3: We Can Be Heroes

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Novel.

It's late 2009.

Ben Fodor strolls into a Seattle comic book store.

The Dreaming Comics and Games.

He enters a hidden back room behind a bookcase.

When he emerges from his secret lair, he's no longer Ben Fodor.

As the comic book lovers of Seattle browse the shelves stuffed with Nightwing and Batman comics,

an actual costumed crime fighter glides past them and steps out of the shop. Phoenix Jones has a city to save.
A few months earlier, before he established his secret changing room, Phoenix was sitting in the same store chatting to the owner, Aaron, about crime fighting. At that point, he decided that he wanted to continue fighting crime,

but he realized that he needed a compelling outfit,

one that would make him stand out.

And it would take a lot of trial and error to get there.

I had a pair of jeans, no shirt, and like a ski mask.

Then there was a more ostentatious look.

We went all spandex with the Count Chocula hat.

Yeah. Clearly, this was not a permanent solution.
When I first heard about real-life superheroes, I assumed that they modeled their outfits off fictional superheroes because they thought it was cool. But there's actually a practical reason for wearing a flamboyant superhero outfit.
It distinguishes you from criminals who might also be wearing a mask. If a cop gets called out to a crime and they see a guy in a ski mask, there's a pretty good chance they'll think this is the suspect.
And as a superhero, that is something you want to avoid at all costs. So Ben needed a costume that would distinguish him from the criminals he wanted to take down.
In some ways, I feel like what happened next was the moment when Ben Fodor really became a superhero. Up until this point, he was just a guy in spandex and a goofy hat trying to stop crime.
But his next suit was when he fully embraced the superhero image. We got this replica Batman suit off the internet and like grinded the nipples offipples off, because one of those Batman Forevers.
Like, grinded the nipples off, and remember that being a conversation. And then we went up there, and I had that one for a while, and I spray-painted the gold V on it.
And so the newly-minted Phoenix Jones, with his freshly-spray-painted, nipple-less Batman Halloween costume, took to the streets of Seattle. In the comic book version of this story, Phoenix would instantly start kicking ass.
But this was not a comic book. This was real life.
The first six months was just an expose and stupid. For starters, not all of Phoenix's gadgets worked the way he hoped.
I was chasing a guy. I think he'd broken into a car.
I was like, oh, I'm coming after you. I pulled out this net gun I just bought.
And I pop it off, but I'm running at like super warp speed, right? The net gun catches wind and blows back and nets me and rolls up. And I land in the side of like a little gutter ditch right on the side of the road.
It's been raining, so there's like two inches of water in it, right? And I land belly down. And I'm like, oh my God, I'm going to drown.
So I'm like rolling up, taking breaths, and rolling up and taking breaths. At this point, Phoenix feels a pair of hands grabbing his back.
He gets forcibly turned over. And there, glaring down at him, is the criminal he'd been chasing.
Then, in a decidedly unheroic moment, lying in a ditch and ensnared in his own net, Phoenix gets mugged. He grabs my wallet, he punches me in the face, and I just lay belly up in this freaking rain ditch, and then finally the cops show up and they're like, what's going on? So I explain the story to them and they're like, oh, we have to take photos for evidence, which is lies.
It turns out crime fighting is tougher than it looks. Everything you see in a crime fighting magazine, it's the pages between the panels you have to learn to live in.
You know those little white bars to separate all the comic book panels? That's where the real crime fighting takes place. That's where all the superhero work really is.
Phoenix explained that in the comic books, you'll often see a hero on top of a tall building chasing a bad guy. The hero might be shown swinging on a rope, but what's not shown is when he set up where the rope would go.
That's the part the superhero stories leave out. But as Phoenix was figuring out the hard way, these little details are crucial.
Only weeks into his crime-fighting career, Phoenix Jones was a laughingstock, reliant on friendly members of the Seattle Police Department to fish him soaking wet out of the gutter.

This would not stand.

It was time to get serious.

From the teams at Novel and iHeartRadio, this is the Superhero Complex.

Episode 3, We can be heroes.

Hearing Phoenix tell the story of his early crime-fighting failures

made him more endearing to me.

It was nice to hear him deviate from his over-the-top proclamations

about being the only real superhero

and his claims that he is, quote,

perfect at crime-fighting.

I get the sense that his arrogance

and his insistence on being better than everyone around him has been the source of a lot of the interpersonal conflict in his superhero life. The night of the disastrous net incident was humiliating.
But one thing that you'll never see a self-respecting superhero do is quit. As soon as he'd waved goodbye to the police who'd rescued him, he dusted off his dirty, nipple-less Batman outfit and got back to work.

I stopped my first crime that same night.

I hear this girl screaming,

and back in the day,

there used to be a really big pickpocket

and, like, grab iPhone and run scenario kind of deal.

