OMGJeremy

Guide To Being A Hero

You should be an action hero. I’m not fucking with you. You should be an action hero right now, seriously, because people love heroes and nobody loves you. People dedicate zip codes to heroes. Nobody loves you. People repeat ad infinitum any words that slip out of action heroes’ mouths and try to do it in their voices and then they elect them to public office because they love heroes. Nobody loves you. Action heroes are like eight pimps, Barry White and a bucket of firemen to the ladies. Nobody loves you.

I’m coming through, yes? Heroes have grim, memorable names and lead exciting lives that are chronicled in all mediums and you are ugly, boring and worthless but we can change that. Nobody is a lost cause. You can be special, too. Don’t you want to be special? Really, truly special? Can you imagine any life more pure, more perfect and more insatiably beloved of the people than that of an action hero?

Be a hero. Cure all your problems before you even come up with a catchy name. Bad acne? Put on a mask and be all dramatic about it. Fat and stinky? Wear armor. Problems with women? Beat a hooker. Tiny dick? Giant gun. It never ends. Every part of your body and your psyche can and will be improved one hundred thousand percent just by the simple act of brooding on top of a gargoyle in the rain. There is no reason not to quit your meaningless, dead-end jobs and come up with a gimmick and a catch phrase in the next five minutes. None. You get to be loved and you get to do whatever you want and that right there is something no other occupation can boast.

You will be encouraged to dig up every last angry little fantasy of senseless brutality and act them out in public and you will be applauded when you do. You could walk around with a tractor-sized gun in each hand, scream “I AM MADE OF JUSTICE™” before firing bullets the size of fists into the faces of three hundred people and you would be handed a medal from the President instead of locked away for the rest of your life. Loved and respected, lusted after by all women and you get to break anything you want.

You want to be an action hero.

And I will tell you how.

Many people foolishly assume that success in the merchandising kit-eat-focus group world of the action hero is based wholly on martial skill, the ability to shoot straight and keen detective skills. See, fuck that. You want to be a success, I can tell you how to be a success right now and you don’t have to know the first goddamned thing about throwing a punch or advanced forensic pathology. Three words: image, image, image. Nobody gives a flying fuck about anything but image so that’s all you need. Everything else falls into place.

Because the action hero is invincible. He’s untouchable, unimaginably mighty and any wound he takes will only enhance his appearance. Shoot wherever you want, every bullet will hit. Flail like a spastic monkey, your enemies will fall as wheat before your mighty feet for you are no ordinary man. You are a hero. Not even death will be able to hold you, unless you happen to be one of those boring ones with stupid names and dipshit gimmicks dressed in ridiculous, overblown costumes with dialogue that is funny in the sad way. Image. Image is everything and image is easy. It’s easy.

First, you need to decide what sort of hero you want to be. There are four choices and you’re going to want to choose carefully, because everything else comes from this decision.

SUPER HERO

Also known as “the whole shebang,” becoming a super hero will allow you to act out every single twisted fantasy your stunted emotions have blessed you with at once by dressing in spandex, putting on a mask and flying over cities shooting people with your laser eyes. By far the most lucrative choice, as every single part of you, your mindset, clothing and vocabulary is eminently marketable. Thought having your picture in your local newspaper was a trip? Try having a movie, a video game, a television program, a series of toys, a comic book and a newspaper strip dedicated to your face.

Possibly the best part about this choice is the job itself because you get to break anything you want, whenever you want, for whatever reason and not have to pay a dime for it. Hurl people through plate glass, hit stuff with cars, throw tanks into buildings, it’s okay! Nobody’s gonna ask the beloved super hero to pick up the tab for that measly little twelve-story office building that got knocked down when you were chasing a purse snatcher, fuck no.

There is a downside, however, to the idyllic life of the super hero. There’s this kinda complex balancing act that goes on here, lemme see if I can explain it. See, a super hero cannot exist for long without a super villain, or else you have a guy who can lift a mountain fighting common thugs and it gets old. When it gets old it gets forgotten. Super villains are drawn to heroes depending on image and compatibility, and a hero with a brilliant, awe-inspiring and religiously memorable image will draw more villains, which in turn will draw more heroes – ones with lesser images – who will then sponge off the ‘alpha hero’s’ enemies until they draw more villains of their own. This draws more heroes, which draws more villains.

Soon you have a city with a 66% super hero/villain population and it’s just getting worse and worse. You’ll have random packs of super heroes and super villains waging all-out war with each other in the streets which triggers massive crossovers involving multiple packs which in turn will attract the attention of a Mysterious Cosmic Entity and his good friend Forces Beyond Your Understanding and the next thing you know, BAM. Continuity shift.

