#Greg Greginski

[howtohero]

#298 Taking Over the World

Hello? Is this thing on? Ah, perfect. Hello world, it’s me, Smuggles, the fiendish criminal who orchestrated the end of the Age of Superheroes and ushered in the Age of Villains, or the Age of Smuggles, my compatriots and I are still workshopping the name. Anyway, now that things are well and truly finished for your pathetic heroes and those who would try to guide them through life, I thought I might take a moment to explain to you all how all of this came to be, so that you might truly comprehend the absoluteness of our control and the futility of trying to stop us. And yes, I’m sure I know what you’re thinking, thanks to the mind reading flakes that Professor Brain-Scrambler mixed into every box of the aggressively marketed Cereal Flakes: Everyone’s Favorite Cereal and Favorite Flake in the world. You’re all thinking: Ooh is he really going to monologue now? That’s so passé, how gauche. But I feel as though I deserve this. You might have trouble believing this but this is actually my very first supervillain monologue. I don’t often succeed at my villainous plots, and even when I do, a successful smuggling kind of means there won’t be an audience for whom I can monologue. So excuse me if I feel like gloating for a bit.

Before I get into things though, I think it would be quite remiss of me not to thank those who helped me get to where I am now, starting with the real MVPs, the How To Hero team. The How To Hero team? Aren’t they good guys? Aren’t they victims in all of this? How could they have helped you? All good questions, to be sure, but they are indeed responsible for my meteoric rise to power. Of course they didn’t know it at the time. You see, three years ago I was nothing more than a petty thief with a costume and a codename. Barely a supervillain as some have called me. It was rare that I even saw superheroes, let alone did battle with them. Until June 8, 2017, when a certain blog told every two-bit would-be cape-fetishishist that I would be a good villain to test their crime-fighting chops on. Suddenly, I was being accosted nightly by every man, woman, child and giant badger with a hero-complex. It was humiliating, it was painful, and I vowed that I would get revenge on anybody who contributed to my nightly beatings, so, every superhero ever and also How To hero. I decided to start with the blog, as that seemed easier, and also they were the only ones on my revenge list who hadn’t already decisively proven that they could beat me up. So I began reading their guide, know thine enemy and all, and in time I discovered that while they may not be much of a superhero guide, they were, unwittingly, laying out everything one might need to be the ultimate supervillain. I reached out to an old accomplice of mine Perry the Pirate, who helped me hack into How To Hero’s database so I could access notes and drafts that they had yet to publish so I could glean even more information and tips from them. Apparently another lawyer in his firm worked closely with the guide and had a backdoor into their system on his computer. I pored over the information I found, sifting through thousands of unbearable puns and jokes to get what I needed, and thus, a plan began to form.

Historically speaking, the main obstacle in any villains way to world domination is the large contingent of heroes who love freedom and peace and living in a non-dominated world. They’re always spouting on and on about rights and justice and love, I know, they’re exhausting. But people tend to like them, and people tend to be inspired by them. Which often means that when a supervillain manages to take out one hero, somebody else will very quickly take up their mantle and continue their fight for them. So it is not enough to just pick off heroes one by one. In order to truly get rid of them, they, all of them, would need to be taken off the board all at once. And such an event would need to occur when a villain, or a group of villains, is ready to step in a take control, so that they may do so swiftly as soon as the heroes fall. This part, I realized, was crucial, no time at all could pass between the fall of the heroes and the rise of the villains. Any sort of grace period would allow for the rise of new heroes, and we would be right back where we started. So even though How To Hero had foolishly provided me with a roadmap to taking out the world’s heroes, I needed to put some pieces into play first. I needed to garner the support of my fellow villains.

Not an easy feat for the preeminent starter-villain. 

Honestly, it wouldn’t be an easy feat for anyone, had it not, once again, been for How To Hero. You see, most villain team-ups fail eventually. The villains will always end up betraying each other or falling out over some petty reason like “who gets to control which coast” or “what are we going to name the henchmen”. The rate of decline goes up the more villains you add to your team. So if I was going to form a villainous alliance capable of taking out the heroes and taking over the world, I would need to find a way to overcome the virulent backstabbing and counter-plotting that often plagued supervillain team-ups. So imagine my delight, when How To Hero published a guide on fights between supervillains and how to resolve them. Armed with the tools I would need to diffuse any fights that might arise I approached Al “Da Boss” Marconi, a big time supervillain and crime boss.

