#92: Magic Carpet Ride

That afternoon, I went up to the Inland Ocean Archeological and Anthropological Institute. Given the time of year, I expected Doctor Messiah to be off on a mystical summer sabbatical in some exotic, foreign place like Tibet or Transylvania. But to my surprise, I found him in. As usual, he wasn’t busy studying any of the arcane materials stored on the endless shelves which took up nearly the entire top floor of the Wardell Hotel. Instead, he was just silently sitting cross-legged on his oriental carpet, barefoot in worn flared jeans, the yin-yang symbol on the chest of his black turtleneck oddly glowing, meditating.

#91: On the Down-Low

When I returned to Detroit, I had the apartment on West Forest Avenue all to myself. Avie, following in the James sisters tradition I had inadvertently initiated, had gone up to Camp Michi-Fo-La-Ca for a two-week stint as a camp counselor, just as I had done for three summers between my freshman, sophomore, and two junior years of college. But whereas my first summer camp had introduced me to a variety of sexual experiences courtesy of the older, more wizened college-age counselors, my younger and more extroverted half-sister already had years of experience of her own and a wealth of hard-won sexual knowledge; I could only imagine what her fellow counselors would be learning from her.

#90: Profusion and Proliferation

Introduction to Volume IV: Civilian

I graduated from Arbor State University in the spring of 1984—a year late, for reasons I’ve explained elsewhere and at the time was still trying to live down. Briefly, I attribute the delay in part to what I call my delayed freshman crisis. Being a studious student, it took me a couple years of college before I came out of my shell socially and sexually, aided by more extroverted friends and various psychoactive substances, not to mention a serendipitous, protracted hookup with Yarn Man.
        Another impediment was my discovery, in the summer of 1982, that I was a natural-born megahero, which earned me a costume and some quirky new colleagues. As Ms. Megaton Man, as I called myself, the few adventures I’d had, if you could call them that, were a distraction at best, only making my return to the dean’s list that much more challenging.

#89: Crown Heights

When they joined the Reconstituted Megatropolis Quartet, the Phantom Jungle and Rubber Brother thought they’d be doing glamorous things alongside Liquid Man, Yarn Man, and Kozmik Kat, like battling intergalactic menaces that threatened to invade earth.
        In truth, so did I.
        Instead, our alter-egos—Donna Blank, social worker, Jasper Johnson, philanthropic volunteer, and myself—had to spend all our time coordinating with the City of Megatropolis Social Services to find housing, financial assistance, and food stamps for all the civilians who had lucrative careers in the Quantum Tower in the other reality, but had found themselves completely dislocated, socially and financially, by the sudden move to this dimension.