Your Changing Body: a Guidebook for Boy Supervillains

Introduction by Mr. Positive

When I was thirteen years old, I spent an afternoon in the restroom of a public library that changed my life forever. Although the books answered none of my questions, what I learned that day set me on a path of self-discovery leading inevitably to this place. Writing the introduction to this book. What you hold in your hands right now is a source of great pride for me, and composing its introduction is, in a very real sense, my destiny. It is also one of the final actions that I am likely to undertake of my own free will.

Commissioning this collection of stories, testimonials and scientific analyses was a decision prompted by the decline of my criminal career, but the book has its roots in my childhood, long before I adopted the name Mr. Positive. Long before I became, as they say, “evil.” While there is still time, I would like to contribute what little I can by telling my story. How I came to be this man, and why I believe this book is so important.

Things could have gone so much worse for me if I hadn't grown up in the country. My family's little house was situated in the woods on the Oregon coast, affording a sense of isolation that worked in my favor. I'd have been caught out right away in a city, always surrounded by neighbors and strangers. But when I wasn't in school, I was playing in the forest, climbing trees and exploring, and matching wits with my imaginary enemies. I enjoyed turning the woods into a tropical jungle, where I might search for a valuable stone or priceless jeweled artifact, with my archrival just one step behind me.

And that's just where I was, the first time it happened. Deep in the woods on another bright, overcast morning, standing on a log over the shallow creek that ran maybe a quarter mile behind our house. At the top of the embankment on the other side was a cave. In reality, its clay walls extended no more than eight or nine feet into the hillside, but for me it had served as an entrance to Aztec temples, military prisons, the kingdom of the Mole People, and an interdimensional gateway to an alien world. I was eleven years old and anything was possible.

Today, I had fought my way past cannibals and dinosaurs and a man-eating plant to get here: the Lost Caverns of Froon, legendary resting place of the Siamese mummy! As I crossed the familiar log - this time around, a rickety rope bridge - I decided that I would arrive just in time to discover that my nemesis, Professor Francois Buchard of the Royal Institute, had beaten me to the punch. I pictured him emerging from the cave into the light, a smirk on his smug continental face when he saw me coming, too late once again. I felt a pang of anger at his imaginary arrogance.

But what should have been a familiar fake emotion, fading as easily as the imaginary rope bridge, did not fade. I could almost see Professor Buchard, and I kept hating him! My anger was suddenly, unusually real. My chest seized. I couldn't catch my breath, which terrified me. I felt my knees bending, and the bark scraping under my feet. The sky seemed to darken.

Long seconds later, I heard myself gasp. I was finally taking a breath, and as I listened to myself draw it in, I realized that it was the first sound I'd heard since this started. Was this a seizure? I had seen my aunt Janet have a seizure at a family reunion two summers earlier, but she had been twitching uncontrollably. This wasn't like that at all.

No. I was still. Unbelievably still. The spongy damp of moss against my legs told me I was straddling the log. I could hear the sounds of the forest now, and the sky was bright again. My chest though... the pain was gone, but I could still feel something there, as though I was being pulled. I started to panic again. This was not an overactive imagination! I really could feel it, I could feel something grabbing my chest and pulling. Toward the cave?

I looked up then, and for the first time I saw the thing that would change the entire shape of my life.

Of course, it wasn't much to look at. Not yet. Hardly more than a smudge.

Still, there it was. Across the creek, floating above the leaves and sticks that carpeted the ground. A smudge in the air, like an oily drop of ink in a clear bowl of water.

“Overactive imagination.” I was a kid who had been accused of that more than a few times, and maybe it was true. But I knew the difference between what was real and what wasn't. Logic told me that what I was seeing couldn't be real. Something had to be wrong with my eyes, like when the sky had appeared to darken a moment ago.

The trouble was that I could feel that dark spot, a connection, as if my own nerves ended in its shadow. It just hung there, a haze, I could see the mouth of the cave right through it and I could feel it tugging at my chest.

Seconds later, the smudge was gone. I was snapped like a rubber band, knocked backward and rolled off the log. I didn't remember falling, but my knees were in the creek. There were small rocks cutting into them, and the abrupt pain brought my mind back into focus. When I opened my eyes, I was looking down at the dirt on the bank, and I was throwing up. I could smell it, and I felt glad that I could smell again.

Somehow I knew that what happened to me wasn't normal. I loved my family, but instinct told me that I was better off keeping it to myself, so when I ran home I only admitted to falling off the log.

It was nothing, really! Wet moss and soft bark, that's all.

And gravity, added my mother, tying her hair back with a quick motion. She gave me a smile, then turned to grab the first aid box she always kept to the left of the sewing table.

Whenever she wanted to talk, or spend time together, or bandage my knees, my mother always took me into her sewing room. That's what she called it, but the room was really much more special to her than that. The sewing machine was beside a long table that held all of her little projects, and they both faced a picture window that looked out over the woods.

I was playing in the woods, mom. Sometimes scraped knees just happen.

She wiped my knee with an alcohol pad, and I sucked in my breath at the sting.

That's what you get for making me worry about you falling off a log. Mom was always good for a mischievous grin.

I thought that's what the scraped knee was for!

No, that's what you get for actually hitting the ground. And just like that she was finished, tossing the sterile wrappers into her wastebasket with the homemade cotton liner.

She loved to work in here. Two walls had large shelves filled with fabrics, sewing notions, art supplies and other things that I grew up thinking of as "mom stuff" - because if you needed something, she always had it. The shelves also held her books, which included many photo albums, and a growing collection of mementos from my childhood.

