An hour earlier it seemed like the dead of night in downtown Orlando. A deluge had descended out of nowhere, darkening the heavens like a biblical apocalypse, pelting the city with heavy torrents of rain. Now, the tumult is dissipating just as quickly as it arrived. It’s early evening and clear skies are again poking through the clouds hovering over central Florida. Puddles and a lustrous sheen on the streets are the only evidence of the sudden storm.
Like an elemental spirit who hitchhiked in on the tempest, a strangely clad figure materializes at the intersection of South Orange Avenue and East Pine Street. He is ostentatious in his silver costume: motocross pads on his chest, shoulders and arms, spandex tights and a cape, a black Stahlhelm atop his head and a mask covering the upper half of his face. The garish gear does much to distract from his otherwise unremarkable build—not quite dad bod, but a far cry from the mighty Thor. He’s carrying a tattered black backpack in one hand and a plastic 7-Eleven cup in the other. He splish-splashes across the road and announces his presence in a distinctive nasal rasp: “Master Legend, at your service!”
His attention is diverted before I can muster a response. He spots two men sitting on sleeping bags outside an abandoned storefront nearby. He springs over, carefully sets down his cup and reaches into his backpack. “Do you guys need some clean socks?” he asks, pulling out a pair. The men enthusiastically accept. “Clean, dry socks,” he says to no one in particular. “They’re the number one item you have to carry with you as a superhero. They’re in high demand.”
A woman, noticing the transaction, makes a beeline for Master Legend and asks him for change. “I’m sorry, I’m short on funds,” he tells her, “but I have socks and snacks.” She shakes her head and walks away. Master Legend spies another woman panhandling for change across the street. “Everywhere you look, someone is in despair!” he proclaims, again to no one specifically. Spend time with Master Legend and you can’t help but notice that he narrates himself, like a voice-over in an old radio serial. He grabs his 7-Eleven cup, glances quickly at the traffic, then dashes over. You’ll also notice he only crosses the street in one manner: manically.
The panhandler says her name is Tammy and yes, she’d love some socks. Master Legend hands her a pair, then another for good measure. “I’m always partial to the ladies,” he says. “I guess I’m just chivalrous.” This isn’t Tammy’s first encounter with Orlando’s resident real-life superhero. “He’s helped me out before,” she tells me. She’s wearing a green poncho and holding a sign that reads, Seeking human compassion. Struck by her message, Master Legend reaches into his fanny pack and pulls out a few dollar bills. He hands them over, then hugs her.
That doesn’t sit well with the woman he declined moments ago. She runs across the street and lays into him. “You didn’t give me any, what the hell?” she barks. Master Legend tries to think fast. “I owed Tammy money,” he says sheepishly, “so I was just paying her back.” The woman isn’t buying it; she’s getting angrier. Unable to come up with a clever escape from this impasse and keen to prevent it from escalating, he produces another few bills and hands them over.
That seems to mollify the woman, so Master Legend says it’s time to move on. This burst of charity has made him thirsty. His cup—whatever was in it—is now empty. If you know anything about Master Legend, you know it probably wasn’t soda. “A lot of the other superheroes hate me because I like my beers,” he says. “But I don’t drink to get drunk. I never get drunk. There’s nothing wrong with having some beer if that’s the case.”1
He leads the way to the Woods, a second-storey watering hole on North Orange. Bemused patrons eye the masked, caped stranger quizzically as he waits at the bar for a beer. Minutes later, we sit down and he launches into his biography. Master Legend’s origin story, as he tells it, is one of the more colorful—and fanciful—among the real-life superhero community. It begins with Baby Legend being born in the swamps of Louisiana with a so-called “veil” over his face. In some belief systems, the phenomenon presages the newborn having a special destiny or superhuman abilities. Medical science, however, explains the “veil” as a caul, or a thin remnant of the amniotic sac that sometimes covers a baby’s face as it emerges from the womb.
Master Legend’s parents were horrible people, he says. His mother was a voodoo practitioner and Satan worshipper and his father was a member of the Ku Klux Klan. His father forced him to take part in child fighting rings, where he slugged it out with his friends as adult onlookers bet on the outcomes. When he lost a fight, his father locked him in a closet without dinner. Young Legend found his escape through comic books, which helped him imagine himself as a strong hero like Spider-Man or Superman. The comics inspired him to dress up in a costume as a grade schooler and fight bullies. Of course he always won, he says.
His father killed himself and his mother disappeared when he was in his teens, leaving him alone to panhandle and work odd jobs on the streets of New Orleans. One day, he saw a thief steal someone’s purse. He chased the criminal down and recovered it, then decided that he too could be a superhero. He initially dubbed himself Captain Midnight, but changed his name after seeing the “master legend” printed in the corner of a map. By this point, he’d also become a proficient motocross rider and was performing reckless stunts, which earned him the nickname “Legend” among his friends. Combining that with his motocross outfit, it felt like the perfect fit.
Master Legend is also one of the few real-life superheroes who actually believes he has superpowers. He says his birth veil gave him the ability to predict the future, which manifests as limited precognition that lets him sense things before they happen. It doesn’t give him omniscience, though. “I wish I could predict the lottery, but it doesn’t work like that” he says. “It’s rigged! You can’t predict what’s rigged!” He also believes he’s capable of super strength and speed, which are powers he gained from drawing an “X” on the tombstone of famed New Orleans voodoo priestess Marie Laveau. The proof, he says, came shortly after doing so, when he was strolling through the cemetery. He had wandered into an open mausoleum, only to have the door mysteriously slam shut on him. Unable to budge it, he started to panic. He calmed himself down, then backed up and ran at the door with a flying kick. “Bam!” It came open—his powers emerged. “It seems like when I’m in a really desperate spot and I need super strength, it comes to me,” he says.2
By the time he was in his mid-twenties, he was hard up for a job and looking for a life change. A friend convinced him that Orlando had better opportunities, so he moved to Florida. Along the way, he got married, had a daughter and was widowed. Now in his fifties, he’s a journeyman carpenter, electrician and construction worker. By night, he becomes Master Legend and patrols the streets looking for people to help. In between gulps of beer, he tells of how he was recently forced to move out of the storage unit he was squatting in thanks to the man in the next locker over, who inadvertently drew the facility owner’s attention. The man had been playing with chemicals, possibly cooking crystal meth, which caused a stench that led to the eviction. “I’m better off now, because I’m in a small house,” he says.