This guy's pulling on this girl's purse,

and he cuts the purse strap, right?

I see him, and I come up behind him,

and at that point in time,

I'm still at catchphrases, too.

I'm, like, really deep in the stupid,

and I roll up, and I was like, stop. What are you doing? You know, kind of like that.
It's a terrible catchphrase, by the way. Hey, I do what I can.
You know, you think you have catchphrases until the moment happens. You know, I say, stop.
The guy just turns around and just straight up stabs me right in the stomach. And I had no armor.
I was in just spandex. And all of a sudden I realized, wait a minute, this isn't a game.
You're a professional martial artist, bro. You have skills.
You are a three or four time champion at this point. There's no reason that you should be out here yelling out ridiculous corny catchphrases in spandex.
In Phoenix's telling of the events, it's almost as if he'd forgotten until this very moment that he was a trained fighter. Immediately, I switched into fight stands, two left jabs and a right hand, set the dude down, flamingoed him, which is duct taping your right hand to your left leg, so you hop around like a flamingo if you try to run.
And I'm sitting next to him, and the girl's taking off at this point. I have her purse, but I don't know where the girl is.
And all of a sudden, the brightest lights shine on me. And I'm like, what's going on? I look, and the cop, who had just got me out of the ditch like four hours earlier, he's like, no way.
He's like, Phoenix Jones, you stopped a crime. And I was like, I did.
I stopped a crime. And the girl's in the back of the car and everything, you know.
And the cop comes up and goes, hey, if you got caught by this corny motherfucker, maybe crime's not for you. With his first bad guy in handcuffs, it was time for Phoenix to level up again.
And how does an ambitious crime fighter stay one step ahead, you might be wondering? Well, trampolines, obviously. I went around the city setting areas that I would have things to make me superhero up.
And it was a calculated, planned out, orchestrated idea. And it really, really blew some of the criminals' minds.
You know, like little things, like hiding those little trampolines you can buy, you know? Like hiding them behind dumpsters and where there's fences. Phoenix told me that he set up these sort of booby traps around town.
Not traps in the sense that they ensnared criminals, but more like magic tricks that made it seem like he had superpowers. He would chase unsuspecting bad guys down Seattle's back streets.
They'd flee in horror, attempting to scramble over walls, only for Phoenix to sail majestically into their path, propelled by one of his strategically placed trampolines. I'm bouncing over the fence, flying, and just land.
The dude just stopped and just laid down. He's just like, fuck this.
It's almost like you are breaking the magician's rule and like revealing the trick, you know? Yeah, but I think that's not the trick, right? The trick is timing, being effective, and actually having the skill to do it because there's no trick to what I've done, right? I jumped over that fence, landed in front of a guy with a knife, and you surrendered. No trick.
Well, the trick, I think, is that you had gone ahead of time and put a trampoline there. Right, but it's not a trick.
See, that's the difference between being a superhero and being something that's a joke, right? It's because I'm using it as a tool to get over that fence to cut off valuable time. I'm just doing it in the mode of a superhero.
Other superheroes are doing things simply as a trick. I love the image of Phoenix leaping from a trampoline and soaring through the air to thwart criminals, but I have serious doubts about the validity of this story.
It just seems crazy to me that you would know where to place the trampolines and that they would be in precisely the right spot during what I imagine is a pretty chaotic chase through darkened streets. But some of Phoenix's other tactics seem a lot more plausible.
I used to laser point people all the time. Hilarious.
I had a laser pointer on the top of my thing and I'd just go, stop! And people would just stop. I was thinking like Buzz Lightyear, kind of like I'm setting my thing from stun to kill.
Yeah, and I would just laser pointer them. And I'd be like, don't make me immobilize you.
And they would just stop. You know what I mean? So it's like a bluff, but really, if you came after me, you would get beat up.
So it's not exactly a bluff, right? The laser's for your protection. You get closer to me, you're going to have a problem.
The laser keeps you at a safe distance from your own bad choices. Wouldn't it be nice if we all had lasers that kept us at a safe distance from our bad choices? Anyways, in between zapping bad guys with his Buzz Lightyear laser and getting caught in his own net gun and bouncing over fences on miniature trampolines, Phoenix did manage to stop a few crimes here and there.
And in the process, he attracted some followers, folks who wanted to fight alongside

him and, if needed, help him get out of whatever dumb mess he'd made for himself. Even the world's greatest superhero needs a hand sometimes.
Coming up, I meet Phoenix's original sidekicks. That's after the break.
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That's terrifying. That's fair.

Joe, Regional Vice President, PG&E.

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I would love to see that.

We're on our way.

I hope so.