What I remember most vividly of that room, though, is the other wall, loaded with family photographs. My grandparents were represented here, with all of their children, every wedding, every birth. Most of these photos captured moments that happened a long time ago in faraway places, but she told their stories so well that I felt like I knew each of these people as well as my own parents.

I remember that the sewing room was a comforting place, where I always felt important. All of my school pictures were given places of prominence, and I would swell with the pride that I knew she felt for me. Each moment of my life was valuable to her. She had framed images from every ultrasound. In my innocence I wondered if I was an only child because there would never be enough room for pictures of two of us.

You know I fell out of four different trees last week? I could have been seriously hurt!

Mom snatched the cushion from her sewing chair and threw it at me. Oh, you are gonna get it for that!

She came in for the tickle.

Surrounded by such love it was hard to keep the truth to myself, but I did not even know what had happened to me, much less how to explain it. My fondest hope was simply that this would never happen again, and I wouldn't have to.

It would be a long time before I ventured back into those woods.

I was changed that day. Terrified that the incident might repeat itself, I avoided the two things that my eleven-year-old logic regarded as triggers: the woods, and my own mind. I was afraid to play. I became a very serious boy, keeping few friends and limiting my leisure time to activities like watching television, which discouraged imagination. In this way, I delayed another occurrence until I was thirteen, when my unbalanced hormones made it impossible to keep myself under control.

The worst part of my teenage school day was the mandatory PE period. A thin kid with no interest in sports and no social circle was fair game anytime, but in PE the girls weren't around to keep the jocks from going too far. The best I could hope for was to hang back and try to be inconspicuous. That's what I was doing that Wednesday, sixth period, on the football field.

My goal was always the same: stay as far away from the ball as I could. Despite seven years of public school, and being born a male in the USA, I had never learned the rules of football and I wasn't about to start now. I stood near the edge of the field, many yards away from what I believed might have been called the “line of scrimmage,” watching my classmates struggle without really knowing the point.

Then, out of nowhere, it happened again, almost exactly the same as before. The sky darkened, and I was dragged forward by my chest. I fell across the twenty yard line and watched as the sun reignited. The familiar grip on my chest did not release, and I looked toward the source. Toward the boys at the line of scrimmage.

I was scared, but mostly I was just so sad that it had come back. It was almost two years since that day in the woods, and I'd begun to think I had made the whole thing up. But I hadn't. Directly in front of me, right behind the players, was that cloud of ink again. Not quite a shape, maybe darker than last time, but I could still see the other boys through the shadow.

Again, only a few seconds passed before I was opening my eyes, face-down on the football field. I barely threw up this time. Since it had appeared behind most of my team and remained so briefly, nobody seemed to have noticed the shadow. But some of the boys had seen me faint, bringing a lot of unwelcome attention my way. I was sent to the school nurse.

Luckily, I was prepared for this moment. I had always feared I might suffer an attack at school and it wasn't hard to memorize a few symptoms and rehearse them enough to sound unrehearsed. In half an hour, I was on my way home with mononucleosis, which guaranteed me an excuse for what happened in PE and several days off from school. Now that my condition had returned, I was determined to use those days well.

I needed to know what was happening to me, but I was afraid to ask anyone. So exercising my best National Honor Society instincts, I waited for my parents to leave for work, then I hopped on my bicycle and rode to the public library.

I held onto a dim hope that my situation wasn't as unusual as I feared, and that this trip to the library would end with the textbook explanation I needed. There are plenty of things that people don't talk about, but surely the books would divulge what I needed. Maybe adults just kept the weird stuff under wraps, because they don't want to frighten their children with all the bizarre things our bodies might do to us. Or maybe it was simply that a surplus of hormones can cause delusions, and they would eventually pass. The only good thing about not knowing was that I wasn't sure, yet, that I was some kind of freak. Not completely sure.

Even the card catalog embarrassed me. Somehow, I thought, the librarian could see that I was looking up the word "puberty". I slunk off toward the stacks, grabbing a couple of other books along the way, not even looking to see what they were. It didn't matter. I just needed something to hide behind.

I found the section I needed, uncomfortably close to the main reading area. Crouching, I tried to shield the area with my body while reading the titles off the spines. There were few books that seemed to deal directly with my predicament, and a cursory inspection revealed little to recommend one over another. If I was going to choose, I would need time to examine them more carefully, and privacy to do it in. I took them all, sandwiched them between the decoy books and tried to look nonchalant as I meandered a circuitous route to the bathroom.

Once inside, alone, I locked myself into a stall and began to pore over the indexes and chapter headings, searching for some kind of explanation. But even the promisingly-titled What's Happening to My Body? offered nothing pertaining to mine. These books were all the same. After hours in the bathroom I had found only hormones, hair, and growing pains. Nothing about recurring hallucinations, cardiac seizures, or anything else that I was experiencing.

Another thing the books had in common is that they all recommended that any farther questions be addressed to a parent, doctor, school official, clergyman or other trusted adult. As much as it pained me, I resigned myself to taking just this step.

I would talk to my father. I couldn't believe he would have an answer, but what else could I do? If something truly was wrong with me, if I was sick or something, we would have to figure it out eventually.