Say goodbye to everything you ever thought you know about yourself, your powers, your past or what fucking version of which planet you’re on. It’s like someone’s hit the universal reset button and nobody can remember how it happened and why you’re suddenly a girl. And say goodbye to your social life. Sorry honey, no wild face sex for us tonight, Professor Oddlore Black has opened the Sucking Vortex of Allahaxstarus and the streets are crawling with mutant, demonic versions of me and the guys. Don’t wait up.

COSTUMED AVENGER

Some say this option is for people who don’t have super powers but still like to wear spandex and kick people in the face, and to this I say bullshit. Everybody knows how to get super powers, and if you don’t you’re an idiot and that’s all there is to it. No, the costumed avenger subset is for the bolder, considerably more violent sorts who get one major edge over the super hero, and that edge is derived from their very lack of actual powers.

Anyone can combat evil if their skin is bulletproof. A man with nuclear rays that fire from his hands does not need to be courageous in order to charge headlong at thirty-eight armed men. But the guy people REALLY respect, the guy who every teenager wants to be and every woman wants to fuck is the hard-as-nails badass motherfucker who takes down entire criminal organizations by himself with no super powers whatsoever.

That’s impressive and it means you can be considerably lazier. Nobody will applaud Captain Forever for catching a mugger, the guy can rearrange time with his brain, what the fuck’s he doing subduing a mugger? But the Black Mongoose, the mysterious masked man of mayhem with nothing but his unbreakable will as a shield against the endless forces of evil, that motherfucker could do nothing but beat up common hoodlums all day long and people would call him rock star.

Plus, you get to be the moodiest bitch on earth. No shit. Brood for hours in stunning poses on the sides of buildings and nobody will call the cops on you. Snap and torture a junkie to death with bullets, people with gasp and say, “That is one fractured man, tormented by demons of the most dire and foul sort. How incredibly sexy is that?” Let a vicious psychopath get away scot-free with the vow that, ‘I will find him again.. SOME DAY,’ and then turn around and break a purse-snatcher’s legs. Plus, you get to have the word “the” permanently affixed to the front of your name. You’re not just Masked Drifter, no. You are THE Masked Drifter. Ask Powersmash the last time anyone called him THE Powersmash the next time he teases you about your realistic physical abilities.

And finally, the lack of powers also enables you to be exactly as physically violent as you like. It’s not like you could subdue the terrorists with your mind now, is it? Restraint is for super heroes, and you don’t have any powers. Lacking any other option, you’re simply ~forced~ to batter people into bloody heaps of flesh. After all, they needed to be taught a lesson about the errors of their ways and there’s no lesson like a steel-toe boot in the teeth. Commit acts that would get police officers lynched by other police officers and feel that warm praise flow like blood in your veins.

The main downside is that costumed avengers only rarely attract super villains. No, instead, they draw criminal masterminds – who aren’t so bad, as they tend to be both reasonable and comfortably predictable – and homicidal psychotics who will, if you’ll pardon the play on words, drive you out of your fucking mind. Seriously. If you thought continuity shifts were a pain in the ass, try a raving psychopath with apparently limitless wealth who has affixed his identity to yours and follows you around, killing everybody you know and practically screaming LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME with piles upon piles of bodies and becoming so goddamned popular you’re never allowed to actually kill him.

On the other hand, you can carry as many guns as you like in public, every day.

ACTION HERO

While all of these heroes are ‘action heroes,’ only the action hero subset actually carries that title. Action heroes are basically costumed avengers without masks. They still wear a costume, oh absolutely, as I’ve said; a hero is nothing without image – but their costumes are more, shall we say, ‘down to earth.’ Trade the flashy spandex for a leather jacket and a pair of sunglasses. Put down the mask and put on a leather trenchcoat and a pair of sunglasses. No need for a cape, you have a personally-styled military uniform and a pair of sunglasses.

Action heroes, like costumed avengers, are only expected to take on normal human beings and action heroes, like costumed avengers, are expected to do it in a grotesquely violent manner. Break bones like Popsicle sticks, shatter faces with many bullets, set fire to inhabited buildings and do it all with the complicit acknowledgement of whatever secret government military law enforcement strike team you work for. Fuck, you could even buy a fake badge and call yourself a ‘private investigator’ and you’ll still get all that warm, juicy love you lust for.