A few things you need to know about Marconi, he is quick to anger and only speaks to people whom he respects. So my first attempts at meeting with him ended with me being hurled out of a fortieth story window. Thankfully, on the advice of How To Hero, I was wearing a parachute and ended up being just fine. I realized I would need to find a way to impress Marconi. If I could get him onboard, most of the villain community would be similarly swayed. So I set my eyes towards bigger fish... Oh, not Charlie, that was actually something else. You know what, I might as well talk about that now, while we’re on the subject.

If I was going to take out every hero in the world I would need engineer large-scale threat, but as I’ve said, I didn’t not have large-scale threat connections. In fact, after Perry the Pirate left the villain game to become a lawyer, my only supervillain contact was another low-level villain named Charlie the Fish Whisperer. He mind controls fish by whispering to them, that’s not exactly large-scale, world-threatening stuff. It is, what you could charitably define, as a lame superpower. But that’s ok, How To Hero has a guide to using lame superpowers to your advantage. It was all about perception. All I needed to do was make others perceive Charlie the Fish Whisperer as a world-ending threat. But how to do that? Charlie was only a semi-formidable threat in the water so what were we to do? Mount on attack on Atlantis? How To Hero told us we’d be fools to try. Besides, if we allowed the idea that Charlie was only threatening in the water to stick, he’d never rise to world-ending threat. I realized we would need to speak to a specialist. 

Our world has nearly ended so many times, that there are several former heralds of the apocalypse just hanging around without much to do. I set up a meeting with a fellow called The Dark Harbinger who used to do some freelance heralding for folks like Karalaxus and The Living Ingestor. He taught Charlie and I what these big threat guys are actually like, and How To Hero taught us everything we needed to know about putting on a facade to trick others. But being able to talk the talk wouldn’t be enough. We needed a big dramatic action that would cement the new Charlie the Whisperer in the minds of heroes. Thankfully, How To Hero clued us in to another specialist we could speak to. A man named Ivan Karolov, aka Mister Immortal. Karolov agreed to meet with us, who can say why, I honestly think he was just bored. He had somehow found himself as the prime minister of Finland and I think he was itching to fake his death again and move on. Karolov used his skills and experience at faking his own death to help us make it look like Charlie the Fish Whisperer had killed him with a goldfish he had smuggled into Kesäranta. Charlie rebranded as Chuck and the heroes of the world became convinced that he was truly dangerous and locked him away in an alternate dimension. Obviously that’s not how I saw things playing out, but no matter. I had a world-ending threat that I could use as needed.

Now, to switch gears, I must explain how I finally gained the respect of Al Marconi and the rest of the supervillain community. To put it briefly, I went to Hell. Now, now, don’t give me that look, it wasn’t nearly as dramatic as it sounds. In fact, How To Hero made it easy. All I needed was some peanut butter, and get this, I already had some! Just lying around in my cupboard. All I needed to do was put some out in a pentagram to attract a demon and we were in business. I planned on recruiting some Underworld bigwig to my campaign. How could Marconi not respect me if I had the legions of Hell behind my cause. The rulers of Hell are actually easier to appeal to than mortal villains. All I would need to do is pledge my everlasting and eternal soul to whomever was sitting on the throne that day and I would be given an army of ghouls and undead spirits to command. What do I care about my soul? Whatever demon I dealt with would only get once I died, and How To Hero had very helpfully laid out exactly how I could achieve immortality. Luckily though, I didn’t even end up needing to pledge my soul, once again How To Hero came to my rescue. While reading one night I came across a shocking diatribe against a man named Greg Greginski. Greginski is a well known talk show host who frequently talks about superheroes and their ilk, and rarely in a positive light, which is why How To Hero takes issue with him. Greg Greginski is not well-liked in the superhero community, but those of us in the supervillain community are privy to the fact that Greg Greginski is not simply a television host. He’s so much more. He’s part-time ruler of Hell, Greg the Skeleton King, and after How To Hero’s disrespectful remarks towards him, he was willing to throw his weight behind my crusade against the blog, free of charge. 