My father and I, we didn't have a lot in common but I always knew he had my back. I can only imagine what he thought when I came into his den and asked if we could turn off the football game. When I recall the way I told him that "I need to talk to you," my own grimness almost moves me to laughter. Any child that serious must seem comical to an adult mind. But my dad, he stifled the smile and obligingly muted the television. He gave me a chair and if any part of a smirk remained, he didn't let it extend beyond the borders of his mustache. He asked me, What's on your mind, son?, and when I think of his voice, I only remember the sound of concern.

As I sat down, I realized my mistake. Putting all my effort into finding the courage to talk to my father, I'd forgotten to figure out what I was going to say.

Something's been happening to me, I told him, with great effort. Something I don't understand. These... feelings. They make me sick. But I don't seem to have any control over them!

My father started to nod, and for a moment I felt hopeful again. Like he knew what I was talking about. Like he was going to tell me the secret that the library books wouldn't share.

These feelings, he asked. Have you had them long?

Only a couple of times, I confessed. The first was a long time ago, and I thought it was gone, but then it happened again this week! It was during PE. I was standing in the field watching the others play football when it hit me!

That same look came across my father's face again, possibly even stronger this time.

Son, he said, all serious and gentle, let me interrupt. I can see that this is hard for you to talk about, and I think I know what you're going to tell me. It must have been scary for you, realizing how it made you feel to look at those other boys. You're so young, and your hormones are just beginning to flood your body with urges you've never had before. But I'll bet you thought you knew what to expect.

Dad-

It's okay, son. It's no wonder these feelings confused you. Every day you watch television, and you see stories about young men and their interest in young women. You thought you were going to be just like them, and you're not. But I promise you, son: there is nothing wrong with a young man who develops an interest in other young men. It's less common, but you are normal.

His eyes searched mine. He was trying so hard to give me comfort, offering so much understanding. The irony is that he was right. I'd known for years that I was gay, but I was so obsessed with figuring out the dark smudge and its effect on me that I never even thought about the fact that being gay was unusual, or that my parents might be concerned about it. I wasn't hiding it from them. I was hiding something else, which was so huge that I forgot to worry about the normal stuff.

Thanks, dad, I said, trying to look... relieved, maybe? And he gave me a hug.

Son, I love you. And I'm proud that you came to me with this. I want you to know that I will always support you, and if you ever have any problems you can always ask for my help.

The promise was beyond his ability to keep, but he meant every word. And I guess I'm hoping this book will fulfill that promise. It will be a place that kids like me can turn for answers.

But that day, I let my dad be proud.

And that's how I sort of came out to my father, but it got me no closer to a solution to my real problem. The good thing was that, as far as my parents were concerned, it explained my last two years of increasingly strange behavior. And probably excused the fact that I was about to start spending a lot of time in the woods alone.

Books couldn't help me, and to my adolescent mind, the conversation with my father was all the proof I needed that no trusted adult could help me either. I was going to have to solve this problem on my own. That Saturday after breakfast, I entered the forest for the first time since I was eleven years old.

All of my old trails had grown over, but I pushed through by habit along the same paths I had always taken. The farther in I went, trampling the new ferns and huckleberries, the larger the knot in my stomach became. But I pressed on, because it made sense to return to the place where it all started.

The old log across the creek became my research station. That Saturday I sat on the log, closed my eyes, and tried to remember exactly how I felt the first time it happened. I thought about that sensation of something gripping the inside of my chest. Of darkness crowding in from the edge of my vision. The snap of the rubber band.

For an hour or more I just sat on the log and thought about it, freaking myself out but accomplishing nothing. Something was wrong. Something was missing, something so unbelievably stupid that it hadn't even crossed my mind. Professor Francois Buchard of the Royal Institute. My imaginary nemesis. He had been there the first time, and maybe he needed to be here now.

So I imagined him.

It was a sideways means of getting there, but it worked. This was the first time that I summoned the shadow on purpose.

I was a little out of practice at imagining, but I remembered the way Professor Buchard had always looked to me. His thin ginger hair, his wire glasses, that impractical sweater vest he wore even in the jungle. Sitting on the log, holding onto the memory of that tightness in my chest, I could almost see the professor standing there in front of the cave.

As soon as I could see him, the sky went dark. My breath grew shallow, but I knew what was coming. This time I didn't fall, I did not stop breathing, and I kept my eyes open.

This time, I saw it happen. The smudge came out of me. It slithered out of my chest as though drawn along a string, and I felt it leave my body like a splinter being pulled. Once outside of me, insubstantial, it confused my senses. It was almost a part of me, I could almost feel it. Like seeing a friend get hurt and experiencing a flicker of sympathetic pain.

I was able to stay calm though, to watch the shadow... and it did nothing. The shadow just was. So I did the only other thing that I knew was within my power. I tried to put it away.

I concentrated on the tug, that tension stretching outward from me, toward the smudge. I tried to imagine pulling it back into me. Nothing happened at first, but eventually the rubber band went slack. The shadow funneled back down the line. I felt a jolt when it smashed into my chest, but I was braced for it and I kept my seat on the log. A wave of nausea washed over my body, but I kept my breakfast down.

In a way, I started to come out of my shell after that. I still didn't know what any of this meant, and I still had to figure out the mental mechanism that turned it on and off, but I was far less afraid of the thing I didn't understand. Maybe the shadow could still appear involuntarily, but I knew it was possible to turn it off again. I was not out of control, and the waning sense of fear led to an increase in confidence. Not that I became a popular kid or took up recreational athletics, but I was no longer afraid to be seen. I walked the halls with my head held high. Nevertheless, most afternoons and all through the summer I tended to retreat into the woods. I wasn't always summoning the shadow, but I was always thinking about it, and wondering. Wondering if it was alien or mutation, if there were others like me, or different like me, or if it had a specific purpose that I hadn't figured out yet.

