#87: Those Chosen Few

In the parking lot outside the Big Yard, I spotted my father, Clyde Phloog; although he was in his civilian form and not his default Silver Age Megaton Man stature, he still seemed a head taller than everyone in the crowd. He was dressed in a sharp business suit and was snapping away with a self-developing film camera as Stella and I approached, triumphant, in our caps and gowns, clutching the scrolled mock-sheepskins we’d received on the stage.

#83: The Tragic Realization of Temporal-Dimensional Travel

Before I could clamber to my feet, two of the Megaton Mice had grabbed Kozmik Kat by the whiskers and were flinging him around the clearing.
        “Hey, you guys! Cut that out!” I shouted. But the other two had clamped onto my ankles. For their size, they were strong. “Ouch! That hurts!
        I shook them off; they went rolling toward the rubble pile. But Koz wasn’t faring as well. “Guys! I’m a different person now!” he cried, as one twirled him by his tail. “I would never chomp your brother today—really! He even tasted lousy, compared to other mice. I haven’t touched one since!”

#82: My Excellent Adventure with Kozmik Kat

I had often wondered what caused readers of popular fantastic fiction to spend as much time, if not more, poring over the writings of Emil Reardon Ryerson, Grover Edwin Honath, and Henry Potsdam Lipschitz, and memorizing shelves of information of completely made-up worlds like Whagool or the Daemonic Ravines of New Hampshire, or the Antediluvian Age, and yet be unwilling to put the same energy into public school, and later a master’s degree in history, philosophy, or French Medieval lit?

#57: The Revelation from Missouri

I should probably mention that in my student days, especially when I wore my civilian clothes over my Ms. Megaton Man uniform, I was never anything to look at. I dressed down in the cooler months, September through May in Detroit. I wore jeans that were neither excessively baggy nor excessively tight; a baseball jersey, extra-large T-shirt, sweater, or school sweatshirt, depending on the weather; and a hoody, windbreaker, or baseball jacket over that. In really cold weather, I had a winter coat—kind of a weatherproof parka with a fake-fur hood. Oh, and I got an old army jacket just for kicks. I seldom wore makeup during the day, and I never wore my wavy, burgundy hair any special way other than sometimes pulled back in a ponytail. It wasn’t that I was necessarily going for the lesbian look—I never went in for plaid shirts and work boots, the de rigueur uniform of the brush-cut bull dyke; I just never wanted to attract sexual attention to myself when I was hoofing between my classes at the Arbor State Extension and Warren Woodward University campus. In a harsh city like Detroit, it seemed an eminently practical decision.

#43: The Arms of Krupp

I didn’t know how to express my concerns to Trent: that we were all in grave danger, civilian and megahero alike; that malevolent scientists had split the universe apart, then recombined it, and might be trying to split it apart yet again; or that the only thing holding this crazy Everything-but-the-Kitchen Sinkverse together at the moment might be the two-year old offspring of Megaton Man and the See-Thru Girl, who at that very moment was busy chasing squirrels with a squirt gun in Broadway Park in Ann Arbor.

#42: The Theoretical Unraveling of the Kitchen Sinkverse

Avie and I immediately wanted to whisk our newfound grandmother up Woodward Avenue to Eight Mile to reunite with our Mama, who hadn’t seen her mother in over forty years. But Grandma said she had to make an urgent phone call first. Seedy used my dial-up rotary phone and Avie, Charles, and I—and Audrey, who was still dressed in my Ms. Megaton Man uniform—crowded into the tiny kitchen of my garret apartment to give Grandma some privacy. I had a feeling it was some kind of official scientific business.

#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.