Once I had Greg the Skeleton King on board, I went back to Marconi with an army of damned souls and he was very quick to endorse my movement as well, especially after being dangled out the window by a ghost who occasionally struggled to stay corporeal. Marconi agreed to spread the word amongst the rest of the villains and I moved on to the final phase of my plan. Taking out all the world’s superheroes in one fell swoop. As I alluded to at the beginning of my post, How To Hero handed me the perfect plan on a silver platter. All I needed to do was trigger a superhero/supervillain team-up. According to How To Hero, when a threat is large enough, superheroes will form temporary alliances with supervillains until the threat is dealt with. This makes sense, supervillains don’t want the world to be destroyed, who would they do crimes against if the world is gone. So heroes need no worry about supervillains pulling anything shady during such a team-up, unless of course, the villains knew that the threat was fake, and that there was no real risk to the world. Enter Chuck the Fish Whisperer, my very own personal world-ending threat. The only problem though, was that Chuck had already been defeated and locked away, earlier than I’d planned. Oh well, at least he was still alive, I just needed access to a interdimensional portal generator. How To Hero had already laid out to me how difficult it is to cross dimensions, the easiest way would be to use somebody else’s existing interdimensional portal generator. Luckily, I knew somebody who could help, Frederick Kaminsky aka Dr. Brainwave. 

Dr. Brainwave was perfect, he had already built a portal generator, and he lived in How To Hero headquarters. He could be my man on the inside. He could be my partner in all of this. Or, well, he could have been. If he hadn’t been a world-grade idiot. It seems that, in his work with How To Hero as their supervillain correspondent, Dr. Brainwave had actually grown to like the team behind the blog. He had begun to think of them as his friends. He wouldn’t allow me access to his machine he told me, but as a professional courtesy he wouldn’t tell anybody about my plan to free Chuck. I let him think that Chuck was the brains and that I was simply his henchman, his sidekick. Brainwave didn’t think I was a threat, and so he didn’t take any steps to report me to the authorities. This ended up being his undoing. If Dr. Brainwave wouldn’t help me, then I would need somebody else on the inside. Unsurprisingly, Brainwave’s beloved guide held the answers. Allow me to quote from the blog’s guide to joining a team that has not invited you to be apart of it: 

If you want to join one of these teams and there’s already somebody there with your powers you’re definitely going to have to sabotage them. We understand that sabotaging another hero to steal their spot on a superhero team isn’t a very superheroic thing to do but some things are just more important! [Don’t] Poison them! Depower them somehow (maybe with some type of ray and/or beam)! Humiliate them by beating them at Dance Dance Revolution at the next superhero dance festival and tractor rodeo which I’m nigh certain is a real thing.

If I wanted to join the How To Hero team, I would have to get rid of the person who already filled my niche. I wouldn’t do it with poison or Dance Dance Revolution though, I would do it with a bomb. A bomb that I had smuggled out of Brainwave’s own workshop when I had met with him. I mailed a bomb to How To Hero’s office. Best case I kill everybody in the building and then just waltz in and use Brainwave’s portal generator to unleash Chuck, trigger a superhero/supervillain team-up, and then have the villain betray the heroes once they’ve let their guard down. Worst case, I take out Brainwave and steal his job. I knew Brainwave always wore rocket boots, he was almost as much of an avid reader of this blog as I was, so I knew that if anybody was going to fly the bomb out of the office, it would have to be him. Afterwards it was just a matter of filling out an application and coasting on my reputation as a non-threat. Sure enough, those fools fell for it hook, line and, sinker. So here we are now, the superheroes are gone, and I and my allies rule the world. And it’s all thanks to this little blog. 

That’s all for now, stay tuned for my first slew of villainous decrees and demands soon. Welcome to the new world order.

#superhero #superheroes #comedy #humor #funny #hilarious #The Age of Villains #Smuggles #Al Da Boss Marconi #Karalaxus #Dark Harbinger #Ivan Karolov #Mister Immortal #Perry the Pirate #Chuck the Fish Whisperer #Charlie the Fish Whisperer #Dr. Brainwave #Professor Brain-Scrambler #Greg Greginski #Greg the Skeleton King #Hell #How To Hero

[howtohero]

#213 Being Feared

When ask whether it was better to be loved or to be feared, Ultiman answered “loved of course.” And Hatman put on a really gruff voice and said “the fear of others fuels me.” And then everybody else in the room just kind sat in an awkward silence and shot each other furtive glances because, like, that guy’s gimmicks is hats and that is not scary. So is he just not being fueled? Did he misunderstand the question? Does he think hats are scary? Yikes. But Hatman, however misguided and confused the capped-crusader may be, his fantasy is other hero’s reality.

One of humankind’s staples is their capacity to fear, and to turn that fear into hate. Humans fear what they don’t understand, they fear those who are different, and they fear those who have the capacity to rain fire down from the skies. Unfortunately for you, as a superhero, you probably fall into one or more of those categories.