Master Legend is a pariah within the real-life superhero community. Many of his colleagues don’t approve of his drinking or what they consider to be his penchant for far-fetched stories. They feel it gives the community as a whole a bad name. “Dark Guardian [in New York] didn’t like me because he said I tell tall tales, about how I got my powers in that mausoleum,” he says. “But that really happened! I really did open that door.” Geist from Minnesota, meanwhile, was hostile to him at a photo shoot in Los Angeles for the Real Life Superhero Project in 2010. “He told me, ‘You better not drink any beer during this shoot,’ and I said, ‘You’re not my babysitter!’” The friction notwithstanding, he believes he’s earned respect from his fellow veterans by virtue of his longevity. Media reports have documented his charitable activities since at least the early aughts. Despite his idiosyncrasies, there’s little dispute that he’s helped many people, like Tammy.
Back outside, the rain has stopped. The bar crowds and homeless people are now out in force. Master Legend heads south down Orange Avenue, stopping to give socks and packs of peanut-butter crackers to a few individuals along the way. He ducks into Gitto’s, a hole-in-the-wall pizza joint, but not for food. The place also serves beer, including Bud Light, his favorite. He leads me upstairs to a table overlooking the street, where he continues his biography. “I sat at this very table with a cop and had a beer not too long ago,” he says. Florida law prohibits anyone over the age of sixteen from concealing their identity in public, but Master Legend says he has a special exemption from the police. He pulls out his phone and proudly shows a photo where he’s receiving a certification of commendation from the Orange County Sheriff’s Department. He got it for helping to clean up in the aftermath of Hurricane Charley in 2004. “People laugh at me, but I go, ‘You got one of these?’” he says, referring to the award. “‘You say you’re a real-life superhero? This says I am!’”
His thirst quenched (for now), Master Legend leads us back onto the streets. Steps away from Gitto’s, he encounters an older African-American homeless man who says his name is Melvin. It’s late and Melvin is tired; he wants a coffee. With nowhere nearby to get one, Master Legend offers him a beer from his backpack instead, which is starting to resemble Batman’s utility belt for its actual utility, except of course for the one key difference (the Dark Knight doesn’t necessarily carry Bat Ale). Melvin declines, so Master Legend puts an arm around him and points skyward. “Good Lord, please make this man rich, or at least get him a coffee.” Melvin smiles and Master Legend moves on. Minutes later, he chats with a young African-American man wearing a sandwich board that reads, Spoken word. The man asks us if we’d like to hear some poetry, then launches into a rap about how the rainy weather isn’t bringing down his spirits because living on the streets is hard enough. Master Legend again offers a beer. This time, the man accepts and once again, it’s time to move on. “Have you ever seen Lake Eola?” Master Legend asks me. “It’s one of the nicest parts of Orlando.” I haven’t, so we head eastward.
A ten-minute walk, punctuated by Master Legend’s mad dashes across the streets, takes us to the twenty-three-acre downtown oasis. Lake Eola is surrounded by a multi-use path. It’s nearly eleven, but well lit, so the park is still busy with joggers, dog walkers and cyclists. Benches ring the path. We sit down and Master Legend pulls another can from his backpack. A pair of young men walk by and eye him with amusement. “Are you RoboCop?” asks one. “No, he’s a Stormtrooper,” says the other. A group of young women stroll by, likely aware that Master Legend is ogling them. “I can still drink my beer and look at the pretty girls,” he says.
We had spoken previously about The Legend of Master Legend, the fictionalized television pilot commissioned and aired by Amazon Prime Video in 2017, so I ask him to expand on why he didn’t like it. His biggest issue was with how his daughter was portrayed as a habitual shoplifter. He says he had a good deal of input with the writers, so the characterization was surprising. “She’s never stolen a thing in her life,” he says. “I raised her better than that.” The show was also set in Las Vegas, rather than Orlando—“I’ve never even been to Vegas!” The pilot was a windfall, though, with likeness rights garnering Master Legend an eighty-thousand-dollar payday. He says he also earned five hundred dollars per page for drawing his exploits in comic-book format for the show, as storyboards of sorts.
Despite his complaints, he seems disappointed about the show not going ahead as a full series. It was, after all, a chance to grow the legend of Master Legend, as well as a potential ongoing paycheck. He grows quiet and stares at the lake as he finishes his beer. “I always wanted to help people,” he says. He relates a story about how he tried to give a homeless man a few dollars when he was still a teenager back in New Orleans, just as he did with Tammy earlier this evening. His father, however, slapped him, took the money away and pepper-sprayed the man. The memory of the constant cruelty still burns. “Anything to be the opposite of my mean old daddy has led me to be this way,” he says. “Every bully and mean person out there reminds me of my daddy.” Master Legend, the character, has been his escape for years now—a different identity that has separated him from that troubling past. Despite the many years since, it’s not clear if the escape is working. He’s alone, his relationship with his now-adult daughter is on again, off again. “I don’t have much else going on,” Master Legend says. “I’ve almost forgotten my own name.”
Claims of wanting to help the helpless or maintain law and order aside, many real-life superheroes take up their capes as a form of personal therapy. Assuming a different identity is, for some, an escape from who they are or have been, an attempt to become someone else entirely. It represents the conscious creation of an idealized, better self who embodies the symbolic virtues of the superhero, as well as the separation from a more mundane and likely negative reality. Whether they admit it or not, many individuals become real-life superheroes to help themselves almost as much as to help others.