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I'd found Midnight Jack on Facebook. He and another real-life superhero, Ghost, agreed to meet me at the Northgate Movie Theater in the outskirts of Seattle's city limits.
The theater was in an outdoor shopping center with a few cafes and a Subway sandwich shop. It was a sunny, clear day in August.
As I stood next to an outdoor fire pit, I noticed that ash was falling from the sky. I looked around and saw the alarm on the faces of other people around me.
It felt apocalyptic. Not unlike a scene out of a superhero movie, where everyone is confused at the falling

ash, then we all look up to see a giant explosion in the sky as two masked superheroes battle royale

in the heavens above our mortal world. But it turned out it was just a large structure fire,

about a mile away. Eventually, I smelled the smoke and saw the plume rising in the distance.
And then Midnight Jack and Ghost walked up to me and introduced themselves. They were not what I expected.
I guess I thought they would be more intimidating. This was during the pandemic, so they both had masks on.
Ghost looked like he'd just rolled out of bed. Flip-flops, gym shorts, and a t-shirt.
Midnight Jack at least looked like he'd come from the gym. Workout pants, coffee in hand.
Though I remember being surprised at how much skinnier he was than I expected. Hi.
How you doing? Good. I'm guessing you're here to look for a ghost? Yes.
Are you? Yeah. Nice to meet you, man.
Good to meet you. We decided to walk down some steps away from the shopping center to a more secluded area with a few tall apartment complexes built around a scenic bike path that ran alongside a little creek.
We could just sit maybe on that bench over there or something. As grandparents pushed strollers and couples walked hand in hand along the path, Midnight Jack and Ghost regaled me with wild stories of their past lives.
A homeless dude almost ripped Cabby's dick off one time, which is funny. It's why you don't wear fucking men's leggings to street patrol.
Duly noted, Cabby, I'd later learn, was a fellow recruit. Before becoming one of Phoenix's comrades, Midnight Jack says he started out in life as a criminal with a superhero-like ability of getting away with it.
I have no record. I had a very serious cocaine addiction, specifically crack cocaine addiction.
If you look back at my personal information, which I won't give you, I have something crazy like 172 police contacts in three years, no arrests, no convictions, which is not necessarily something you should be bragging about, but I mean, that's just what it was. Now, because Jack won't give me his real name, I'm not able to verify his claim that he has something like 172 police contacts without ever being arrested or charged with a crime.
But I will say that I find it very hard to believe that someone suffering from a severe crack addiction who claims to have been a very active criminal and gang member could have that many encounters with the police and never get caught. Maybe it's proof that real-life superheroes have remarkable superhuman abilities.
Or maybe Midnight Jack is full of shit. Yeah, I'm curious about your transition.
Like what made you stop doing crime and start fighting crime? Well, when you stop doing cocaine, you stop needing to fund cocaine. And so the need to commit crime slowly goes away.
So at the end of that, I left the crew I was with. I left the state for a year.
And when I came back, I was sober and I was looking to fill my time in a positive way, as opposed to being a criminal and a bad guy and a thug. I was 22 when I got back.
And, you know, I had done nothing really in my entire life other than crime. Jack saw a news article about a guy stopping car break-ins, wearing what he calls a rubber gimp suit.
But what we know now was actually a nipple-less Batman costume. I was like, well, shit, I got an old ski mask that I used to use and a baseball bat.
I'll just start walking around here. So then for the next six months, I walked around with a bat and a ski mask and chased off car prowlers.
And we call them baiters. It's aggressive, homeless drug addicts.
We call them baiters. And yeah, that was basically my first six months of career.

Jack was in a park at night, ski mask on, bat in hand,

when a cop stopped him and asked for his name.

I was like, uh, it's Jack.

He glanced at his watch, 11.53 p.m.