If you find yourself being feared by the community you’ve sworn to protect. If the pundits and the internet bloggers and seven time World’s Worst Talkshow Nominee and three time winner, Greg Greginski have made you out to be a bona fide threat or menace, don’t fret. This might not be a bad thing. When people fear things they often allow their fear to run wild and allow their perceptions of things to blown way out of proportion. All of which means that you’re going to my mythologized as a sort of criminal hunting boogey man, which can serve as a major deterrent against crime in your community. It also means that your enemies, be they in the city government, police department, or supervillains, (or your neighbor’s grandmother, who recently moved in with him, which is very sweet, but she does not like you at all one bit because once you ate a cookie that she made and you choked but like you didn’t mean to insult her. The cookie was fine. You’re just bad at swallowing properly.) will have a difficult time planning how to attack you. They’ll have to factor in every single rumor (several of which you should feel free to start on your own), every whisper about your fire breath, every piece of speculation about your hidden ability to grow a second head whose sole purpose is to smack talk people while the other head is breathing fire, every chatroom post about your super secret third head that shoots lasers. They can’t run the risk of disregarding anything because that thing might just be true! Which means that your villains will be forced to either waste a ton of time working how to beat you with all of your myriad of possible powers and skills, which will give you plenty of time to track them down and put a stop to their scheme to steal the world’s hair and use it to power a *checks notes* self-propelling hamster wheel, huh ok, which then powers an *flips page* entire windmill field what in the world?? Ok which then powers a *turns page again with much trepidation* device which steals hair oh come on! (That’s what happened!) 

Being feared allows you to keep a professional distance from the people of your city. Nobody is going to ask you to movie premiers or to speak at conferences. They won’t ever rush up to you and ask for a photograph or autograph (or phonograph) after you’ve defeated a villain, thereby taking up valuable time and preventing you from going after and stopping more villains with actually evil non-hair related schemes. (Look there are plenty of legitimate evil hair related schemes. Remember that evil sentient mustache? Megealehxar Fizzleton XVII, he was pretty evil. He killed some folks.) Being feared means most of the law enforcement officers in your city will be hesitant to actually investigate you. (Leaving only the hardest boilest no-nonsense cop on your case but you’re pretty confident that you can win him over and go on an inane buddy-adventure with him where you both develop a mutual respect for each other and maybe, just maybe you’ll help him get over the tragic death of his wife and maybe, just maybe he’ll help you come to terms with the death of your parental figures, especially when it turns out the same man was responsible for all of those murders and the two of you finally bring him to justice.) 

So since being feared seems to be a pretty neat gig, how can we go about making sure that happens to you? Of course, there’s the aforementioned rumor mill that you should wholeheartedly contribute to, but rumors alone aren’t enough to strike fear into the hearts and minds of the cowardly and suspicious lot of criminals in your neighborhood. Many of them are liable to be plenty scary on their own, so if you want to scare them, you need to add some substance to those rumors. First off, you need to revamp your image. Until we shattered your tiny mind with the revelation that being feared might not be all that bad, you probably dressed like a regular, approachable, non-scary superhero. Well no longer. Change your entire costume to black, but not just regular black, you need to get deeper, darker, blacker, than any superhero costume has ever gone before. Have your science buds and your designers team up to invent an entirely new shade of black. One that traps all light and causes feelings of existential dread. If your mask doesn’t already cover your entire face (then your identity is as good as blown anyway so nice going) you need to change that. If your entire body is sheathed in a pitch black (or darker) body suit then you’ll be practically invisible at night. Which means you’ve got the opportunity to really freak people out with your mask. Paint something onto it that will look really scary to criminals as it floats towards them in a dark alley. A flaming skull, the devil’s face, misfiled tax forms. Studies (yeah) show that most criminals will just turn over completely new leafs if they are under the impression that there are floating tax forms haunting the streets where they do crimes. 

After working on your image you need to do things that will actually give villains a reason to fear you. Just making a career out of throwing villains into prison just doesn’t cut it in a world where villains break out of prisons in massive scale jail breaks. You know what scares bad guys? Dangling them off of rooftops, shooting supervillains right in the face, floating tax forms. If you’re squeamish about shooting criminals right in the face, (weak) [it is legally and morally abhorrent!] fear not, that’s what holograms are for! All you need to do is project a hologram of yourself doing something scary or menacing and bam! Instant fearsome reputation. 

If all of this sounds good to you, but you’re not sure if you want to sacrifice all of the goodwill and positive connections you’ve acquired as a loved superhero. Fear not! This is why we wear masks. You can easily just start operating under a new superhero identity and craft a terrifying persona for your second self. How hard could it be? You’ve already got a dual-identity, a triple shouldn’t be that much more difficult. You can always fake one your identity’s deaths once you decide for yourself whether it’s better to be feared or to be loved.