The concept of the monomyth, also known as the hero’s journey, is well trodden in fiction and especially superhero stories. It begins with an unassuming individual, often hailing from humble beginnings, going on an adventure and finding themselves transformed for the better in the process. The protagonist generally leaves their known, comfortable world behind, sometimes reluctantly, and heads into the unknown to face conflict—either personal or external—resulting in some form of victory. Mythology professor Joseph Campbell summarizes it thusly in The Hero with a Thousand Faces: “A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.”3
Examples abound in folklore and mythology. Beowulf, the Old English epic poem, relates a tale in which the titular hero becomes king after slaying the monster Grendel. Jesus’s story in the New Testament, in which he deals with doubters, heretics and soldiers on the way to taking his place as the risen son of God is another archetypical monomyth. In modern fiction, The Lord of the Rings tells the story of Frodo Baggins as he saves the world by disposing of an evil artifact, discovering his own strength along the way; The Matrix sees Neo learn the true nature of his virtual world while assuming his destined savior role within it (and whoa, he also learns kung fu). Perhaps the best-known pop culture monomyth is the original Star Wars trilogy, where a humble farm boy named Luke Skywalker discovers he is part of a powerful legacy as he defeats the evil Empire and becomes a Jedi master. None of it would have happened if he had been able to stick with his original plan of going to Tosche Station to pick up some power converters.
Monomyths are prevalent in comic books too, though with their ongoing and episodic nature—and continuing commercial value—the protagonists’ stories are usually never-ending. Bruce Wayne, for example, was shaken from his world of normalcy by the murder of his parents; his crusade against crime as Batman is his effort to overcome that personal trauma. The X-Men, meanwhile, are torn from their realities by genetic mutations and forced into fighting for acceptance in a world that fears and hates them. Spider-Man, perhaps the best example of the superhero monomyth, endeavors to use his accidentally gained powers for good as atonement for his pre-hero hubris, which indirectly resulted in the death of his uncle. He learns the ultimate monomythic lesson—that with great power comes great responsibility.
With superheroes dominating mainstream entertainment now, the monomyth is at the center of much of modern pop culture. It is the engine that drives a huge number of the movies and TV shows we watch. It’s no wonder, then, that some people actively seek out their own heroes’ journeys in the real world.
The unimaginatively named real-life superhero “Superhero” (Dale Pople)—resident of Clearwater, Florida—is a prime example. Active between 2005 and 2010 and now in his fifties, Pople has reached a point of self-awareness where he understands that he had subconsciously sought out his own monomyth. “My life had a story arc, like a comic book,” he says.4 Like many real-life superheroes, Pople was a skinny kid who was picked on by bullies at school. His mother was abusive physically, verbally and sexually; his father was inattentive and unavailable. It messed him up. “She got away with whatever she wanted,” he says. “I’ve told therapists over the years that if I watch serial killer documentaries, I can go down the checklist: ‘Okay, they did this to Henry Lee Lucas, that was done to me; they did this to John Wayne Gacy, that was done to me.’” Like many kids in similarly abusive situations, he found escape in comic books and movies. “Godzilla was probably my first real friend,” he says. “I was always fascinated by the big, can-take-care-of-themselves, don’t-have-to-take-any-shit guys like Adam West and William Shatner, monsters like Godzilla and superheroes with powers because they were in the exact opposite boat that I was in.”
Pople was jaded and angry by the time he hit adulthood—“a fucking asshole would be a better description,” he says—but he had bulked up by spending time in the gym. He became smitten with professional wrestling and was determined to become a star of the quasi-sport. Comic books served as the inspiration for his persona, or gimmick in the parlance of the wrestling industry. He fashioned a red-and-blue Superman-like spandex costume and decided to call himself, simply, Superhero—a not unusual choice in a business where characters are often named after supposed real-world occupations, like the Undertaker, the Mountie and the Repo Man. Pople enjoyed some success wrestling around Florida, but his ring career was cut short by a torn knee ligament. Since he was already a figurative superhero, he considered taking the next step. “When I was done wrestling, the character didn’t go away,” he says. “He just kind of stuck around until I eventually said, ‘What would happen if I went out to actually do this?’”
His first few patrols in Clearwater went like they usually do for real-life superheroes. He reported an abandoned car to police and nearly got into fight with a drunk. Otherwise, it was total boredom. Like others would later learn, he discovered over subsequent patrols that helping homeless people was more rewarding because they—unlike crime—weren’t hard to find.
The encounters affected him deeply. Pople knew he wasn’t doing much to solve the larger problem of homelessness, but his supply handouts and the conversations he had were indeed making small differences with the people he met. It made him feel better about himself and his place in the world. He also started doing voice work for television and met, then married his wife, Karen. His life was slowly coming together. He learned of the existence of other central Florida real-life superheroes, including Master Legend, Aristeroi and Symbiote. They banded together as Team Justice and collectively handed out supplies to homeless people, keeping watch over their communities while doing so. For Pople, the camaraderie and association with like-minded people from similar backgrounds was like group therapy. “When I first started doing it, I was damaged goods. I didn’t care what happened to me,” he says. “But I have done nothing but gain from being a superhero. I grew as a person, I grew as a husband, as everything. I became a lot more humble…. That’s the greatest lesson I ever learned in my life. Be humble or be humbled.”
Pople speaks earnestly, intelligently. He has given his personal monomyth a great deal of thought. “Being a superhero really shaped me and made me better than any amount of therapy could,” he says. “I’m not telling anyone, ‘Blow off therapy and put some tights on,’ but actual hands-on experience like that was way better than any therapy could be. You’re out there doing good, helping your fellow man. You’re preventing if not evil, then bad from happening. You’re making a difference. You can’t change the world, but you can change a little part of it.”
