burnouts. I ask Knight Owl if he’s worried about Phoenix. Maybe he could become a burnout.
    “I think he should take his doctor’s advice, rest up, get healthy, get strong,” he replies. “The way he’s going is a recipe for disaster.”
    I talk to Phoenix on the phone. He’s frustrated that I never saw him engage in any proper crime fighting. I promise to stick around with him and give it another chance. He says a trip to the dangerous Seattle suburb of Belltown at 4 am on a Saturday night should do the trick. We make a date.
    Meanwhile . . .
    . . . San Diego. Wednesday night.
    I’ve been wanting to see another superhero operation at work to compare Phoenix with, so I’ve flown here to meet Mr Xtreme. He’s been patrolling most nights for the past four years, the last eight months with his protégé, Urban Avenger.
    They pick me up at 9 pm outside my hotel. Both are heavily costumed. Mr Xtreme is a thickset man—a security guard by day—wearing a green and black cape, a bulletproof vest, a green helmet and visor upon which fake eyes have been eerily painted. His outfit is covered with stickers of a woman’s face—Kitty Genovese. In March 1964, she was stabbed and seriously wounded in her doorway in Kew Gardens, Queens, New York. Her attacker ran away. During the next half hour thirty-eight bystanders saw her lying there and did nothing. Then her attacker returned and killed her. She has become, understandably, a talisman for the RLSH movement.
    You cannot see an inch of Urban Avenger’s body. He’s wearing a weird, customized gas mask, green-tinted sunglasses, a red full-length hoodie, and long black leather gloves. Underneath it all he looks quite small and skinny. He says he’s in his late twenties, has children, and works “in the food service industry.” That’s all he’ll reveal to me about his secret identity.
    He says he loves being covered from head to