In a flash of inspiration, his superhero persona came to him. Midnight Jack, and the name stuck ever since.
Legends are born out of necessity. They're not planned out or carefully created.
Now that the legend was born, Midnight Jack decided it was time to join some like-minded heroes. He told me that he fell in with a crew of decidedly average Seattle superheroes.
All fat, out of shape, and they were so desperate to have somebody with any sort of skills or know-how whatsoever. Jack says they harassed the odd drug dealer, but they weren't about to save the world.
Then one day, he saw Phoenix Jones's crew patrolling in his part of town. He came up to me and I was like, hey man, just so you know, like this crowd down here is more mellow.
That one down there is a little rowdier. We already did two loops of the block.
Most of the cars are parked down here and this and that and that. You got all this kind of stuff.
And he looks at me and goes, who the fuck are you? And why are you telling me shit about my own patrol? How did you even get here? That was how I met Phoenix Jones. It wasn't exactly love at first sight, but it was clear to Midnight Jack that Phoenix Jones was very different from the crew he was running with at the time.
Jones was the real deal. Jack says his work ethic impressed Phoenix, but Phoenix describes their first encounter a little differently.
We found Midnight Jack on the streets. He was out patrolling in a very stupid way.
He was out there just beating up people, like, with no abandon. Just, you know what I mean? Just, like, hiding in a bush with two sticks, and then when a crime takes out, just beating someone senselessly.
So we found him, and we were like, you should join our squad and, like, not go to prison. And then from there, it just kind of built.
It might sound like an odd recruitment strategy to make a guy you found hiding in the bushes and beating people to within an inch of their life a member of your crime fighting crew. But Phoenix spotted a fellow costumed crime fighter and clearly saw something in Jack.
By the time Jack started hanging out with Phoenix, Ghost had already been patrolling with him for a while. In fact, Ghost actually knew Phoenix back when he was just Ben Fodor.
I came back from Iraq in 2009, and I found out that someone I knew from high school, Ben, was doing this crazy shit out on the streets. Oh, so you knew Ben in high school? Yeah, I did.
We ran in similar circles. I called him, I'm like, Ben, what the hell are you doing? What are you doing, man? And he invited me up to have a chat with him.
We talked about it, and I was like, well, I'm going now. You don't really have a say in that.
I really wanted to know what Ben had been like when they were growing up. But Ghost was not particularly interested in talking.
He seemed wary of me and my microphone. At one point, Midnight Jack said that Ghost had been freaking out on the way to the interview.
Jack did almost all the talking. Ghost would stand to the side, and sometimes he would wander off, like 20 or 30 yards away from us, and just stand there, watching from a distance.
I don't trust anyone. Like, sometimes I struggle with some post-traumatic stress situation, and that doesn't really help things when it comes to my trust.
But I'm just doing my best. Ghost didn't want to talk much about the old days.
Though every once in a while, Midnight Jack would launch into a story about a patrol from long ago and Ghost would jump back into the conversation. Apparently, Midnight Jack used to carry a container of baking flour to throw at people.
One time, he was about to douse a local pervert in flour when Ghost stepped in. I almost flowered this homeless dude in a wheelchair that had one leg, but he had his dick out and he was following women back from the club, jacking off, yelling aggressive sexual things.
You're talking me out of flowering that guy because he was in a wheelchair. I was going to flower him and then I was going to push him over.
I got the sense, based on this story and videos I've seen of Phoenix's patrols, that Ghost often played this role. Phoenix described him as a level-headed analyst rather than a brawler.
Ghost has a specific intel-slash-observational job, and he's amazing at that. But Ghost can't run into an altercation and take people out.
These days, Ghost doesn't go out on patrol, but he continues to fight crime. He says his efforts are now focused on catching pedophiles online by posing as a 14-year-old boy.
I set up these fake profiles, and I have at least 10 detectives that work with me. And to any pedophiles out there, it's always me.
So keep that in mind. I came away from my first encounter with real-life superheroes not really sure what to make of them.
On that first trip to Seattle, before I met Phoenix, I was skeptical of a lot of their claims, but I admired their ambition and their desire to do good in the world, even if a lot of their escapades seemed a little absurd. I also got a kick out of all the petty infighting that seemed to consume a lot of the superheroes' time.
I was only just learning what kind of person puts on a costume and takes the law into their own hands. But maybe it shouldn't have surprised me that a lot of them have big egos that can lead to personality clashes.
Despite the bickering, they did seem to have a solid system in place for organizing patrols and vetting new recruits. Sometimes when Phoenix did interviews with the media, he would give out a phone number that people could call if they wanted to get in touch with him.
That phone number went directly to Ghost. And one day he got a call from a new guy who said he was interested in joining the team.

We hit it off instantaneously because we understood that it's not a game. It's not some kind of trivial thing you could just jump into.
The guy on the other end of the phone was about to become the latest member of Phoenix's crew and one of Phoenix's best friends. He called himself El Caballero.
Of all the real-life superheroes I've hung out with,

El Caballero. Of all the real-life superheroes I've hung out with, El Caballero was the one who surprised me the most.
Before I met him, I had formed my opinion based on videos of him patrolling with Phoenix's team. And to be honest, I thought he was the most ridiculous of the bunch.
His superhero costume was really absurd. He wore a luchador mask and a purple cape vest thing with a gold embroidered dragon and bell bottoms.
He was the guy Midnight Jack had talked about, who nearly got his junk pulled off on patrol. And of course, his name was El Caballero, gentleman or knight in Spanish, which for a white guy just seemed like an odd choice.
Based on all of this, I had an idea in my head of who Cabby was. But then I actually met him.
El Caballero agreed to meet me, of all places, at a Mexican restaurant. He doesn't live in Seattle anymore, and he asked to keep his exact location a secret.
He says there are a lot of bad dudes he's apprehended over the years who he thinks are keen to track him down and enact revenge. It's peaceful where he lives now, a small town about an hour and a half outside of Seattle.
He left the city a few years ago and has settled into a quiet life with his wife. They live in a trailer park in the forest.
Cabby chose the Mexican restaurant to meet because it was close to his home. It had nothing to do with his superhero name.
I got there a little early and took a seat in a booth. Mexican pottery and colorful Spanish tile lying on the walls.
When he walked into the restaurant, I didn't recognize him. He came over to me and introduced himself, and I was immediately entranced by his eyes.
Cabby has hypnotic blue eyes that feel like tractor beams into your soul.