Pople wishes more of his colleagues were honest about their personal motivations, though he understands that such wisdom may only come with experience, as it did for him. With the benefit of hindsight, he thinks there’s a clear division in what drives real-life superheroes. As with everything in life, comic books can explain it. “Batman does what he does because he’s a mess emotionally. Superman does it because he was raised properly and is a nice person. That’s a good way to lump the two categories of them,” he says of his colleagues. “Sadly, you probably get a lot less Supermans than you do Batmans.”
Some real-life superheroes are indeed aware of their own conscious or subconscious selfish motivations, though again, that realization often comes after the fact. Zero, who co-founded the New York Initiative in 2009, is among those who admit to suiting up for selfish reasons. “None of this was altruistic for me. I started out because I wanted to die,” he says. “When I was younger I had a lot of chemical issues and stuff that happened to me that… I don’t want to get into. I started to wander the streets because I wanted to die.” He continues: “I was an artist and I got high a lot. I did a lot of dumb shit and it got me into a place where I didn’t want to live anymore. I was daring the universe to take me out.”
Like Pople, Zero says he was abused and molested as a child: “I’m made, bred and nurtured to go out in the world and track down the people who did the same shit to me when I was a kid, and end what they’re doing.”5 His former teammate Lucid admitted to the same in the HBO documentary Superheroes: “I’ve always had a fairly abnormal aptitude towards violence. I’m not sure if it was my upbringing or what, but adrenaline and rage have been a very vital part of my life,” he said. “For me it’s not that hard to get into the mind of a criminal because I used to be a criminal. I used to sell drugs, I used to womanize, I used to be a borderline alcoholic. You name it. I’ve learned to funnel my rage in a way that is productive.”6
Zero dropped out of the real-life superhero scene in 2014, when he moved to Mississippi with his girlfriend at the time. He has since found a new partner, whom he married, and says he has achieved some level of happiness. Still, he itches to get back onto the streets where he can make a difference. His monomyth, like Bruce Wayne’s, isn’t finished yet. “I still want to try and find a way to be that,” he says.
Bipolar disorder led Skyler James Minor Nichols to become Skyman in 2010. He learned of the existence of real-life superheroes from the Watchmen DVD, which included a featurette on the phenomenon. That inspired him to craft a red, white and green costume and patrol Seattle’s streets with other like-minded individuals. That was the beginning of his hero’s journey. “I was drunk and depressed and wanted to kill myself and relying on a manic personality called ‘Skyman’ to protect me from suicide,” he says. “I want to save my own life first before I endeavor to help other people, but I truly believe that while I help myself I’m also helping others.”
Like Pople, Nichols’s experiences have helped him come to terms with his own issues: “I was once that homeless drug addict who held up that cardboard sign… and I figured that was not a life, so I went back home and repaired things with my father and got a stable roof over my head,” he says. “The costume gives me hope and inspires me to be a better person. I’m no longer drunk and depressed and I’ve been able to keep off about a hundred pounds. I’m in it for the long haul—you’re not getting rid of Skyman that easily. I’m a lifer.”7
The transformative power of wearing masks during rituals is well understood, which is why people have been doing it for millennia. But for some real-life superheroes, slipping into a different persona doesn’t necessarily have to be part of a therapeutic monomyth to overcome past trauma. It can also be a way to deal with more mundane issues.
Dark Defender, who patrols Harrisonburg, Virginia, says he stutters less when suited up. “When I put on my uniform, I feel a sense of confidence, a feeling of authority,” he says. “It can change you, especially if you’re really dedicated to it.”8 The same goes for Impact in St. Petersburg, Florida, who has palilalia, a language disorder that causes him to repeat words. He has interviewed for jobs over the phone while wearing his costume. “It really works,” he says. “Being able to don a different persona, it gives you a boost of confidence you didn’t have before. You’re not Bob Smith, you’re Wonder Man. You can be whoever you want.”9 Knight Warrior, in the United Kingdom, says he stands up straighter and walks with more authority when suited up. The attention he draws in public also forces him to interact with people, which has helped him overcome his shyness. “You’re putting yourself in an uncomfortable situation, you’ve got strangers coming up and talking to you,” he says. “It boosts your confidence.”10
These more mundane effects—not necessarily the healing of internal wounds—are indeed the primary reason the majority of individuals become real-life superheroes, according to a 2015 study. Dressing up and patrolling the streets is a break from the everyday grind, not unlike bungee jumping or hang gliding—which might explain why many ex-soldiers and marines do it. The study refers to this pursuit of the unordinary as “edgework”:
Both work and entertainment have become boring and only serve to deny people the opportunity to exercise their skills and creativity. Consequently, people manufacture unplanned and sporadic moments of “edgework”; episodes of transient excitement, which are adrenaline filled and provide emotional enjoyment where individuals can be both skilful and creative…. Patrolling, occasionally fighting crime, dealing with potentially dangerous situations and helping people in distress provides emotional highs and a sense of purpose. In addition, for some, being a RLSH [real-life superhero] also brings a level of celebrity status. Being a visible hero sets the RLSH performance apart from the everyday.11
Elaine Fishwick, an education and social work professor at the University of Sydney and the main author of the study, found this desire for edgework to be a common trait among the real-life superheroes she interviewed. While past trauma was a motivator for some, alleviating mundanity was the bigger driver for the majority: “Contemporary life is so controlled. This provides them with some avenues to challenge that,” she says. “They’re allowing another element of their persona to emerge. Even if what they’re doing is boring, there’s the potential of something exciting happening.”12
This has been the case for Raymond Fagnon, a double-duty edgeworker who has patrolled as “Ikon” with both the Guardian Angels in Tampa and Bay Coast Guardians in St. Petersburg. By day, he’s a data center engineer, which generally isn’t high on the list of most exciting occupations. “I love the kind of work I do, but I hate working. There’s always tons of paperwork. It’s not as fun as when I first started doing computing,” he says. “When I first started, people saw me as the greatest thing. Now, people just see me as a commodity. I’m not the top dog anymore. As you get older, people get tired of working because their life isn’t as fulfilling as when they first started working. I do [patrols] to spice up my life and to give back. My job pays me very well, which allows me to do those things.”13
Good Samaritan, another of the Bay Coast Guardians, agrees. “The real reason we do what we do is because we want to live out that childhood fantasy of being the hero, the person who saves the day or makes the difference in their community. We want to feel good about ourselves and we want to have fun,” he says. “A lot of us, maybe we’re not satisfied with our home lives or our jobs, or the way life has stacked the cards against us. We want a sort of out, something to take pride in.”14 Real-life superheroism is thus a hobby for some—a way to spend free time that is more gratifying than stamp collecting or model-airplane building. As the edgework theory suggests, it’s also a way to spice up an unassuming existence, which makes it a middle-class luxury of sorts for some. The theory does much to explain why many real-life superheroes—from the California Initiative in San Francisco and the Bay Coast Guardians in St. Petersburg to the Trillium Guard in Canada and individuals in England or New Zealand—go out of their way to avoid real danger. A bit of danger is enough to spice up one’s life, but getting involved with real threats is outside the purview. Those real-life superheroes who take crime fighting seriously don’t tend to hail from the middle class.