Action heroes have one major drawback, (which can actually turn out to be a boon) and that is the lack of a ‘secret identity.’ No masks. The flashy, marketable name you go by is the one you will always go by. Your life as a hero and your private life will be permanently connected by that one single name, and that means you’ll be expected to be ‘in character’ one hundred percent of the time. Dr. Impressive can take off his mask and be plain old John Pajvolski whenever he likes, he can hide away and ignore the tides of villainy, keep a normal job and take a vacation as a normal human being, but the action hero has no such option. At work, you’ll be John Steele and at home you’ll be John Steele, and that means kiss your family, your friends and everybody you’ve ever spoken to goodbye, as they’ll all be filled with bullets fired by bad people who want to get your attention. This can actually work out in your favor, as nothing makes a man look dead-hard and grimly awesome than a permanent scowl and a shopping list of dead girlfriends. Plus, the absence of a mask makes you appear to be even more ‘human,’ meaning you’ll receive more vagina than you will know what to do with.

Plus, every woman you have sex with will get shot in the face soon after, which means no commitments!

KUNG FU HERO

One further step towards humanity and you have the final subset of the action hero, one who supposedly has no super powers and yet is capable of feats far beyond the abilities of any living mortal, with a simple costume, a convoluted or hard-to-pronounce name and most importantly, no guns. The kung fu hero is a soft-spoken badass who stabs his fingers into the brains of evil-doers everywhere on his endless road to vengeance for the death of his master, his father, his brother or some guy he met on the subway one time.

The image of the kung fu hero is the trickiest of all, as costumes, masks or even flashy names are not a prerequisite and may just bog him down. No, the kung fu hero’s image revolves wholly around the style and name of the martial arts he uses to break people into pieces. To be fair, the style itself isn’t all that important, so long as it’s full of unnecessary movements and flashy poses that little kids will imitate when they pretend to be you. More importantly is the name you give to your personal ‘savage dance’ – it must be complex, awe-inspiring and contain at least two of the following words: Flying, Leaping, Vengeful, Fearless, Invincible, Mountain, Iron, Dragon, Tiger, Leopard, Fist.

And that’s all there is to it, really. Just pick two or three of those words and stick them together in any order, contort your body into a pose that would look hilarious on anyone else and get ready to kick people very, very hard over and over and over again. The kung fu hero’s life is by far the easiest – though possibly the most strenuous – as there’s no real detective work to be done. All you have to do is walk around and kick people in the head, and eventually you’ll sort of run into the villainous scum you’ve been ‘looking’ for.

The strenuous part comes from the fact that all the kung fu hero ever does any given minute of any given day is kick people in the head. Grandiose, impeccably staged fights will follow you no matter where you go or what you do. It’s as if the kung fu hero emanates some sort of magic kung fu vibes that will instantly transform every single human being around them at any given time into a low-rent, easily-defeated hostile kung-fu master. You won’t even be able to go to the bathroom without the guy in the next stall flipping out about a lack of toilet paper, breaking down the walls and forcing you to kick him in the head. A quiet evening at a restaurant will end with every living, breathing person in a five-hundred-foot radius charging at you while you fend them off with your salad and kick them all in the head. It can get a little tiresome.

This is the best choice for those of you who prefer cutting or bludgeoning people to death rather than shooting them. Pick a sword or a knife or a staff or some sort of complicated killing tool that involves chains, hooks and blocks of wood, give it a fancy, nonsensical name like Black Falcon Dream or Iron Lotus Petal or Super Happy Fun Meathook and you’re set.

And you don’t even need to speak English!

IMAGE 101

Now that you’ve chosen what style of action hero you will become by the time you finish this article, it’s time to get down to brass tacks and come up with your image – unless you’ve chosen to be a kung fu hero, in which case all you need now is a pair of black pajamas and you’re all set to go.

First you’ll need to choose a name.

Those of you with super powers have it easy right here, as your name can be a simple self-descriptor. Can you fly? Name yourself after a bird. Are you made of lasers? Good to meet you, Living Laser. Have you the powers of an animal? Name yourself for it. Easy, easy, easy. The rest of you may actually have to think.

Colors are great! Nothing spells ‘badass’ like using a color as an adjective. Black Falcon, Blue Blazer, Red Menace, it’s all good and it’s all good for you. Stay away from colors with negative connotations or complicated patterns, as there is nothing but laughter waiting for Yellow Justice and his sidekick, the Paisley Weasel. Metals are fine, too, provided you stick with metals that are used in things that kill people.

How about an unearned honorific? You can call yourself Fantastic until the cows come home and you will never get as much respect as you would if you’d just add the word Captain, Commander, General, Sergeant, Detective or Lord to it. You may think Jacob Stallion sounds dead cool, but think about how many more chicks you’d draw with the simple addition of those magic letters: P. I. Even a plain old ordinary ‘Mister’ will work wonders for your image.

Next, you’ll need a costume.