There's a depth to Cabby that totally surprised me.

He's a deeply spiritual person,

but also very intimidating.

He's a big guy covered in tattoos.

He had on a denim jacket over a brightly colored shirt.

His appearance hides a gentle, thoughtful side

that I hadn't expected. We sat in the restaurant for a while.
I ordered some food, and Cabby had a couple drinks and ordered a burrito to take home to his wife. Then we got some beers from the gas station and sat in my car chatting in the parking lot between the restaurant and Cabby's trailer.
One of his neighbors saw us and wandered over to see what we were up to. Hey, how you doing? Hey, brother.
Good to see you, man. We're just doing an interview.
We're doing an interview for the internet. All right, sounds good.
All it's good is get back to what you're doing. Thank you.
Cool. All right, thanks, man.
I'm just going to set my levels. You can hold it, actually.
All right, how should I talk? Is this a good level to talk in and talk when I talk? I generally talk like this and, yeah, sharing a story and telling the thing about the things of the story.

That sounds good.

Cabby has lived all over the world.

His dad was in the U.S. military and worked for NATO.

So Cabby spent part of his childhood living in Europe.

After I saw the Berlin Wall fall, I was like 11th grade, 12th grade, and I moved back to America in a small town. I'm a little bit of an artist and creative person.
And growing up in Europe and then coming to America, whatever, some of my mannerisms made people think certain things or whatever, and they made judgments on me. And there was, like, skinheads and all this other, not traditional skins, but some negative Nazi white-powered skinheads.
And, like, one threw me down the steps, and teachers were like, oh, well, it's all right, it's all good or whatever. And so I experienced that, and I was like, no one should suffer this, like, let alone myself.
And so I went from someone who was very sensitive and artistic, and still am, I believe, to someone who was trained to protect myself, and then even trained to protect other people. I tried to join the military, but I have irregular heartbeats.
Even though he couldn't become a soldier, Cabby wanted to be a protector of humanity in some way.

He got into martial arts and pursued a career in social work.

I was doing caregiving and helping developmentally disabled people and stuff like that.

Some of my clients were really intense, had violent tendencies,

and so the company I worked for sent me to them because I'd already been trained, not with them, but with other things, with martial arts and de-escalation and things like that. Cabby was also an avid reader of history.
And in his studies, he came across a template for the type of heroism that he wanted to emulate. The Knights Templar.
It's an ancient chivalric order dedicated to protecting pilgrims and widows and orphans and the downtrodden and anyone else. Although the actual Knights Templar were destroyed around the year 1307, the revivalist group that Cabi was involved with paid homage to the medieval order and dubbed Cabi their new knight.
I swore on the holy bible in front of legal witnesses and they gave me a knighthood. In fact, I have several knighthoods now, just based on the fact that I've sworn to protect humans.
Cabby took his new role as a protector of humanity very seriously. He felt a deep sense of honor and duty as a member of this historic order.
I felt like I wouldn't be living up to these high honors that these people gave me if I didn't do something more noble with my skills.

I told Jones, I'm like,

hey, it's cool you have your high school buddies,

but let's bring on some real heavy hitters.

It was time for Phoenix Jones

and the Rain City superheroes to raise the bar.

So for a new generation of aspiring recruits,

things were about to get competitive.

After the break, we sort the superheroes from the sidekicks. Divorce can leave you feeling isolated, like you're stuck on an island with no direction.
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PG&E asked customers about their biggest concerns so we could address them one by one. That's terrifying.
That's fair. Joe, Regional Vice President, PG&E.
We have to run the business in a way that keeps people safe, but it starts driving costs down. I would love to see that.
We're on our way. I hope so.
PG&E electricity rates are now lower than they were last year.