According to Pople’s dichotomy, these middle-class edgeworkers don’t necessarily qualify as the archetypal Batman, the tortured soul seeking redemption through heroic acts. But they aren’t necessary Superman either, where they perform good deeds simply because they are virtuous. Instead, they’re bored. Critics suggest this is where such real-life superheroes can fall under a third archetype: Booster Gold.
Considerably less well known than his movie-star DC Comics stablemates, Booster Gold is a pariah among comic-book superheroes, or at least he was in his early days. First introduced in 1986, Booster Gold is the alter ego of Michael Jon Carter, a fame-seeking, football-playing narcissist from the future. Born in twenty-fifth-century Gotham City to a deadbeat father, he becomes a security guard at the Metropolis Space Museum, where he steals a number of superpowered gizmos including a ring that confers the ability to fly, a force field–generating belt and a sphere that allows him to travel back in time. He heads back to the twentieth century with a plan to become rich and famous by performing heroic deeds. Although he often does help save the world as part of the Justice League, Booster Gold has often been depicted as a self-centered, self-aggrandizing narcissist whose main mission is to improve his own standing.
Calling a real-life superhero “Booster Gold” is thus an insult. “It’s not the Batman or Superman you have to watch out for,” says Zero. “Eighty per cent at least of these guys are in it for the attention.” It’s not hard to discern who they are, he adds, since the Booster Gold types usually don’t wear protective armor or have self-defense training. “You can tell right off they’re not thinking straight or they’re not doing anything [of substance]. It’s one of the two. They’re not actually planning to do anything besides be seen.” He gets particularly agitated by those real-life superheroes who post pictures online from charity handout missions. “You’ll never see my group bring a camera to go feed a homeless person. That’s just gross. This person is at the worst part of their life, they certainly don’t want to be seen. There’s no dignity,” he says. “Who is that helping besides themselves?”
Media attention is indeed often likely, especially for real-life superheroes who suit up in small towns, where newspapers and television stations are more likely to notice them. The Keizertimes, in Keizer, Oregon—population thirty-nine thousand—is a case in point: “Heroes or Menace?” asked the paper’s front page on October 6, 2017, above a full-page photo of Arachnight and Guardian Shield, two resident heroes. Do the gig long enough and more press is bound to happen. Maybe Amazon will shoot a TV show, maybe someone will even write a book about it (!). Aside from that, there are also the local bar-goers who will inevitably want photos with the strangely garbed characters they encounter to post on their social media feeds. Put on some spandex and go viral.
Carl Potts, a longtime editor at Marvel in the eighties and nineties who oversaw the development of the company’s foremost vigilante character, the Punisher, isn’t a fan of the real-life superhero phenomenon. “If you’re going around looking for trouble, is that right? You’re looking for something to happen so you can go into action. Is that the right motivation?” he asks. “I don’t know if enough of these people have the self-realization to know what their real motivations are.” Real-life superheroes may in fact be doing more harm than good. “The best villains don’t think of themselves as villains. Doctor Doom doesn’t think he’s the bad guy,” he says. “They’re looking to justify their need for that sort of thing.”15
Ty Templeton, a long-time Batman comic book writer and artist, also worries about the Booster Gold types. He occasionally gets emails from real-life superheroes asking for advice, but he refuses to encourage them. “The guys who dress up as the ‘Green Dingo,’ I don’t know what they’re doing it for other than they need an identity that they don’t have in real life. They make believe they’re doing good by handing sandwiches out,” he says. “It starts to become a narcissistic delusion. They may be doing good, but they’re doing it under worrying circumstances. Once you get into that level of narcissistic delusion, who knows what’s going to happen?” Pople’s Superman archetype doesn’t enter the picture. “You’re not really doing it for the public good,” Templeton says, “you’re doing it because, ‘I hope I get my picture in the paper.’ That’s not what Pa Kent was teaching you. If you’re really there to do good, do good and be quiet about it. It’s not about duty to that dude who needs food. There’s a narcissistic splash back here.”16
There is no Superman archetype, critics say. No matter their professed motivations, real-life superheroes always get something in return for their supposedly selfless actions. This raises significant questions about altruism itself—does it even exist? For the answer, we return to where everything related to superheroes seems to inevitably end up: New York.
In the early 1980s, it was obvious to anyone looking at the Statue of Liberty—arguably the original American superhero—that Lady Liberty was in dire need of repairs. Her copper skin had holes in it, her torch was ragged and the iron grid that held her insides together was badly corroded. The problem, as her centennial approached in 1986, was that no city, state or federal government was eager to fund the expensive restoration needed. But not to worry, this was America after all. Entrepreneurial gumption to the rescue!