#superhero #superheroes #comics #comedy #humor #funny #hilarious #advice #feared or loved #being feared #being loved #Ultiman #Hatman #Greg Greginski #holograms #shooting people in the face #Megealehxar Fizzleton XVII #triple identity

[howtohero]

#122 Being Framed

Crimes happen all the time (good job). Probably there are eight or nine happening right now (so reading this is just an excellent use of your time). Many of these crimes go unsolved (probably because our worlds’ greatest crime fighters are reading internet funny blogs). Some of them do get solved though (no thanks to you). But even the ones that are solved or the ones that are stopped sometimes aren’t stopped or solved in exactly the best way possible (that’s on you too). Sometimes in fact the wrong person is arrested and imprisoned and publicly condemned as a super criminal (making a mockery of the justice system). And sometimes, that wrongly imprisoned, or falsely accused person, is you (personally, I think you did it). 

The first thing you need to when you’ve been framed for a crime is find out that you’ve been framed. Until you know that, you can’t do anything. So you need to stay abreast of all the superhero news in the world. If you’re being accused of a crime that’s where that information is going to pop up. In fact you should focus more heavily on those sites or news programs that have more anti-superhero leanings.

“Anti-superhero learnings?” you ask, the donut you were eating falls out of your mouth which is now agape in horror. For you are horrified by the very notion. “How could such a thing be?” you stammer as your monocle pops out of your eye. You’ve never been more shocked and confused and afraid in your life. Well put that donut back in your mouth slovenly citizen, it’s true. Some people do not like superheroes. Maybe their jealous of their fabulous bodies, cool cars or walrus sidekicks. Maybe they don’t think punching ever single individual drug dealer in the groin is the best possible way to make the streets safer. Maybe a loved one was tragically killed in the fallout of an epic superhero battle. Regardless these people do not like superheroes and so they’ll be the first ones to report that you or some other superhero has been implicated in a crime or is the subject of a manhunt. While this is one of the quickest ways to find out if you’re about to be indicted, be warned, these programs are a bit hard to sit through. They generally feature two four well-dressed people smiling about others misfortunes and laughing at bad jokes! Can you imagine? These people have their own television program and they have the audacity to just sit around and make bad jokes. Unacceptable. I can excuse the anti-superhero rantings and ravings (our favorite anti-superhero rant’n’rave comes courtesy of talk show host Greg Greginski and features the line “these spandex sissies and their frikkin’ underwear on the goddam wrong side of the pants and their stupid astro… astro-motorhomes and their fancy pants cape-wearing horses! I can’t stand them! I wish they’d all be eaten… eaten by progress… the progress of society!” like that was crazy what was he even talking about why was he so mad about the horse? What a champ.) but the bad jokes are where I draw the line. These are the same people that start every St. Patrick’s Day show by saying “top o the mornin’ to ye” in a terrible accent. Just so we’re all on the sampe page.

In fact, interestingly enough, angry/jealous/insecure, morning show hosts are responsible for 62% of superhero framings. They do it to stoke those anti-superhero flames. That’s a true statistic. They commit more superhero framings than actual supervillains (supervillains tend to be very enthusiastic about taking credit for the crimes they commit. Heck, most of them broadcast their crimes on every screen in the world while they’re committing the crime). Supervillains don’t even make up the other 38%! There’s also dirty cops and non-dirty cops just being bad at their jobs. So disgruntled morning-show hosts take the lion’s share of that blame. 

Once you are alerted to the fact that you are wanted for a crime you need to immediately get out of your costume, and then not get back into it until this whole thing goes over. The manhunt can’t succeed if the man they are hunting never shows up anywhere ever again. (Or womanhunt, women can be framed for crimes too). If you want, you can even just leave it at that. Destroy your costumes, design a new one, repaint your car to match your new color scheme and you’re good to go. Even if whoever is framing you keeps framing you for crimes it doesn’t even matter. You set that identity on fire, it’s theirs if they want it so bad. The costume was never even that comfortable. You designed it early on in your career. You were younger back then, caring more about coolness than comfort. You don’t like to admit it but you were thinner back then too. The costume was much too tight, you’re glad for the opportunity to make a new one, a better one, a costume with a future. Being framed was the best thing that ever happened to you! Thank you Greg Greginski, you’ve changed one more life for the better.