Hear what other customers have to say and what PG&E is doing about it at pge.com slash open dash lines. and none of it worked.
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There's a type of soil in Mississippi called Yazoo clay. It's thick, burnt orange, and it's got a reputation.
It's terrible, terrible dirt. Yazoo clay eats everything, so things that get buried there tend to stay buried.
Until they're not. In 2012, construction crews at Mississippi's biggest hospital made a shocking discovery.
7,000 bodies out there or more. All former patients of the old state asylum.
And nobody knew they were there. It was my family's mystery.
But in this corner of the South, it's not just the soil that keeps secrets. Nobody talks about it.
Nobody has any information. When you peel back the layers of Mississippi's Yazoo Clay, nothing's ever as simple as you think.
The story is much more complicated and nuanced than that. I'm Larison Campbell.
Listen to Under Yazoo Clay on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever cheese for $1.97 each with digital coupon limit for items. Visit safeway.com or head in store for more deals.
Over the first couple of years of his superhero career, Phoenix Jones had built a ragtag crime-fighting posse through a bit of luck and some chance encounters with like-minded folks. This motley crew ultimately became the Rain City Superhero Movement, an organization with a mission to strike fear into the heart of Seattle's criminal underworld.
If Phoenix really wanted to create the Avengers-style supergroup of his dreams, he couldn't just let anyone in. The movement needed some professionals.
Like Ghost, James Marks is a veteran. He'd worked in aviation mission planning for the Army and had served in Iraq.
After he got out of the service, James was surfing the internet when he came across some curious posts about a guy who claimed to be a real-life superhero. His first thought was, oh, come on, give me a break.
I suspect his second thought was, is that a nipple-less Batman costume? But that's more of a guess. I remember seeing online a couple posts and screenshots of some weirdo named Phoenix Jones.
And it just seemed a little larger-than-life personality. And I thought, it's like, what kind of kook is this? James was skeptical, but intrigued.
So when he heard the superheroes of Seattle were holding an event in a bar to meet the public, he showed up. My expectations were seeing a bunch of basement-dwelling cosplay nerds that put down their dice for a minute to go patrol the streets or something.
And it was nothing like I'd expected. A lot of the superheroes James met that day had families and full-time jobs.
They didn't seem delusional. They seemed like they genuinely wanted to help people.
After the meetup, James couldn't get the idea out of his head. He'd given up his job in the military, but he missed the feeling of being on a team, united behind a cause.
I shot an email to Phoenix Jones. He left his email on the Facebook post.
I I'm like, okay. I'm wondering, you know, what's the process like? How does this work? You know, if someone might be interested in joining something like this.
And he responded right away in his famous caps-locked fashion. Meet us at Second and Jackson on Tuesday morning at midnight and wear something blue.
Phoenix out. So in the early hours of the following Tuesday, James waited on the street corner.
I'm wearing kind of like a black hoodie and tactical cargo pants and have this blue sash, kind of a scarf. I showed up there and found out there's like eight other people also waiting around, kind of dressed in various dark garb, each with the individual color.
There was green, there was orange, there was me, blue, there was black, there was yellow. The superhero recruits eyed each other apprehensively.
Nobody said much. A couple other people started showing up that were very much decked out in what looked like kind of superhero gear.
Almost costumes. One looked like a Mexican wrestler.
There was one guy who looked

like Spider-Man, kind of. That was Midnight Jack.
Eventually, in his very famous late fashion,

Phoenix Jones showed up and greeted all of us. And turns out it was tryouts.

Superhero tryouts. If you want to join the gang, you've got to prove yourself.
Phoenix was in his full suit and body armor. And acting like his usual cocky self.
He's a very, very charismatic, affable guy. Clearly very smart.
Just genius, smart, and a smile that could crack a camera lens. He could just leap into any room and be the center of attention and the star of the show.
Before the rookies got the chance to prove themselves to their magnetic leader, there was a first round they had to pass. They took us around the corner one at a time.
Put your name, hold up your ID, pull down your mask, then keep it up, you know, be anonymous in this. But, okay, now what's your superpower? And, yeah, absolutely.
And I just kind of sat there and blinked a few times. I didn't think of that.
He's like, it's okay, it's all right, that's the right answer. We boot anyone who thinks they can fly immediately.
I'm like, all right, okay. I was like, all right, you're good to go.
And, you know, one of the time, they let everyone else back. And at least one person walked away very dejected, back to their car and drove off.
According to James, this part of the vetting process was essential. There had been one guy before my time, apparently went by the name The Platypus, whose superpower was poison water balloons or something, which turned out to be full of pee.
So suffice to say, this line of volunteer work and activism draws a very particular crowd. Once the Rain City superheroes were satisfied that the new recruits were more or less sane, it was time for the real test, their first patrol.
Phoenix Jones had a very like, all right, everyone follow me, do what I do. Don't hurt anybody, just follow my lead.
Go! He just started running and everyone's staring, blinking at each other. Okay, well, hold up.
With the new recruits trailing in his wake, Phoenix led the patrol squad to Pioneer Square, an old red-brick neighborhood in the city's downtown area. For a Tuesday, it was a busy night.
People from the bars were spilling out onto the streets, and the motley crew of wannabe superheroes attracted a lot of attention. Just a lot of cars honking as they drove by or, you know, waving at people.
A couple of other security guards around parking lots. Hey, PJ, what's up? It was like everyone seemed to know this guy.
Phoenix was in his element. He must have stopped for 30 photo ops by the time we made it around the block.
All the women, so many women, would want selfies with him or take pictures. Or he did this thing where he'd carry women like a bride to get a picture.
I mean, that was a workout in itself. But it wasn't just a photo op.
The recruits got to see some action, too. There was a couple people who had clearly gotten kicked out of a club but weren't leaving yet, clearly being too intoxicated.
And one of the telltale signs that shit's about to go down is you see someone pull out their shirt. They're like, oh, shit, shirtless mail, shirtless mail.
Phoenix leapt into the middle of the fray. We just kind of stood back and watched him get in there and talk people down.
He pulled out pepper spray at one point, didn't deploy, but just waited in faces, you know, back up or else you're going to get it. A full year of patrolling later, James and three other battle-hardened recruits who'd been at the tryouts were inducted as full team members