Jerry Welsh, vice president of marketing at credit card purveyor American Express, was casting about for a big target with which he could test an idea he had been developing. Welsh had recently had some small-scale success with a new promotional concept he’d dubbed “cause-related marketing,” which involved attaching a marketing campaign to a social need. The company had donated two cents to a San Francisco arts festival for every purchase made locally by cardholders. Festival organizers were grateful for the infusion of funds and the company saw increased card usage thanks to the positive press it received. Welsh took one look at Lady Liberty’s decrepit state and knew he had found the jackpot he was looking for.
In September 1983, American Express launched a national campaign that promised to donate to the Statue of Liberty–Ellis Island Foundation one cent for every card transaction, a dollar for each new account opened and for each five-hundred-dollar travel package purchased, and a penny for every traveler’s check purchased. The campaign was bolstered by patriotic magazine ads. “In addition to all the logical reasons for using the American Express card, there is now one that is unabashedly sentimental,” read one, followed by a modified version of the company’s tagline: “The American Express Card: for the sake of the Statue of Liberty, don’t leave home without it”—a worthy superhero catchphrase if ever there was one.
Newspaper and television coverage helped make the three-month campaign a success, bringing the company’s donation to nearly two million dollars. Welsh estimated the overall effort totaled ten times that amount thanks to the awareness generated, which inspired many direct donations by non-cardholders. The campaign also kicked off a veritable gold rush of other businesses getting involved. More than twenty other companies added almost seventy million dollars to the restoration pot over the next few years in exchange for the rights to use the statue’s image in their respective promotions. The contributions helped restore the Statue of Liberty to her proper glory. More importantly for American Express, new card applications shot up by 45 per cent and usage increased by almost 30 per cent.17 The results were better than Welsh had dreamed, which is why he proclaimed cause-related marketing, or cause marketing for short, as the new best way to promote a product or service. “The wave of the future isn’t checkbook philanthropy,” he told the New York Times in 1987. “It’s a marriage of corporate marketing and social responsibility.”18
He was right. Corporations quickly realized they could benefit from associating with good causes and that consumers were more likely to do business with brands that gave them warm feelings, rather than cold, faceless entities that were concerned only with generating profits. Examples of cause marketing since are countless: Yoplait has raised millions for the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation by having customers send in specially marked yogurt container lids; Starbucks has donated ten cents from every beverage made on World AIDS Day to help disease treatment and prevention for coffee farmers in Africa; Dove soap has funded self-esteem workshops for women; and so on. By the turn of the millennium, cause marketing had become global and ubiquitous, with virtually every major corporation engaged in some level of social charity attachment—another American product exported to the world. Spending has ballooned since, with corporate sponsorship of causes hitting almost two billion dollars in 2015, nearly double from a decade earlier.19 Companies even get together once a year to hand out Halo Awards for the best cause-marketing efforts, with past winners including Microsoft, Disney and Viacom.
The reason for the explosion is clear: it works. In a 2013 survey of consumers, nearly three-quarters of respondents said they chose a business over another because of its attachment to a cause of personal relevance. Three-quarters also said it was okay for brands to promote causes while making money at the same time.20 The benefits of these campaigns are also clear: they’re win-win-win scenarios, where the cause in question benefits from an infusion of funding and awareness, the sponsoring company gets a sales bump from the buff to its public image and the consumer feels good about contributing to a worthwhile effort.
But there are also downsides, such as the potential for sponsors to stumble into gaffes and contradictions. A great example was when Pepsi tried to get in on the Black Lives Matter movement in 2017, only to have the effort go awry with a TV spot in which Kendall Jenner—considered by many to be a vapid celebrity (who also happens to be white)—was seen to be trivializing the protest movement by sharing a soda with riot police. Public backlash forced the soft drink company to quickly pull the ad and apologize for its tone-deafness. Bell Canada, meanwhile, came under fire the same year for its annual Let’s Talk campaign, which raises money for mental health awareness and funding in Canada. Hundreds of employees complained to the press that aggressive sales targets imposed by the company were causing internal mental health breakdowns, which succeeded in raising the wrong kind of awareness.21 Soon after, regulators began investigating the company’s sales tactics. As both cases illustrate, cause marketing inevitably invites the danger of companies coming off as insensitive or hypocritical.
The bigger problem with cause marketing is the example it sets for the broader population. With most consumers accepting that companies can and should receive benefits in exchange for charitable acts, they’re likelier to internalize that attitude when it comes to their own behavior, either consciously or not. When we are surrounded by product and service providers that are boosting their revenues for doing the good and moral things that we are otherwise taught from birth to do anyway, the questions “What’s in it for me?” and “Why can’t I do that?” become easier to ask. This raises doubts about the nature of altruism, suggests a possible degrading of it and fuels general cynicism. This has particular relevance when it comes to superheroes, both the fictional kind and the real-life kind.
Is Superman an altruist? The general consensus is, yes, he is. Marooned on Earth as a baby after the destruction of his home world, Krypton, young Kal-El is taken in and raised by Jonathan and Martha Kent, two salt-of-the-earth farmers living in Smallville, Kansas, a fictional town representing the archetypal American heartland. The Kents are the epitome of simple morality and raise their son to use his powers for the betterment of humanity. They teach him that no act of kindness is too small and no reward is necessary for any good deed. His godlike powers are a gift, which means he has a responsibility to use them benevolently.
With that kind of a moral compass, it’s no wonder the character has become a paragon of pop culture virtue. “Superman is precisely what we should be teaching our children,” comics creator Greg Rucka wrote in a 2013 opinion piece for the Hollywood Reporter. “Superman inspires us to our best.”22 Even some Christians envy his pure morality, comparing him to Jesus. “In Christ and Superman, we find morals backed up by muscles, powers rested on principles—a combination that makes the ethical behavior of either all the more admirable because it comes from a strength of character rather than a position of weakness,” writes Stephen Skelton in The Gospel According to the World’s Greatest Superhero.23
Yet, over Superman’s eighty years of publishing history, writers have tried to wring more complex motivations out of the Man of Steel. Simple virtue doesn’t seem enough—doesn’t seem believable—as times change. Some have plumbed Superman’s creators’ own origins for material, playing heavily on their—and his—alien status. As we saw in Chapter 2, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were the sons of Jewish immigrants living in the United States at a time of virulent anti-Semitism. Superman was their escapist fantasy creation, representing everything they wished they could do, from flying through the air and picking up cars to getting the girl and punching out Nazis. But he was also a realization of how they thought an outsider might go about fitting into his adopted society. Superman would be accepted by subscribing to and espousing American values, which Siegel and Shuster boiled down to the essentials: truth and justice.24 Out of practicality, the people of Earth would overlook Superman’s alienness and accept him as one of their own because of his good deeds.
