Magnificent: A Superhero Novella (Audiobook)

In 1983, when the world was busy trying not to blow itself up with nuclear war, we got the first substantial proof that humanity wasn’t alone in the universe. Three huge, sinuous, alien ships descended from the sky over New York City—that’s become a pattern since, these aliens can’t seem to get it into their heads that New York is not the capital of the world—and demanded tribute of the earth to their Grand Regent, who apparently had annexed our region of space two centuries before and neglected to tell us. Oh, and we owed them interest.

The ships were terrifying. At least, they were on the old accounts on TV. I hadn’t been born yet. But the ships weren’t what convinced everyone the aliens were real. We’d all seen Star Wars and knew about special effects. We knew about The War of the Worlds radio broadcast. We weren’t stupid—these things could be faked, couldn’t they? Aliens couldn’t be real…could they?

But we’d never, before that day, seen someone fly. A buff streak in a black and gold football jersey (which on a closer look had a hand-sewn “d20” on the back) and a badly-cut-out black mask shot up from the heart of the city and disabled the engines of the ships with what we later learned was a natural ability to create electromagnetic force fields. Then he proceeded to use his fields to push the ships back into orbit, shouting a lecture all the while about how this planet was under his protection.

Several news outlets with suicidal helicopter pilots and reporting teams on board managed to capture some of this speech. It was ridiculous. Ranting, and full of nerdy gamer slang. That, paired with the close-up visuals that just couldn’t be faked, because we had all seen Star Wars and no special effects could convincingly make the blue crackle of his electrostatic fields, drove home that this was really happening. The aliens were real. And so was the flying man in the almost-football-jersey and badly cut black mask.

We knew he was an alien because he shouted it in his speech: “I’m an alien, too, you self-righteous dickwads, and you don’t see me trying to conquer the planet!”

That was the day the world met Magnificent Man. 

The name was a quip from a nervous field reporter who shouted, “Oh, what a magnificent man!” Because even with his blonde mullet tousled and the awful black mask, and the nerdy speech, you could tell that he was, as my mom says, a “stunner.” That was the day we learned an alien had been living among us all along. That was the day the world met my father and fell in love with this ripped, presumably straight and cis—because everyone just assumed—alien hero.

But this isn’t his story. This story’s mine.