of the Rain City Superheroes.

And by this time,

James had a new superhero name.

Being a history nerd

and loving a lot of things in Latin,

I kind of went down the path of the Roman army

and chose Evocatus.

It means veteran in Latin

and usually just got chopped down to Evo for short. Evo is the one I told you about before, who wears a full-face helmet a bit like Daft Punk and motorcycle leathers with thick protective gloves.
With a team that now included trained warriors like Evo, the Rain City superheroes were ready to take Seattle by storm. Phoenix even had his girlfriend along for the ride, Purple Rain.
Purple focused mainly on supporting victims of domestic violence. El Caballero remembers the heyday of the Rain City superheroes well.
We were really hitting the pavement. We were really doing some stuff from felons who had stabbed people, hardcore drug dealers like the cocaine and the cartel stuff to identity thieves.
Like, we'd hit the ground running. The team held practices in the middle of the night at Gasworks Park.
It's on the shores of Lake Union, a freshwater lake in the middle of Seattle. The rusting remains of an old gas plant still stand there.
Late at night, by the metal ruins, the superheroes would trade skills. Phoenix taught them MMA moves, and Evo taught knife disarms and other techniques he'd picked up in the military.
And these turned out to be necessary. According to Midnight Jack, things could get pretty gnarly out on patrol.
We lived a crazy-ass life. We were going to work with fucking bruises and black eyes from fistfights, broken thumbs, taped up toes, washing the mace off your body at the end of a long night till you can get two hours sleep and go in and stock shelves at a Target.
That's the kind of lives that we lived. The stakes were high.
They had to look out for each other. Like Phoenix says, this wasn't a game.
I ended up getting stabbed, and Cabby was there. And he's like, oh, it's all good, man.
Don't even stress about that. So we're talking, and we're...
Don't even stress about getting stabbed? Oh, yeah. He's like, everything's fine.
We're talking around our way to the car. We're driving back to the hospital or whatever, right? And before I get in, I like can't stop tearing up, right? And I'm like, man, I can't get in the hospital like this.
Like there's cameras. People might see it.
We are tearing up like. Oh, I can't stop crying because I got stabbed.
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
I just can't stop and get my shit together. And I wake up and I'm in the hospital bed.
And I'm like, what happened? Gabby's like, don't worry, boss, I choked you out. What? I was like, thanks, man, you're a genius.
Choking your buddy unconscious so he doesn't freak out after getting stabbed, that's true friendship. And it's just as well because, as you might have gathered, Phoenix has a lot of stabbing stories.
He got the chance to repay Cabby on another patrol in Belltown. El Caballero and I see this person, and the guy's got a knife, and he's yelling at this guy and this girl.
And Cabby runs in, and the guy turns around and reaches out and grabs El Caballero straight in the crotch and starts grabbing his junk. Cabby, out of instinct, grabs the guy's arm, right? So the guy's arm's kind of grabbing his junk like that, and he's got his arm around it like this, and they're going like this back and forth on the side of the street.
And then I come through, and I put the guy down, and Cabby steps back, and he's like, he's holding himself, and he goes, you know what, man, I forgive you. So the guy who was grabbing his nuts? Yeah.
Wow. It was just one of those moments, it looked like it was going to get his junk pulled off.
It was hilarious. I love Cabby that way.

Until I met Cabby,

I never imagined that superhero work

would put your groin in so many high-risk situations.

Anyway, flash forward to today.

Of the individuals who made up

the Rain City superhero movement

in 2011 and 2012,

none of them are on speaking terms

with Phoenix Jones.

