#18: Origin Secrets

Kozmik Kat and I couldn’t agree whether he was now my sidekick or I was his—just in case we were ever officially called into action for some mission. We didn’t come to blows over this, since it was mostly hypothetical; as soon as the fall semester started, I planned to put my Quarantinium-Quelluminum mesh-fiber Ms. Megaton Man uniform in its garment bag and consign it to the back of the closet. The hard part was learning to put my cape into hibernation, which I could only do through some complex instructions on my touch-screen visor. But before I could do that, I still had one personal mission of my own to perform.

#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.”

#8: A Night at the Hospital, a Day in the Funny Papers

It was late when the doctor finally spoke to me and Pammy in the waiting room. She told us what Stella had experienced were known as false contractions; she hadn’t gone into labor yet; her membrane hadn’t even ruptured. In other words, her water hadn’t broken. It might still be another seventy-two hours before she went into real labor. The way Stella had been overdoing things lately, this came as no surprise. The stress and strain she’d put herself under to get ahead before she’d have to take time off from school had brought this on, I guessed. Not to mention Trent Phloog reverting to Megaton Man—the father of her child—again, thanks to Secret Agent Preston Percy’s booster shot. Still, the doctor said they wanted to keep her overnight, just in case.

#7: The Mysterious Preston Percy

It was the last Saturday in March, just a few days before Stella was to go into the hospital—to give birth to the love child of Megaton Man—when again Daddy’s pickup rolled into the driveway. I heard the honk from upstairs. Only this time it wasn’t carrying a load of gravel, or Daddy; when I got to the front porch, Avril was letting down the tailgate. There was something big and boxy under the blanket.

#6: Civilian Trent

If Trent Phloog was Megaton Man, or used to be, he’d clearly undergone a radical change of heart. Instead of the cavalier Megahero who had spurned Stella’s pursuit of a relationship back in Megatropolis, he was now a normal, mild-mannered Civilian—and an underemployed autodidact—in Ann Arbor who now wanted desperately to play a part in his baby-mama’s life—any part at all.

#5: Calling Occupants (of Interplanetary Craft)

Pedestrians were already running in the opposite direction, away from Central Park, on the sidewalks and between the traffic that had ground to a halt on Madison Avenue. The cabbie pounded the steering wheel: “There’s no respect for the working man!” He cursed UFOs as well as all Megaheroes.

#4: Spring Break

The spring semester began much as the fall semester had ended, for me at least; I saw little but the insides of libraries and classrooms and study carrels. Except that I now came home to housemates who also knew little but school work. Pammy had new students to grade and Stella had new teachers, and each of us had our respective college work cut out for us. There was little enough time for my housemates to dwell upon the world of Megaheroes they’d left behind in distant Megatropolis, let alone for me to give it much thought.

#3: Me and Sue Caza!

Back in Detroit, Mama James made the usual turkey feast with all the fixings—enough for an army should they drop by to watch football with Daddy. But it was just them and me and my sister Avril—who was still in high school and lived at home—for Thanksgiving.
     “I’m moving out of the dorms,” I announced, right after the blessing. This went over about as well as if I had suddenly revealed some entirely unforeseen sexual orientation.

#2: Need to Know

Even though she claimed to be fed up with mad science and Megaheroics, listening to Stella’s story all afternoon made me feel like even more of a boring non-entity than I did before. But I was sufficiently curious about her past life as the See-Thru Girl I might have trudged north to the second-floor comic book shop to find out more on the subject—I’m such a nerd—even though I knew the Megaheroes in comic books were mostly made up. And this girl—with a body that didn’t stop—was not made up.

#1: Meet Stella Starlight!

Volume I: Ann Street

My name’s Clarissa James—although you may know me better as Ms. Megaton Man, if you’ve ever heard of me at all. If you haven’t, that’s all right; I’m not one of the better-known megaheroes out there. But if you happen to have read the book Megasomething, you’re at least familiar with a highly-fictionalized version of me—and a few of my more sensational friends.

Comics-Haters Beware: MsMM is an SJW!

One of the more perverse trends of our time has been the emergence of the thuggish Comics-Hate, a group of disgruntled former mainstream superhero writers and artists whose fifteen minutes of perpetuating corporate-owned trademarks expired before they wanted it to (too bad, too - now we'll never get to see mainstream characters beating up migrant caravans of homeless refugees fleeing persecution at the southern border or extinguishing peaceful candlelight vigils in front of Jefferson's Rotunda on the campus of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville).

Social justice? No, Ms. Megaton Man just likes shattering skeletons!
™ and © Don Simpson 2018, all rights reserved.

Wrongfully attributing the short life-expectancy of their careers to inexorable demographic trends, Comics-Hate's favorite target for bullying has been those they deem "Social Justice Warriors"  - a tag that forms the conveniently anti-Semitic-sounding acronym "SJW" - a pejorative they apply indiscriminately to anyone who wants comics to move into the twenty-first century and reflect the world we live in. Their faith in the free market is such that they announce boycotts and issue threats of violence to those who've "adulterated" their friendly little hobby.

Clarissa James, who has been around since 1985 (Megaton Man #4, to be exact), has something to say to the Death-Zombies of Comics-Hate: we have already displaced you. You are completely superfluous; please curl up under the rock you crawled out from under (or return to your parents' basement).
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Be a Social Justice Warrior and read the YA prose Ms. Megaton Man™ Maxi-Series! New oppression-bashing chapter each week!
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All characters, character names, likenesses, words and pictures are ™ and © Don Simpson 2020, all rights reserved.