If you do want to keep your identity though you’re going to need to do some damage control. Check up on all your spare costumes, make sure every one of them is accounted for. If you find that one of them is missing, then you have a potential crime scene that you can work. Scour the site of your missing costume for any clues or forensic evidence that might lead you to discovering who could’ve stolen it, and who is now probably wearing it while commiting crimes and vlogging about it. Think about who could’ve had access to this secret costume hiding spot. Which of your allies knew where it was and which of your enemies might have the powers or skillsets to break in and steal it. A missing costume is a great place to start your investigation.

Sometimes however though you’ll find that none of your costumes are missing at all. This isn’t all that unusual or even surprising. A skilled seamstress could replicate your costume just by looking at it. Heck, even a garbage seamstress could replicate your costume approximately enough to fool the shoddy security cameras at the convenience store you supposedly robbed. If you find that all your costumes are exactly where you left them you should immediately become suspicious of all seamstresses, no matter their skill level. 

Now is around the time where you should start seriously making sure that you’re actually being framed. Sure, there’s definitely someone out there assuming your identity to steal apples in order to create a worldwide apple shortage and then become rich off of their stolen artificially-rare apples, but are you entirely sure that it’s not you? Perhaps you were mind controlled, or maybe you’re a sleeper agent. Maybe you did it consciously, while in control of your body and mind and everything (I’m sure you had a good reason) and then somehow forgot about it (or were forced to forget about it). For all we know you could actually be framing yourself! To make sure that you haven’t been secretly committing crimes in your sleep or something (sleep-stealing is a real thing that effects dozens of people across the galaxy) I recommend attaching a video camera to yourself. This way if another crime is committed all you have to do is check the tapes! Brilliant! If the tapes show that you were off doing your own thing at the time of the crime then you’re golden (well, relatively, there’s still somebody defacing all the statues in the park while wearing your costume). And I know what you’re thinking, but no, you can’t use those same tapes to exonerate you in a court of law. For one thing, unless you’re wearing your costume 24/7 you’re going to give away your secret identity and we’re not quite at that point yet. Even if you were wearing your costume the entire time you had the camera on you a shrewd lawyer could just make the point that anybody could’ve wearing your costume. To which you’ll say “Yeah that’s exactly the point I’m trying to make here!” and then flip over a table and then you will be held in contempt of court.

When the public perceives you to be a criminal you’re usually on your own. The rest of the superhero community will probably turn your back on you and to be honest that might be, at least partially, our fault. So sorry about that. You see, we once said that “The average superhero is exactly one (1) traumatic event away from turning into an evil pilferer.” And all your superhero friends are definitely aware of that. They all read this blog. So that means you have to launch this entire investigation on your own (here this might be helpful).

You should try to acquire any videos or photographs or witness statements that pertain to your alleged crime. If you’re going to go after the person masquerading as you, you’re going to want to know everything that you possibly can about them. You might even get lucky and see them pulling off one of your known enemies’ signature moves! Regardless though you want to get as much information on them as you possibly can. You’ll probably need to break into your local police precinct’s evidence locker but honestly, at this point, who even cares, we have you do shady stuff like that all the time. It’s all in good fun. It’s all in the name of Justice.

Once you’ve learned everything you can about the person who’s framing you for these unspeakable crimes, you can begin checking out your suspects. The person you’re looking for will have a similar build as you and possibly a similar skill or powerset. Lots of superheroes have enemies like that, it’s like people with similar builds and powers are drawn to each other through some metaphysical drama-creating force or something. You might also actually be looking for an evil clone. Man, that would be such a hassle. Remember how annoying those things could be? Or gosh maybe it’s a shapeshifter? Those guys are such tools. It’s not cool to turn into other people! Being someone else isn’t even that hard! The true challenge, and I firmly believe this to be true, is being yourself.

Once you do track down the bad guy whose impersonating you though, you need to put on your costume again. This way (as we’ve mentioned before) the public can see that there’s both a good guy and a bad guy who have the same costume and your name will automatically be cleared. Even from bad things that you actually did! Every negative thing that’s been done in your costume, no matter who did it, will just be laid at the feet of the evil guy wearing the costume! This is a great chance to get rid of all that embarrassing stuff too. Like the time you were caught on camera in costume yelling at a pigeon who had stolen your last french-fry. Or the time you were refused service at a drive-through because technically you flew-through and there’s apparently a rule against that in the drive-through code of conduct. 

Once the bad guy is defeated and captured and their costume is taken away to either be aggressively burned or aggressively laundered, you’ll be starting with pretty much a clean slate. Once again the public will adore you and see you as the hero you are and you can go back to spending your days fighting sassy swashbuckler or attending superhero drum circles which are posilutely a real thing. Don’t expect any apologies from the pundits who disparaged you on national television or the legions of police officers who agreed to unpaid overtime just to hunt you down (or me). They’re still waiting for you to turn evil for real. Frikkin Greg.