That certainly was the prevailing attitude of many immigrants to the United States at the time; that adopting the ideals of hard work and industriousness was the surest way of being welcomed. “He’s always been the ultimate immigrant story,” comic book writer Mark Waid told USA Today ahead of the Man of Steel movie’s release in 2013. “What is the hope of the immigrant than at core a promise that it would be better in America? That no matter what your situation is, it will be better here.” Jim Lee, the comics writer and artist who immigrated to the United States from South Korea with his family when he was five, shares the sentiment: “It was all about: Can you adapt and fit into a society?”25
According to that interpretation, Superman isn’t entirely altruistic. He is indeed governed by Ma and Pa Kent’s morality, but there’s also something in it for him. He wants to be accepted by his adopted planet, a reward for performing righteous deeds and saving the world. There’s at least a little bit of cause marketing driving the Man of Steel. This thinking can be applied similarly to many of the other altruistic superheroes, like Captain America. Scrawny Steve Rogers is bullied as a youth, so he signs up for a government experiment that transforms him into the most capable super soldier the world has ever seen. Like Superman, the change lets him do all the things he couldn’t do before, like get the girl and punch out Nazis. “I don’t like bullies, I don’t care where they’re from,” he says in the film Captain America: The First Avenger, speaking to a motivation—revenge—beyond the altruism he’s otherwise known for.
The point isn’t to cast cynical aspersions on superheroes’ motivations, fictional or real, but rather to suggest that pure altruism is in the eye of the beholder, even in entertainment. One of the realities of modern society is that performing a good deed often results in some benefit to the person doing the deed, whether he or she is looking for it or not. For observers, that can make it difficult to determine where altruism ends and self-interest begins. Philosophy and science are indeed divided on this issue.
Adherents to the “I don’t do anything unless I gain from it” school of thought are believers in psychological egoism, or the thesis that we are all motivated, deep down, by self-interest. In this paradigm, no one does anything selflessly; we are slaves to biological imperatives that require us to further ourselves. In an example given by the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, if Pam rescues Jim from a burning office building, the psychological egoist believes it is because she “wanted to gain a good feeling from being a hero, or to avoid social reprimand that would follow had she not helped Jim, or something along these lines.”26 Counterarguments revolve around the notion that self-interest can’t always be quantified, known or imagined, even by the supposedly self-interested person in question, in which case there is no conscious or subconscious expectation that any reward will ever be gained. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy gives a good example of this:
Suppose, for example, that I want my young children to be prosperous as adults long after I have died, and I take steps that increase to some small degree their chances of achieving that distant goal. What my desire is for is their prosperity far into the future, not my current or future feeling of satisfaction. I don’t know and cannot know whether the steps that I take will actually bring about the goal I seek; what I do know is that I will not be alive when they are adults, and so even if they are prosperous, that will give me no pleasure. (Since, by hypothesis I can only hope, and do not feel confident, that the provisions I make for them will actually produce the good results I seek for them, I get little current satisfaction from my act.) It would make no sense, therefore, to suggest that I do not want them to be prosperous for their sake, but only as a means to the achievement of some goal of my own.27
The psychological egoist might counter that argument by suggesting the person taking steps to ensure their kids are prosperous later in life is indeed acting in their own self-interest, to the greatest extent that they can. They may take some satisfaction knowing they at least improved their children’s chances of prosperity, even if they have no way of knowing whether or not those odds will pay off. That sense of satisfaction is the reward. It’s a circular argument, which is why philosophers have come up with no firm answer to the question of whether people can be truly altruistic.
Science doesn’t provide easy answers either. Ethologist Richard Dawkins came to prominence in 1976 with his book The Selfish Gene, in which he argued that altruism is determined biologically; people (and animals) are more likely to act selflessly when it comes to other people (or animals) they’re related to. Under this theory, a mother is indeed capable of true altruism for her child, but the situation changes when a total stranger is involved. The less related the person is, the more likely it is that self-interest determines actions. Social psychologist Daniel Batson, meanwhile, has spent a lifetime performing experiments on this subject and has determined that altruism does indeed exist regardless of biological relations. In one of his better-known experiments, performed back in 1981, Batson tested the reactions of subjects watching a fellow study participant receive electric shocks. Observers were placed into two different scenarios: one in which they could leave the room and no longer have to watch the shocks, and another in which they couldn’t. The subjects were just as likely to step in and take the remaining shocks themselves regardless of the scenario they were in, which proved to Batson that empathetic altruism exists regardless of social or familial context. These tests formed the basis of his belief that empathy-motivated altruism was a more powerful instinct than psychological egoism. “The research to date convinces us of the legitimacy of suggesting that empathic motivation for helping may be truly altruistic,” he wrote. “In doing so, we are left far less confident than we were of reinterpretations of apparently altruistically motivated helping in terms of instrumental egoism.”28 Critics, however, point out that such experiments often take place under strict experimental conditions that aren’t necessarily reflective of how people behave in the real world, so they aren’t conclusive.29
A more recent experiment that used magnetic resonance imaging to map brain responses to altruism, published in 2016 in Neuroscience and Neuroeconomics, also delivered mixed results. Researchers found that altruistic giving lights up several parts of the brain, including those associated with emotional processing, perspective taking, self-discernment and reward centers. “Together, activation in these regions is likely if individuals are actively engaged in thinking about not only the emotions and feelings of others, but also about their own thoughts, feelings, and desired outcomes,” the report said.30 As with philosophy, the scientific debate is circular and continues with no firm conclusion in sight.