And almost every day, I wished that one of those books in the library had some advice for me. I was lucky, I realized later, that my particular ability developed quite gradually. I had time to blindly grope my way through super-puberty, dealing with each new manifestation as it came, but not every "different" kid was so fortunate. And most of us go through it all alone.

I went on learning, the best I could. I learned that I could keep the shadow out as long as I wanted, more or less. I didn't try to do it for more than a few hours at a time, since I was keeping up appearances with my folks. But it got easier to summon and retract, and while those actions took some effort, it didn't seem to require any significant amount of energy just to maintain its presence. As time went by, the shadow became more defined, and though not yet fully formed, the general human shape was undeniable.

My first real clue, it turned out, was hiding in plain sight. Only now, when my mind was constantly searching for answers to my condition, did I ever pay real attention to the ultrasound pictures in my mother's sewing room. Suddenly I noticed, for the first time, that the earliest image was different from the others. The picture clearly showed two small blobs joined together. It seemed significant, and I couldn't think of a better way to find out what it meant, so I asked my mother.

You could have been twins!, she said, and I could tell from her voice that she had thought about it often. You started out that way.

But what happened?

Well sometimes, two embryos start to develop, but only one of them survives.

My heart was racing. Do I have a dead brother?

Honey, my mother said, no, look at the other ultrasounds. This happened very early in my pregnancy. It's actually fairly common. The genetic material just gets reabsorbed by the other embryo.

Not uncommon, and as I eventually learned, it was not even unique as a catalyst for superhuman abilities. But now, young men going through similar circumstances won't have to blunder through these discoveries: they can simply turn to chapter three for an in-depth study of known origins for both natural and supernatural powers. Pay special attention to the testimonial from Doublemensch, whose story parallels my own in many ways. I wish I had known then, as a young man, that I was not unique. I would have been so reassured.

As far as I knew at the time, though, I was one of a kind. A boy who had absorbed his twin in the womb, and who now had the ability to manifest a ghostly human shape at will. It seemed to me that the two facts were probably related.

But only time would tell. I was eighteen when the shadow became real enough for me to see its face. It was me. Over the past months I had watched its extremities coming into focus, and noted the suggestion of features on its face, which I had attributed to a sort of corresponding maturation as I got older. As we got older. Now it looked like me, but there was something else too. I figured it out one afternoon in the woods, and it only clicked because of the star. I don't even remember where I got it, but I was wearing this bright green jersey with a white star on the chest, and I summoned the shadow. The effect was unmistakable.

It stood before me, transparent as always, but so clear. How had I never seen this before? A man in a red shirt with a black star. Skin so dark it was almost black, a shock of nearly-white hair. Right down to his faded yellow jeans, it was a perfect photographic negative of me. My twin? My opposite? I could feel him, and as I truly recognized the negative for the first time, I got a new shock. Only for a moment. The world spun around, and then I felt it.

His feet on the ground. The spring air, not on his skin but blowing through him. And me. For just that moment, I could see myself through his eyes. I was standing on the log, a look of confusion, loss, and that old familiar panic. Panic I only ever felt around him. I could feel the tug from the other side, from my side, and then it was over. I fell off the log. For the first time since I was eleven, I lost control of the connection and threw up in the creek.

Weird, feeling that old sense of trepidation again. My power had become new and scary once more. No longer completely under my control. But it was also a turning point for me - the point where I started to learn what the shadow was. It was only a matter of time before I discovered how to use it.

Over the next few years I learned by degrees, still with no guidance. My connection to the negative grew stronger, though I did not experience a recurrence of that sensory overlap for quite some time. What I did have was increasing physical control over the negative. I could move it around, and its distance from me didn't seem to diminish that control. Only with a direct sightline could I tell how far away it was, but I hadn't found a limit yet. The frustrating thing was that I had a pretty amazing puppet, but it was essentially useless. I could move it around, I could change its appearance because it always emerged as my negative. But nothing more. If I had a mentor, some idea of what to look for or how to proceed, I might have unlocked my potential much sooner, or even had foreknowledge of the cost. Instead, I just dealt with each symptom as it presented, the best I could. And it could have been better.

The key to my career came when I was twenty-two. Home for Christmas, I was down in the woods, walking my negative around after a light snowfall. Nothing unusual. We spent a lot of time together. Alone together. I liked to talk to him. Today, I was strolling along the creek with my negative beside me. Like a friend.

“I feel like I've built my whole life around you. I have you instead of friends. I lived alone in college, because I need privacy to spend time with you. But I don't know why I do it, aside from the fact that I can.”

I paused, and let the negative take a couple of steps in front of me.

“Lately, I've just been wondering if I'm letting you be my excuse for not having a real life. I don't... I'm not part of the world. And I haven't substituted anything else for living in the world, except for these days with you.”

I was surprised at how difficult I was finding this conversation. It's how I imagined it would feel to break up with someone. The negative was still in front of me, and though I didn't quite believe it was a real person, I found it difficult to look at him right now. I turned around, looked back the way we had come.

“I think maybe it's time...”

Then I saw it. My guilt led me right there. I turned my back on him and I looked at the ground. What I found there changed everything. My own footprints in the snow. And beside them, a faint trail. Not a set of tracks exactly, but scuffs. The snow disturbed as though by gentle puffs of air. It wasn't much, but it meant that my negative was becoming substantial. And if he could touch things, then I could use him.