This one’s a bit harder as you’ll need clothing that would look good on a toy and a symbol that would look good on a bottle of cola. Remember that spandex never goes out of style and leather is made of hardcore, so you can never have too much of it. Also remember that weaponry makes for a fine fashion accessory, so load yourself up with more guns that a normal man’s spine could possibly support. A single, armored shoulderpad with great huge spikes is a powerful gesture, and for god’s sake, if we cannot see your balls through your pants, you are not wearing the correct pants.

Practice saying your every word through fiercely gritted teeth until it becomes second nature to you and get into the habit of twisting your body into convoluted, ridiculously uncomfortable-but-dramatic-looking poses at the drop of a hat until you can pull them off without pulling something. Never shoot the badguy without tossing off a grim, imitateable catchphrase like “Suck my throbbing justice” and you’re set.

GALS!

Doesn’t it suck, sometimes, to have a vagina? I mean, all the boys get to go out and shoot people in the eyes and pull off arms in the name of justice and there you are, time and time again, stuck in the kitchen making the thirty billionth dinner you’ll make in a lifetime of forced servitude and shattered dreams. And if it’s not cooking, cleaning or spurting children like some kind of fertility geyser, it’s something just intolerably degrading, like being used as the helpless goddamned victim yet a-fucking-gain.

Well chin up, ladies! The days of Heroing as a Boys-Only-Club are long since over and now women are not only finally allowed to come out from behind their ironing boards and washing machines to help the boys stomp the skull of villainy into a red, foamy paste –  why, they’re practically expected to!

The world and wild life of the action hero can be yours for the taking, ladies, provided you look like a porn star and have tits the size of watermelons that stick straight out like you were in zero-gravity, or else fuck you, Ugly, get back in your doghouse.

A few things to remember, ladies:

• There is no need whatsoever to armor your midriff, your cleavage or your thighs. No matter what odds you face, a bikini and hotpants with a visible thong are all you’ll ever need. Honest.
• Fighting the endless forces of injustice is NO EXCUSE to spend less than twelve hours a day making sure your hair is hot and sexy and perfectly groomed at all times.
• Comfortable, supportive boots or shoes are useless in combat, as any TRUE warrior woman knows. Stiletto-spike heels are the way to go.
• No fat chicks.

Only one last piece of the puzzle and you’re ready to get out there and start wreaking havoc of biblical proportions.

LOVED ONES ARE FOR FAGS

You need a mysterious, tragic past, that’s all there is to it. The people will not rise up to embrace Willy Hamish, the part-time chef at the Do-No-Matic who leads a happy life with a loving girlfriend and no trace of personal trauma, just because he pulls on a mask or picks up a gun and calls himself the Red Ferret. Kill off his girlfriend, though, and make his childhood a Dickensian tale of dead parents and dead friends and POOF. Hero city.

Go on, look through the annals of action heroes through the ages. I dare you, I double-dog-dare you to find a single one who is not tormented by at least one well-placed death festering up his brains. The chronicles of action heroes are rife with dead parents, dead friends, dead mentors, dead lovers, dead children, are you seeing the connection here?

Have you lost anyone you love? No? Maybe you had better start picking out candidates for the chopping block, or else you’ll never get anywhere. All it takes is a single e-mail to xv_bones@yahoo.com, and you’ll be up to your neck in deceased loved ones whose souls will perpetually cry out for vengeance and drive you to the brink of madness that you will hide behind a mask as you bring your personal brand of justice to the streets of this diseased city and pull in the cash hand-over-fist from all the marketing deals.

Pick someone out, and write that e-mail today.

You can’t afford not to.

Put them all together, they spell H-E-R-O, and that’s what you are, my friends, my most glorious children, that is what you are. Your name is picked and it is hardcore. Your costume is revealing and emblazoned with an image that children doodle in their notebooks. You are an action hero and you are ready for anything. All you need now is an insidious bastard, a true-form heartless motherfucker you can clash against again and again, a man who will torment your dreams with his senseless slaughter of countless innocents and laugh at the pain he brings you.

As I write these words, there is a robotic tapeworm the size of a subway train burrowing towards the center of the earth. In twelve hours, that tapeworm will coil around the earth’s core and drain it of all heat and energy, leaving the world a barren, lifeless rock floating as cosmic wreckage in the endless void of space.

The controls to this tapeworm are positioned in a bank of computers about four feet to my left, in my massive fortress of death and pain studded with automatic cannons, infested with deathtraps and overrun with my endless legions of armed henchmen who are supplemented by a series of grotesque mutant animals, over on the far side of town.

Take a left at the McDonalds and keep going past the gas station, you can’t miss it.

Come get me.