Real-life superheroes are split on the issue too. Some deny that self-interest has any part in what they do. TSAF, a member of the New York Initiative whose name stands for “The Silent and the Forgotten,” told the HBO documentary crew that her appellation is meant to remind her that “It’s never about me.”31 Miss Fit, meanwhile, working at a soup kitchen, wears a button bearing the same message: Not about me.32
Others own up to self-interest and recognize there’s at least some element of cause marketing in what they do. “There is a sense of gratification from doing good and I don’t think that’s a negative thing. It’s not bad to help people,” says Canadian Justice. “It makes charity fun. That’s the thing that’s missing in charity. People see it as a chore.”33 Jaguar agrees, echoing what consumer surveys find about cause marketing. “It’s okay with me if it’s a little selfish, if there’s a little bit of self-glorification,” he says. “It makes it more fun.”34 Dusk Citizen, in New York, embraces the personal gain. “I’ve always been like, ‘Hey look at me, I’m the center of attention.’ I’m welcoming of it,” he says. “I’m more okay with it being for a good cause. It’s a conversation starter. So many people have helped because they like the idea, just because they saw me in a costume that one time.”35
Such positions make it easy for observers to adopt a cynical view—to picture Booster Gold. There’s the obvious criticism: “When I donate money, I do it anonymously. I don’t broadcast it and say, ‘Hey, I gave two hundred dollars!’ I prefer to be more quiet about it,” says Andrea Kuszewski, a psychologist who has studied real-life superheroes. “I don’t know if they broadcast it because they want to get other people involved or if there’s some narcissism involved. I think it’s a mix.”36 With cynicism being the stock-in-trade of real-life super-villains, it’s no surprise that they have few kind words for what real-life superheroes do. “In anthropological terms, no primate does anything without some sort of reciprocation expected. That reward can also just come from within,” says Tamerlane, a real-life super-villain in Florida. “There’s a theory that you give Christmas presents not because you want someone to feel good about that present; you want to make yourself feel better about giving a Christmas present. You’re doing it for selfish reasons. This is the human animal, it’s one part god, one part devil. It’s a horrible, cynical view, isn’t it?”37
Many real-life superheroes bemoan this attitude, which they say is the product of an overstimulated culture that is making people increasingly negative and paranoid. It’s even reflected in the types of superhero fiction that are popular—movies starring Batman, the darker and more cynical of DC’s protagonists, for example, dwarf films with the colorful and virtuous Superman in box-office returns. “It’s seen as offensive to not be cynical,” says Zimmer, who cofounded the New York Initiative with Zero. “It’s this weird cultural thing, but I think it needs to shift.”38 Rock N Roll, the superhero bakery owner, gets angry when people are reflexively cynical about the concept of real-life superheroes. “They say, ‘Why are you doing that? No one does that. What’s your motivation? There’s always got to be something, no one is so magnanimous,’” she says. “Even if it’s a tiny little bit of good that you did, it makes you feel better about anything asshole-ish you might have done earlier in the week. It’s self serving, of course, but people also don’t want to see that it’s this easy to do something good because it holds a mirror up to them and they have to answer the question ‘Why am I not doing this?’”39
Ultimately, the argument over real-life superhero altruism is as circular as it is with philosophy and science: maybe it exists and maybe it doesn’t. To the observer, it often boils down to believing that real-life superheroes are entirely self-interested and are trying to fool themselves or others if they say anything different. Or perhaps their selflessness comes bundled with some amount of selfishness, but that’s okay—it’s just like cause marketing. The attention they get “gives them a license to do good,” says Elaine Fishwick, the human rights researcher in Australia. “But I don’t think that’s something bad.”40
Back in Orlando, Master Legend tells me about how he disliked the HBO Superheroes documentary almost as much as he disliked the Amazon TV pilot based on him. The HBO documentary made him look bad, he says, because he was depicted as constantly drinking beer. His good deeds with the homeless, meanwhile, didn’t make the cut. Still, it wasn’t all bad because the film did boost his profile, which likely led to the TV show that almost happened, as well other opportunities. Just the other day, he says, he got to preach superhero virtues to a classroom full of students in Turkey via a Skype video call. “I never thought I’d become world famous because of it, but I sure did.”
With the possible exception of Phoenix Jones, there isn’t a real-life superhero alive who has drawn more media attention than Master Legend. Does that make him a Booster Gold? Perhaps. But his good deeds are also hard to argue with. He seems genuine in his desire to help people. Does that make him a Superman? That may be a stretch, but it doesn’t disqualify him entirely from the archetype. His difficult past also looms heavy. It’s difficult if not impossible to verify his story, especially given that Master Legend is secretive about his real identity, but it’s hard not to feel the aura of sadness about him—that he’s someone haunted by inner demons. Does that make him a Batman?
Figuring out real-life superhero motivations isn’t as simple as pigeonholing them into one of two or three categories. Master Legend is proof that the reality is more of a spectrum—these individuals do what they do for a variety of reasons, some that are conscious and others that are not. Some real-life superheroes may indeed break down into the simple Batman, Superman and Booster Gold archetypes, but many more probably qualify as a bit of all three. It is usually the case that real-life superheroism is born out of a desire to help others coupled with a desire to also help oneself. A question remains: How does that measure up against the symbolic paragon of virtue as represented by superheroes in fiction? Superheroes in comic books, movies and television are mythic characters who are supposed to represent unselfish altruism—do their real-world counterparts fall short of that ideal? Until philosophers or scientists arrive at a conclusion on the question of whether altruism truly exists, the answer depends entirely on one’s own point of view. To the idealist, real-life superheroes do indeed fall short because of what they gain personally from their actions. To the realist, that’s not a factor. Doing good is all that matters.