We never finished that conversation.

My earliest criminal exploits went virtually unnoticed. My abilities were pretty limited and didn't lend themselves to public display, or the sort of theatrics that would later typify my best work. The first time I used the negative to commit a crime, it was the simplest possible circumstance.

There I was in the back of a busy auto parts store. I saw a manager duck into the office, set a stack of cash drawers on the desk, then quickly rush out again, locking the door behind him. Shift change. Nobody was around back there. Turns out, it was the easiest thing in the world to send the negative through the wall and push the lock. I just walked in, stuffed the cash into my bag and left. The negative locked the door behind me. No fingerprints.

Only now, as a much older man, can I look back on that day and ask a question that appears impossibly obvious to me now. Why did I become a criminal?

It's not something I ever decided to do. But I wasn't normal, and although I attempted to hide my anomalous nature from the world, I never really thought I could have a normal life. I had a power. And in this world, if you have a power, you do one or the other. You either hurt people, or you save them.

I guess I could say that the way my abilities developed, I couldn't have used my power to save people in the early days, and maybe that helped to steer my course. But I never really got on well with people. To be honest, I never had a particular interest in helping them.

Of course I didn't really want to hurt them, either.

When I think about it now, the appeal of my choice is more apparent. When you choose to be a hero, your entire life becomes about the job. People expect you to be there for them, fixing things that were never your problem, and to be a good hero, you have to accept that responsibility as if it was yours all along. Call me selfish, but that is not the man I wanted to be. A criminal can have his own life. I would only have to use my power when I needed money, or just wanted to have a good time. At least I wouldn't have to hold some boring job where I'd always be worried about my negative, or about suddenly developing some new ability that turns people inside out. Laughable, perhaps, but it sounded pretty reasonable when I was twenty-two.

Villainy was a natural career path for me, but I was very conscious of the public's perception of people who make this choice. I wasn't blazing new trails here. Supervillains have been around for a long time, dating back at least to early twentieth century America when the Magnificent Stranger terrorized the Midwest with his Traveling House of Illusions. The people he left twisted into funhouse mirror images of themselves are the first confirmed victims of supervillainy, and the legacy goes back much farther if you accept the conventional wisdom about Jack the Ripper, Leonardo Da Vinci, and at least two members of the Spanish royal family.

But there is no arguing that the past few decades have seen a dramatic increase in costumed supercriminals. It has become a bona fide career choice, and like any line of work, the public has certain preconceptions about the kind of folks who decide to take it up. I know I did. After I had committed that first crime, I started to imagine myself as a criminal. About what that actually meant, and the sort of company I would be keeping.

Tomorrow's young supervillains will be able to refer to the historical perspectives outlined in chapter two, for a better understanding of how they might fit into the constantly-unfolding drama of costumed crime. But what I perceive as the greater value of this book is the opportunity to have criminals like the Delicate Ape, Doublemensch, Skullkick, Harshmallow and dozens of others tell their stories in their own words. Talking about the villains who inspired them, why they chose a life of crime or how it chose them, and the rules they live by.

At twenty-two I'd never seen a supervillain in real life, but I had seen all the classic footage of people like Smooth Operator, Lariat Joe and Vanishing Boy. Guys who committed crimes with a certain finesse and a minimum of violence; even the notoriously conflicting media coverage all agreed that these villains never hurt their victims or any bystanders, and didn't even threaten violence unless provoked. As a young man just starting to find his criminal identity, I felt I could look up to these villains, if not for their specific crimes then at least for an apparent code of ethics.

Even the more puzzling villains like Harshmallow, or The Cornrose, managed to ply their trades without doing more than property damage. When Tin Soldier and Puppet brainwashed forty thousand people during the Chicago Marathon, newsdesks everywhere were rattling with dire predictions, but the dastardly duo only forced them all to play freeze tag. I don't pretend to understand why they do what they do, but I wouldn't be ashamed to be mentioned in the same breath.

But when I say the word “supervillain,” are these the people you think of? Maybe, but they aren't the ones you think of first. First you think of the monsters, like Captain Meathook or Laserface. It's not the colorful burglar with the witty banter that the public remembers, it's the freak who set two hundred wild animals loose on a zoo filled with children and old people, letting them wreak havoc for several minutes before killing everyone with poison gas.

If this was to be my vocation, I knew I didn't want to be like them. I was comfortable with theft. I started small and I liked it that way, picking locks and stealing what I found there. Variations on that theme were easy practice, and I got better, but I was in no hurry to put on a mask and start calling attention to my crimes while I was committing them. I was simply honing my craft, becoming more dexterous and elaborate in my manipulations. And with continual practice came the development I'd been waiting for. It started with a tingle.

I was sending the negative through the door of a walk-in vault when I felt a tingle in my skin. In his skin. I couldn't see the negative inside the steel wall, but I could feel him pass through and out the other side. Unlike the last time, in the woods, I kept control. I wondered if I had his sight, too, but the inside of the vault was pitch black.

The immediate opportunity here was a major improvement on my usual methods. Up until now, to unlock a door from the other side, I needed a simple button or switch mechanism and I needed to know where it was located. But with sensation in my shadow body, I could reach right into the vault door and feel my way through the lock. I could feel the mechanism and trip the tumblers. Which is exactly what I did, and when I had the vault unlocked, I brought the negative back through. He emerged from inside the steel and I saw my own face, smiling, astonished and excited and alive with possibility. I could see through his eyes, and our future was looking very bright.

