#144: The Flight of Dr. Braindead!

Trent Phloog’s third-person flashback continues … (Part 6 of 6)

The Marketable Universe, July 4, 1976

Megaton Man and the Human Meltdown traded blows in midair over the Statue of Liberty, knocking the other back hundreds of feet with each one, and more than once coming perilously close to crashing into the monument. Still aloft, whoever was struck would blasted back, come to a stop, hover for a moment as they recovered, then fly right back at the other one to throw another punch in return. It was a very inefficient way to fight.

#143: The Bicentennial Battle of the Millennium!

Trent Phloog’s third-person flashback continues … (Part 5 of 6)

The Marketable Universe, July 4, 1976

The City Room of The Manhattan Project, nerve center of that great daily newspaper, was empty on the sweltering summer afternoon except for the lone figure of Trent Phloog. The unpaid cub reporter, his padded Robert Mitchum suit soaked in perspiration, snoozed at his desk, his snores in concert with the rattling sounds of the window fans and the smooth murmur of ceiling fans, neither of which did anything to combat the sultry New York City heat.

#142: The Quantum Quest Quartet

Trent Phloog’s third-person flashback continues … (Part 4 of 6)

The Marketable Universe, May 1976

Meanwhile, in a midtown skyscraper, a megahero team was scrambling to an alarm.
        “I’m afraid we’ll have to cancel our regularly-scheduled vacation to Bug-Eyed Island, See-Thru Girl!” announced a bulbous, sloshing, elderly man in blue leotards with a white “Q” on his chest. Rex Rigid’s bloated face stared opaquely at a bank of computer monitors arrayed from floor to ceiling, his gloved hands turning knobs and pressing buttons. “The Quantum Tower’s elaborate defenses systems have detected an emergency!”

#141: The Manhattan Project

Trent Phloog’s third-person flashback continues … (Part 3 of 6)

The Marketable Universe, May 1976

Trent stopped on the busy midtown street and looked up at the granite office building. “It’s the correct address, all right,” he said, checking the street number against what was written on the back of the #10 envelope he pulled from his inside breast pocket. “But for some reason, these aren’t the offices of the Daily Polis, like that nice Mr. Greeley described.”
        Instead, the bronze plaque read,

The Manhattan Project
Est’d 1941
Most of the News We Can Fit, We Print

        “Woo!” said Trent. “Must have been one of those media mergers!”

#139: Flashback to Microville

Editorial Note: We interrupt our regularly-scheduled first-person narrative by Clarissa James to bring you this third person (omniscient) flashback from the life of Trent Phloog. Enjoy! (Part 1 of 6)

The District Universe—May 1976

Golden afternoon sunshine spread across the verdant cornfields surrounding Microville Senior High School as their Bicentennial graduation ceremony came to a rousing conclusion. There was hardly a dry eye as the sixteen-piece Mudcat marching band offered a very out-of-tune rendition of “Pomp and Circumstance” while a score of administrators, faculty, and other dignitaries filed off the plywood platform set up in the Mudcat’s football field—actually, a pasture behind the school building surrounded by cornfields. These joined the crowd of a hundred or more family and friends who were still congratulating their twenty-three members of the Class of ’76, a bumper crop for the rural school district, arrayed in their navy-blue robes and mortarboards.

#135: Night Flight

“Hey, wait a minute!” Kozmik Kat protested, his paws flailing about, as he tried to wriggle free from my grasp. “My powers are no good in a fight scene, Ms. Megaton.” But it was too late; we were already far out over water and ascending rapidly in the frigid night air.

#41: The Thirteenth Scientist

So, there I was, standing in the studio space of my garret apartment while my Asian friend, Audrey—who had a body virtually identical to mine, except with slightly bigger boobs—wore my Ms. Megaton Man uniform, while the woman who had sewn it—my long-lost grandmother, Mercedith Robeson-James—inspected her handiwork like it was hanging on a department-store mannequin. I had just phoned my half-sister, Avie, that Seedy James, whom our mother had always died working for the government during World War II, was alive and well, and Avie said she was on her way over…
     But before I tell you what happened next, there’s a part I skipped over. So let me back up.

#35: Giving Nuke a Tumble

So, I have to tell you about the magenta-haired art student, Nancy—although that’s not her real name, turns out.
     My summer class hadn’t started yet, but I was settled into my garret apartment, such as it was; I just had my bed and a side table, and a few milk crates, as I mentioned. I had a big empty space in the corner of the small studio next to my bed, directly when you walked in the door. It was too small for a sofa, and I was going to need a desk or something to set my portable typewriter on and do homework—the fifties kitchen table wasn’t going to cut it. I’d left my desk in Ann Arbor—but there was time to find something else. First, I needed to find a job.