#superhero #superheroes #comics #comedy #humor #funny #creative writing #lifestyle guide #being framed #talk show hosts #shapeshifters #more like #lameshifters #ha nice #Greg Greginski #aka Smelly Greg #we understand that Gross Greg would have more alliterative appeal #but we don't want Greg to have any appeal #horses with capes #this blog supports superhorses #drum circles #drive through code of conduct

[howtohero]

#215 Superheroes’ Pals

As your superhero career goes on you’ll find yourself spending more and more time in your superhero identity. You’ll find yourself fighting more crimes, saving more worlds, and making more enemies. But you’ll also, against all odds, and specifically in defiance of our sound advice, make some friends. A superhero’s pal is exactly what it sounds like, just a guy who is friends with a superhero. They’re not a superhero, they’re not any sort of specialist in anything, they don’t particularly help the superhero in any way. They’re just a friendly guy.

If you decide to get yourself a pal in your superhero identity you should know that you are needlessly endangering this poor person. But also, hey props to you. Making friends is hard. And I know you’re not exactly in a position where you can be rejecting friends. Plus, in your defense, most superhero’s pals initiate the relationship themselves. They’ll show up to all your battles and snap pictures or they’ll just tail you until you agree to hang out with them or they’ll hurl themselves out of a window and hope that you’ll swoop in and save them. (Or maybe not just you, maybe they don’t care who saves them from their act of self-defenestration. They just want a superhero friend and aren’t especially picky.) If this is the case, then just being their friend might even seem like the safer option. Then they can just text you when they wanna hang instead of jogging out into traffic or lathering themselves with bbq sauce and then wandering into the lion pit. (Not the enclosure in the zoo, the inexplicable pit of lions that was left in the middle of your city after some supervillain plot that nobody can remember.) Plus, a rejected pal might just turn into a jaded and resentful supervillain. Or you might just genuinely like them and want to be their friend. These things have been known to happen. But the whole entire reason you have two identities is to protect your loved ones, so if you have loved ones in your superhero identity, well that’s just a paradox waiting to collapse in on itself. You might have to invent a third even superheroic-er identity. An identity that is so super that is diverts the attention of all your enemies, but so aloof that they don’t pick up friends and hangers on. <Oh! I actually think that lion thing was one of mine. The plot was to put a lion pit in the middle of the city and then wipe everybody’s minds about how it got there.>

It’s a bit harsh, but having a superhero’s pal is very much akin to having a pet. They can’t look after themselves on the level that they’re going to need to. You’re personally responsible for their safety. But they love you a whole lot. So it’s not all bad. Your superhero’s pal can always be counted on to go to bat for you in the court of public opinion. They’ll sort of be like your mascot, but without the doofy costume. You’re going to have a monopoly on doofy costumes in this relationship. Anytime you get attacked in the press or on Greg Greginski’s new show “Superheroes are Bad with Greg Greginski” or in an online chatroom (and be sure, you are being maligned in the chatrooms. Frequent topics include “Haha did you see when he tried to show how high he could kick and then fell on his butt” or “Haha did you know this loser didn’t even know about the online chatrooms”) your pal will jump in there and defend you with an astounding amount of increasingly ostentatious epithets. The trade-off though, is that whenever they’re in trouble, you’re expected to come help them. Superheroes’ pals usually receive a direct line of communication to the superhero that they are palling around with. (Occasionally in the form of a special signal watch, less occasionally in the form of a regular old telegraph). This can be a bit of a culture shock to you, as you’ve been very diligent not to give your personal communication device’s number/hailing frequency/extension to anybody who is not a fellow superhero, world leader, or your mom/maternal figure. But this guy’s your pal and pals give each other their phone numbers. It’s just part of the deal. Be warned though, there’s a bit of a learning curve to giving your personal contact info to a civilian. Be prepared to receive emergency distress signals late at night and rush over only to find out that you’ve just been invited to a pizza party or that your pal just needs someone to quiz him on his Spanish. 