Literally, not one. We'll get into the drama of all that fallout later, but despite the fracture of the group, speaking to me in 2021, it was clear that they missed each other.
Just kind of the calm, cool demeanor that Jones had at that time, where it was like, I'm gonna take care of business and fight some crime, but I'm not going to be scared about it. That was always impressive with me.
Cabby is this mix of skilled negotiator, right, and tactical fighter. He's a tactical monster.
So he'll come in and just do something and hit somebody one time or take them down the right way, and by the time they've got something to do, they're in the wrong position. I can't tell you enough about that guy.
When you're risking your lives together, you get close. And Evo got to know the rest of the team particularly well.
A lot of the people on the team would just kind of naturally talk to me because I kind of accidentally wound up as like the entire HR department. Evo had many roles in the Rain City superhero movement.
Turns out being a superhero comes with a lot of admin. In addition to running Phoenix's social media, filling out endless paperwork, and managing the patrol schedule, Evo was also the Rain City superhero's main chauffeur.
I would leave up to an hour and a half early before a patrol to start picking up team members, and I was driving a tiny Ford Focus at the time, and I would have it packed like a clown car full of these superheroes who couldn't drive.

So I would be listening for, you know,

two to three hours a night of these people

just kind of venting and unwinding

about everything going on in their personal lives

before we hit the street and put on the mask.

If there's one thing I've learned in my time

in the world of real-life superheroes,

it's that they have a lot of car trouble.

Phoenix seems to lurch from one car crisis to the next, both with me and with his former crew members. Over the course of many, many carpools with Phoenix, Evo began to notice a pattern that made him uneasy.
I guess one of the unintended consequences of me driving him absolutely everywhere is that he would tell me these stories about, you know, what's going on, or, oh my god, you won't believe what she told me this time, or something like that. But he tells this story to so many people that he kind of forgets who he's already told.
Phoenix would reel off stories to people on the phone as they cruised around in Evo's car. Evo would also drive Phoenix to speaking engagements at summer camps and colleges where he'd tell wild tales of his crime-fighting capers.
Evo started noticing that the details in these familiar stories started shifting. He would just hop on his phone and, you know, start telling different team members different versions of the same story as well, seemingly kind of forgetting like I'm in the car or that I've already heard this.
As well as having concerns about the truth of Phoenix's claims, Evo was starting to have doubts about Phoenix's leadership style. Behind the scenes, it wasn't very communicative.
If it wasn't like on stage or if it was in front of a crowd or anything like that, he didn't talk much or he didn't tell a lot of people like what was going on or what's the next step. It's kind of like, hey, if you want to be in this, you got to follow my every word and lead.
In a team full of aspiring superheroes, there was always going to be some friction. But Evo says things got particularly bad between Phoenix and Midnight Jack.
They would butt heads like an old married couple and just end up getting in yelling fights and more than one patrol, you know, one would just say, fuck it, I'm out. And they would just leave the patrol, leaving a bunch of people in line, kind of like, uh, what? What did we do? When I spoke to him, Phoenix didn't deny that there'd been clashes.
But to him, that misses the point. Every one of those guys didn't know shit before they met me, and I taught every single one of them how to fight crime.
So people can kind of say what they will from personality conflicts, but when it comes to just facts, half of those guys would be nowhere without my crime fighting. Any group of people is going to have its personality conflicts.
And for a group like the Rain City Superheroes, with its larger-than-life personalities, undergirded by a sense of righteousness, I'm sure it was even harder to keep everyone in agreement. And then throw in the high-stakes nature of their mission, the possibility of death or injury, and top it off with an arrogant, charismatic leader.
And it's a wonder they were able to work together at all. But somehow, they did it.
And maybe they could have kept at it. But then they started to get attention.
First from the citizens of Seattle, then the local and eventually national news media. Phoenix and his gang were about to hit the big time.
And the fragile alliance they had with each other would finally start to buckle under the weight

of their growing fame.

That's coming up next time. The Superhero Complex is hosted and written by me, David Weinberg,

and reported by me, Amalia Sortland, and Caroline Thornham.

Production from Amalia Sortland and Caroline Thornham.

Sean Glenn, Max O'Brien, and David Waters are executive producers fact-checking by Andrew Schwartz production management from Cherie Houston, Frankie Taylor, and Charlotte Wolfe sound design, mixing, and scoring by Nicholas Alexander and Daniel Kempson music supervision by Nicholas Alexander and David Waters original Original music is composed by Paul Hausden.

Special thanks to Peter Tangen, Willard Foxton, Matt O'Mara, Katrina Norvell, Beth Ann Macaluso,

Oren Rosenbaum, Shelby Schenkman, and all the team at UTA.

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In Mississippi, Yazoo Clay keeps secrets. 7,000 bodies out there or more.
A forgotten asylum cemetery. It was my family's mystery.
Shame, guilt, propriety. Something keeps it all buried deep until it's not.
I'm Larison Campbell, and this is Under Yazoo Clay.

Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.