My debut as a costumed supervillain, in which I robbed the Corwin-Brand Savings and Loan, received fairly widespread media coverage and most of the security footage is still available on YouTube. The job went pretty well - the worst thing about it was my costume and that would get better with time. I had myself a white three-piece like a Southern dandy or Colonel Sanders, with a smart-looking derby to match. I hid my identity with a white surgical mask. It looked a bit strange, but it wasn't about me. This was about us.

There weren't many people in the S&L when I walked in, unarmed. I reckoned that if I was dramatic enough, and didn't waste any time, I could get away without needing a weapon. So I made a big entrance - the one they used to open that episode of Dateline devoted to me. Nobody thinks about this, but I had to scout several potential locations before I found an S&L with a door that could be thrown open dramatically. It worked like a charm. I flung it open, stepped inside and announced:

“Ladies and gentlemen, you may call me Mr. Positive! If you'll give me just a few minutes of your time, I'll liberate the cash from your vault and then be on my way. I'm sure you won't mind if I invite my friend Mr. Negative to join us?”

As expected, the security guard's natural instinct to set off an alarm or attack me was curtailed by the sudden appearance of Mr. Negative. My dark double with the black suit, and the skin and mask to match, meant that the rules had changed. These people had never seen me before. If I could generate a negative image of myself and use it to open a vault, who knows what else I was capable of? Everyone cooperated.

With the money in a bag, Mr. Negative and I retreated to the stolen van I'd parked around the corner. I had him drive while I changed in the back (a maneuver I mastered only after many trial runs). He had to get me two blocks away, where my car was parked in an alley. As we turned a blind corner, I jumped out the side door with a bag of money in one hand and a bag of clothes in the other. I threw them both in the trunk and waited in the car while I drove Mr. Negative and the van through the streets. It took almost a full minute for the police to catch up with the getaway car. I led them another two miles in the wrong direction before I hit the brakes and pulled back Mr. Negative, leaving the police to explain a driverless van with no money in it. I eased my car out of the alley and went home.

So it began. Most of my life after that is more or less a matter of public record. The security footage was on the news by five o'clock that night, and the next day everybody had heard of Mr. Positive. I took great care with my public image on those first few jobs. I was loud, amiable, a bit dapper, and always reassuring to my victims. I stole from savings and loans, the odd jewelry shop, and sometimes big multiplexes showing awful movies. Anyplace dealing in large volumes of preferably unmarked cash, and jewels because they were accepted as currency in the criminal underground. Robbing the multiplexes was my attempt at a bit of personal flair. I do object to movies that sacrifice inspiration in a quest for broader appeal. So once in a while, I would rob a multiplex and pontificate loudly, about how the American studio system promotes a dangerous philosophy that is deadly to art, and one that lowers the lowest common denominator.

The soundbyte-friendly speeches were replayed often, adding a charming idiosyncrasy to my already positive media profile.

I miss those early days. Each job a new adventure, more about the planning and the outfits, and the adrenaline, than the money. I loved the thrill. I loved the attention. And I think I was rather good at it. Obviously the media agreed, since I got all sorts of good press, and successfully distanced myself from the really scary supervillains. My star was rising at the same time that Ghost Medusa held her Christmas slave auction in the bloody wake of the Macy's tragedy, and sharing airtime with her was all the proof anyone needed. Some supervillains live only to sow chaos and fear, and Mr. Positive was not one of those. For a bad guy, I was definitely one of the good guys. My victims weren't too keen on me of course, but the AP and Reuters ensured that news of my exploits reached millions of readers who were not directly affected by my crimes. To viewers around the nation, and eventually the world, I was maybe even a bit heroic. A romantic criminal, like David Niven. Well-dressed. Classy. I tried to bring a bit of John Steed to an industry full of artless thuggery. I was a shy boy with a childhood full of lonely secrets, and I grew up to be America's favorite villain. This truly is a land of opportunity.

And if only I had had someone to help me, to teach me, it might have gone on a lot longer. I could have planned more carefully if I had known what was coming. But I never had a clue.

Everyone knows what I did to that security guard, but before writing this introduction, I've never had the chance to explain what happened. To place that horrible incident in the context of the ongoing evolution of my abilities. It's not an excuse; that death is on my hands, and nobody else's. The darkness entered my life on that job, and I've been trying to outrun it ever since.

Up until then, people had been fairly cooperative when I robbed them. But all it takes is one, I suppose. One security guard who saw Mr. Negative and charged forward, attacking him like a man. I watched him, through my own eyes and through the shadow's, and as the guard came at me, I had two competing instincts: to defend myself the way a man would, or to make Mr. Negative disappear. I wish I had chosen differently. Or chosen at all. But I just acted. I threw up the shadow's arms as though to block him, and the guard passed through me. But not cleanly.

My arms went through the guard's head with enough solidity that his brains were scrambled against the back of his skull... and the whole thing was on camera. That was the day I stopped being a romantic criminal. Now I was a murderer.

Never mind that it was all a horrible accident. Try telling that to security officer Clayton Tringer's widow and daughters. Over and over again - on CNN, on Entertainment Tonight, and of course on the Dateline special - they played that ubiquitous 14-second clip of the attack. He charges forward, heroically, just doing his job, and my arms go up. When I watch the clip, I know what it means. I know why I raised my arms, that it was just an accident of defensive instinct, but if that had been my husband guarding the vault I think I'd see something different. I would see Mr. Negative taking out a threat by putting his arms through my husband's brain, and I would never, ever forgive the man responsible.