#34: You’re Not the Boss of Me

The apartment I found was affordable—that was perhaps its first and only attribute, aside from being next to the First Holistic-Humanist Congregation of Cass City, a free-thinking quasi-Christian sect housed in a rusticated Gothic church. Located on West Forest Avenue a couple blocks west of Woodward at Cass, my apartment was on the third floor of a once-modest townhouse turned into sawed-off rental units run by a white-trash couple from down south. You think I’m being mean, but if you saw them, you’d agree. The woman was a mean old bitty who dyed her hair red and the man wore a toupee that looked like a bird’s nest…but that’s neither here nor there.
     I had the picturesque garret apartment in what was once part of the attic, basically one room, a kitchen, and a bath, with all kinds of ceilings angling every which way, and windows pointing to the front and side of the building. There were other apartments on the top floor, and a long hallway that ran to the back of the house to the external back stairs—these egresses would come in useful if I needed to be Ms. Megaton Man in a pinch. At least it was a place to hold my stuff, although I’m not sure I’d call it secure. But at least it was within easy walking distance of the Arbor State extension, Warren Woodward, and the Union Stripe restaurant, where I landed a waitressing gig.

#32: Notes from Underground

Foreword to Volume II: North Cass Corridor

I want to thank John Bradford, former columnist of The Detroit Day and longtime adjunct writing instructor at Warren Woodward University—present whereabouts unknown—for the personal encouragement and guidance he provided, which enabled and empowered me to compose this and a previous volume of my reflections on being a megahero—namely, Ms. Megaton Man. Although never formally my editor, the feedback he provided on my first volume and his encouragement to undertake this second were invaluable to me. I will sorely miss him and his inspiration.

#31: Man, Woman

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#17: Body by Nuke

What took place on my virgin flight and immediately thereafter has been greatly exaggerated in the media, most notably in that aforementioned scandalous “novel,” Megasomething. If you believed everything in that account, you’d be persuaded I had gone on a tear with every student athlete returning to the Arbor State campus for late-summer training camps—and taken on scores of lovers besides. The precise number bandied about is one hundred and twenty-seven men and thirty-one women—which was totally made up. I should know, because I made it up.

#16: Ms. Megaton Man Breaks Out!

That summer following my delayed junior-year freshman crisis began quietly enough. Duly chastened by the academic catastrophe of my own making, I begged and got myself hired back as a waitress at the Drowned Mug Café; all seemed forgiven and forgotten. I worked my ass off there for the entire month of May; when June rolled around, I went off again to Camp Michi-Fo-La-Ca again. So far, this was my typical summer routine.

#15: Yarn Man’s Hippie Crash Pad

The next morning, I phoned Avie and told her not to come out to Ann Arbor to pick me up. “What’s the matter?” she asked. “You don’t have any incompletes or anything, do you?”
     “No, of course not,” I said.
     “They don’t need you at the Drowned Mug, do they?” she asked.
     “No,” I said. I didn’t mention I got fired.
     “You met some guy!” she said.
     “No, I did not meet some guy,” I replied. During the entire Thanksgiving weekend at home in Detroit, I had never mentioned once that Yarn Man had shown up and was being held a virtual prisoner—for his own good—in our Ann Street basement. Nor had I mentioned he was still there. “I just like the snow better in Ann Arbor.”

#14: Thanks for the Use of the Safe Room

The object descending upon us was egg-shaped, with a flat bottom; it sprouted retractable landing gear with disc-shaped pads from its underside as it descended from the night sky over Ann Street.
     Pammy and Matt, who by now had come out onto the porch, were also gazing up at the sky.
     “Looks like one of those old-fashioned beauty shop hair dryers,” said Matt, “like old ladies would sit under in hair curlers.”
     He was right—that’s exactly what it looked like.
     “It’s just Preston,” said Pammy, “making a big, show-offy entrance, as usual.”
     “Preston?” I said. “Secret Agent Preston Percy? What’s he doing up in outer space?”

#13: Late to the Party from Mars

As Thanksgiving approached, Stella announced she was going to make a big, traditional Thanksgiving dinner—a giant turkey with all the fixings. It was time to make use of the house and make it feel like a home, Stella said, and everyone was invited. This in itself was remarkable; even though we all lived in the same house, our differing schedules seldom permitted more than two of us to ever sit down and eat at the same time.

#12: Kozmik Kat’s Trick-or-Treat

The next time I saw costumed characters on Ann Street, I happened to be one of them.
     It was October, and apple cider was in season; Trent bought some fresh, at the Ann Arbor farmer’s market, and he and Pammy and I sat on the porch sipping. It was a warm Indian summer afternoon; I realized that Halloween would soon be upon us.

#11: The Ivy-Covered Halls of Higher Learning

Preston led me to the Drowned Mug Café a few doors down from Border Worlds Used and Slightly New Bookstore on State Street—the same place I had had a cup of coffee with Stella the first day I met her. Neither Preston or I said a word. Busted, I thought, for pounding on the door of an official Ivy-Covered Halls of Higher Learning spy van parked around the corner from our Ann Street house.

#10: The Local Section

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#9: The Dean’s List, Again

“You lost your virginity to Yarn Man?” My sister Avril was both horrified and fascinated. “Now I know you’re making it all up—about living in a house with Megaheroes and the whole bit. I don’t believe that Trent Phloog ever was Megaton Man or any other Megahero, either…and Stella, well…she’s pretty and all, but she’s hardly ravishing enough to have been the See-Thru Girl.”