Soon, those broadcasts of the footage were accompanied by tearful interviews with Mrs. Tringer, and the tide of public opinion turned rapidly against me. Before, a story about Mr. Positive was reserved as an upbeat ending after a grim report about the latest atrocity at the hands of Skullshot or the Star Fruit. But now the anchorwoman would furrow her brow and read the headlines about how Murder Phantom had injured a shopper and two employees in an incident at a California mall, and then cluck her tongue, adding, “and this just days after Mr. Positive took the life of security guard Clayton Tringer.” Right into the camera. Right at me.

None of the pundits ever suggested that it might have been a mistake. Nobody mentioned that what happened to Tringer was proof that Mr. Positive was far more powerful than he let on. That I had deliberately chosen to abstain from violent crimes in the past and maybe I hadn't intended to start now. I could have been an unstoppable assassin, walking through walls, immune to bullets, but I had only ever acted as a thief. I could have had Mr. Negative step into the body of another person, then turn him solid and pilot them around for a while before shedding them like an empty husk. But none of the nightmares I didn't bring to bear could make up for the life I stole.

I retreated from the limelight. I had no soapbox from which to apologize, no way to make things right. I drove out to my parents' house, empty since they died, and returned to the woods where I had spent so much of my youth. Where I could let the shadow out safely. Where there was nobody to hurt.

I stayed on the property for weeks, spending most days in the woods, contemplating Mr. Negative. Moving him. Moving through him. Testing and retesting how solid or vaporous he could be. Playing patty-cake. Under controlled circumstances, everything seemed to be going fine, but the stress was starting to get to me. I was tired, and that rubber band in my chest was getting heavy. I could maintain Mr. Negative ably enough, but the effort of reeling him back in was growing more difficult.

It was during my time in solitude at the old family home that I decided to find a way to make this book a reality. I had tried to walk this criminal path alone and failed. At least I failed myself. I have no illusions about my mission here: at the end of the day, my work will help supervillains commit crimes, and not all of them are going to be gentlemen about it. But most young men with superhuman abilities aren't going to decide not to use them. Most of them are going to choose to use their powers to operate on one side of the law, or the other. What I want is for those who decide to commit crimes to have the chance to do so, to the best of their abilities. That way the criminals like me, who want to do their work without hurting anyone, have the best possible chance of success. There will always be bad guys who want to kill people, but most supervillain homicides are the result of collateral damage and plans gone awry, and those are manageable problems. I had been wishing for this book since I was thirteen years old, and now that I have lived this life of mine, I am in a position to contribute something to make the world safer. Supervillains with accurate control of their powers and some basic instruction in criminal activity are far less likely to take a life that they don't have to take.

I could spend forever trying to atone for the one I took, but the only thing I had to offer was my remorse to Mrs. Tringer. That's why this book is dedicated to her, to her late husband and to their daughters. I want her to know, even though it can never undo the events of that afternoon, that I am truly sorry and I have never been the same.

By reading my story, and the others in this book, I hope that those kids who pick up the torch will be able to make smart choices. While I'm writing this, my team is still compiling material for Appendix C, Questions to Ask Yourself Before Committing Your First Crime. I've asked all of our participants to discuss mistakes they've made, wisdom they wished they learned earlier, and how they see themselves as supervillains. You can't uncommit a crime, and we should all be careful not to start pulling jobs that will turn us into the kind of criminals that we might regret becoming. Too many angry, lonely boys with more power than they can handle turn to supervillainy to get even with the world. Our questions are designed to get these young men to pause, to think about ways to use their powers that will transform their lives and create opportunities for the future. Taking lives because it's easy will burn a lot of bridges.

As Mr. Positive, I never operated as part of a team, and even without a life of crime I'm sure that my all-consuming preoccupation with the shadow would have precluded me finding someone to share my life. I have remained, for the most part, alone, and I have always contended that supervillainy is solo work. You can't start putting criminal personalities into groups and expect things to stay professional. Add super abilities into the mix and sooner or later the games of one-upmanship that normally arise among bonding males escalate into callously (even gleefully) destructive displays of power. That men almost inevitably succumb to such displays is shameful enough; that they should end with a body count is obscene. My solitude was part of my determination to be a different kind of supervillain.

But for this final project to work, I needed surveys and testimonials from the largest pool of supercriminals and, where possible, their families. I was fortunate to make the acquaintance of former child psychologist Ben Epstein, now better known as the mutant conman and sideshow personality Doctopus. He agreed to oversee a team of hand-picked science and crime professionals to collate and interpret any data I collected. So I contacted The Cornrose, Lady Skullshot, and a few other colleagues I'd had dealings with in the past, who in turn spread my request to their circles of friends, and so forth. Most pledged their aid in exchange for money, but some were willing to support the book based solely on its merits. Like me, and like Doctopus, they recognized that there was a dire need.

With this project came a renewed sense of purpose, and for a brief time I even imagined that one day I could return to my life of crime. Now I know that isn't in the cards for me. I buried myself in this book, keeping strange hours, pushing myself hard. One morning I passed out, somewhere around sunup, lying on the couch in my parents' living room. I was exhausted. I don't know how long I slept, but when I woke, I was not alone. Mr. Negative was sitting on the arm of the couch, watching me.

I put him away. Instantly, by instinct. But the significance of this development was not lost on me. Finally, I realized what I probably should have figured out years ago. It wasn't that I was simply gaining greater control over Mr. Negative. It was that Mr. Negative was getting stronger. Every time I let him out, he emerged a little more powerful. More substantial. And, I was starting to believe, more autonomous. The trouble I'd been having lately with the rubber band could surely be explained by Mr. Negative resisting my efforts. And now he had initiated the separation, apparently on his own, as I slept. What if my control over him was just an illusion, something he allowed? How could I be sure?

I still don't know the extent of his abilities, but I know he has had a lifetime of watching me, to learn from my mistakes. I thought maybe I ended it just in time. That perhaps I was still the stronger one, and if he came back I could just stick him underground until he became corporeal enough to suffocate. I also spent a lot of time thinking it was far more likely that I will awake some morning and he will be waiting for me, at the other end of the rubber band. Only this time, he is the anchor. I am the one stretched to the limit at the wrong end. I am the puppet.

Before that happens, I was determined to tell my story, even though I don't know how it ends. I was determined to see Your Changing Body: A Guidebook for Boy Supervillains become a new standard in developmental education.

That all went out the window last night, when one of my contacts told me that Doctopus had been taken into custody. Once the authorities had fingerprinted all of his hands, they were able to tie him into 36 unsolved crimes all across the country.

Long story short, if I want to finish the book, I need to get Doctopus out of jail.

According to my source, he is being held at the Agony Bay Facility, a state of the art maximum containment center built with federal funds after the Macy's tragedy. Extracting a prisoner from Agony Bay is going to take a very, very good locksmith.

I had one of my new associates send over a locking mechanism reported to match the ones in the holding cells, for a test run before I go in to do the deed. Turns out it wasn't the lock I needed to worry about. Mr. Negative fought me the whole time, but I was prepared for that too. The scary part was when I tried to put him away.

My head pounded, and tremors ran through my body as he resisted, harder than ever before. He wasn't moving. If this was a challenge for him, Mr. Negative didn't betray it.

The effort became physical, forcing me to step backward and grip the back of a chair for stability. I bowed my head, gritting my teeth as I reeled him in. He fought me without struggling at all. In spite of all my work, he was already there in the winner's circle. Just like Professor Francois Buchard when I was eleven.

I don't know how long it had been since I thought of him. Buchard had been the key, all those years ago. The mechanism, the switch in my mind that brought Mr. Negative out into the world, was almost the same as using my imagination to see my archrival. I had tried to summon the shadow with will power, as if I was flexing a muscle, but success only came when I fantasized him.

Imagining Professor Buchard is what had opened the door for the cloud of ink the first time, and now Mr. Negative was all grown up and standing there with that same arrogant expression of certain victory, and I hated him. Hated him just like I hated that smug, ginger-haired bastard.

I went after Mr. Negative with everything I had.

“This... has to... end!”

And in the end I did win, but just barely. What terrified me is that at the climax of our struggle, I found myself making fists. I was clenching my fists through the back of the chair. Only for an instant, but I had gone insubstantial.

What does that mean? I'm pretty sure it means that the balance of power is changing, irretrievably. It probably means that the next time I release Mr. Negative, I will be the one who goes back in. Beyond that, I only have questions.

Mostly I wonder what kind of man he will be. If he truly is a man, will he be like me? Or will he be some kind of reflection, like a dark side or the reverse of me? I wonder if I failed him. If Mr. Negative is a person, separate from me, then what have I done by letting him out into the world only to force him to steal things? What kind of brother have I been? When I put him away does he just disappear, or is he like a prisoner that I have locked away for decades, trapped in his smudge of a body, unable to scream?

When he puts me away, will I disappear? Will he ever let me out again?

If he is a man, I wonder if he will forgive me for not knowing what he was. Mr. Negative has been my companion for my entire life. He knows every corner of my heart. I grew away from my family and abstained from friendships, and used my dual identity as an excuse to never get deeply involved with another man. Instead I had Mr. Negative, confidante, confessor, silent partner. And suddenly I realize that I don't know anything about him. What will be my legacy, when I hand over the reins of the rest of my life?

None of which changes the fact that I have a job to do. I still have to rescue Doctopus so that all of these stories can be told. If I'm lucky, really really lucky, I will get a chance to tell the final chapter of my own story. But I suspect that you will know of my success only by holding the completed book in your hands, and that my story - at least, in my own words - will end here.

This story originally appeared in The Lavender Menace: Tales of Queer Villainy! It was not a bad collection, but has been saddled with a terrible title.

When I was tapped to write a story for the book, it was called The Dark Side of the Cape, and our mandate was that the protagonist of the story must be gay, male, and a costumed supervillain. Fine. But in its journey from conception to reality, the book switched publishers, and someone wanted a different name. The authors were even invited to submit ideas - I suggested the title Homo Superior, for its explicit reference to Magneto and cheeky allusion to gayness. But that was the last involvement I had with the book, and I don’t know who made the final decision.

I do know that it was a bad decision. Clearly, The Lavender Menace was selected only for its use of the word ‘menace’, and with no respect at all for the historical significance of the term. The book has been correctly called out for leaning on the term ‘Lavender Menace’ - which has its roots explicitly in the lesbian feminist movement - in a collection of stories whose protagonists are entirely male. Further exacerbating the problem is the subtitle, as ‘Queer’ implies a lot more variety than you’ll actually find here. And I don’t mean to slam the content of the other stories; they’re all poorly served by a title that does not give readers the proper expectation. And I’m sure that whoever made the name change did so without any malice in their heart, but it was the wrong call. It’s a shame, because I am relatively proud of this story and I think fewer people will read it because the name is a turn-off.