Another thing you should know about civilians who become close personal friends of superheroes is that soon, they’re going to become tired of just being the civilian pal. They’re going to hear all of your stories, or witness your grand feats, or watch you fly off with your sidekick or your living hover board (Shoutout to Brandy the living hover board. She’s like a modern day magic carpet who can do sick loop-de-loops and always has the hottest of hot goss.) and they’re going to start resenting their roll on the sidelines. So they’ll try their hand at becoming your sidekick, or partner, or if they’ve got a obnoxiously inflated sense of importance, your mentor. On paper this might seem like a fine idea, who wouldn’t want to fight crime and hang out with Brandy the living hover board with their best friend? But unless and until they can bring something useful to the table, they’re just making your job much harder. The last thing you need when fighting crime is a bumbling civilian who thinks they know how to fight crime because they’ve watched their super powered friend do it a dozen times. But that’s not good enough! That’s nothing! I once watched my friend snowboard down a mountain during an avalanche while being chased by no less than five (some sources reported four but I swear it was five) abominables snowman but does that mean I can do it too? No! Of course not! I would die probably nine different times before making it to the bottom of the mountain. (And that friend... was me.) No it wasn’t, it was Dale. (Who’s Dale?) Oh you don’t Dale? (I don’t think I’ve ever had the displeasure of meeting this Dale.) Oh you should, he’s a great guy, he’s good at skiing. Anyway, your civilian pal isn’t even observant enough to have worked out your secret identity and they think they’ve been paying enough attention to face off against Knife-Man? The man who is made entirely out of superheroes’ pals stabbing knives??? Fat chance. However, you shouldn’t just rebuff your friend outright. (See our earlier point about rejected superheroes’ pals.) If your civilian friend asks you to let them join you in the field tell them that you’re definitely interested, but only if they prove that they can make a valuable contribution in the field. This will inspire them to actually work for what they’re yearning for. With any luck they’ll learn how to fight or start studying nuclear physics or join the police academy and soon enough, you’ll have a new valuable partner in the field.

In this vein, many superheroes’ pals will, at some point or another, attempt to gain superpowers. This will invariably always work, every time. Sometimes they’ll even gain powers without even trying. But just as assuredly, every time a superheroes’ pal gains powers, it will only be for a short time. Any time a civilian gets close to a superhero they become 100 times more likely to gain superpowers from a supervillain experiment or a life saving blood transfusion from their superhero pal or just because some fifth-dimensional imp thought it would be an interesting new wrinkle to whatever story they’re observing. It’s one of the fringe benefits of being buds with a superhero I suppose. But just as your pals learns to control or accept their powers, they will, every single time, lose them. This is just one of those areas of life where the status quo reigns supreme. 

Superheroes’ pals are one of the most novel aspects of superheroism. They’re part fanboy, part asset, part best friend who is just kept in the dark regarding a significant chunk of your life. Superheroes’ pals can be relied on to defend you in the public eye, to lend an ear when you need someone to talk to, and to write extremely flattering biographies about your life that don’t even mention the time you accidentally blew up a planet or the other time when you spilled spaghetti sauce all over your costume. Superheroes’ pals, they’re like regular pals, but super.

#superhero #superheroes #comics #comedy #humor #funny #hilarious #advice #advice blog #superheroes' pals #superhero's pal #Jimmy Olsen #rick jones #snapper carr #Buddy Pine #civilian sidekicks #Brandy the living hover board #Knife-Man #Dale #man Dale is the best #yetis #abominable snowman #Abominables snowmen #that's the actual pluralization for that don't @ me #pals #friendship #friends #Greg Greginski #status quo #fifth dimension imps

[howtohero]

Bodyguards

Sometimes superheroes become so beloved by a town that they become sort of unofficial employees of the city. They show up to important town functions. Their faces are memorialized on commemorative coins. Every couple of years a campaign is started (usually by the hero themself in their secret identity) to rename the town after them, though this effort is usually shot down by those with more sense. Occasionally this leads to the city’s leadership to view the superhero as a sort of asset. A public figure who exists to serve the town. Which is a valid interpretation of a superhero, and certainly better than all that threat menace nonsense Greg Greginski is spewing on his show. However, (and those of you who’ve read the title see where I’m going with this) this mindset by the city’s leadership has a very high chance of leading to them assigning you your very own bodyguards. (Ha! I bet you nerds thought this post was going to be about superheroes being bodyguards! Well it’s not! Gotcha!)

I know what you’re thinking (as always when you read this blog you create a connection between us that allows me to peer into the innermost recesses of your mind and soul) why would a superhero ever need a bodyguard? If a superhero can’t even protect themselves how can they be expected to protect the entire city, if not the world, if not the universe? It’s a valid question and for asking it you get a gold star.

But think about it from the local leadership’s perspective. The world is a dangerous place. Your average week in middle America generally contains no fewer than three strange objects/entities falling from space, six toxic sludge related incidents, and 73 hate crimes. Ideally you want your local superhero ready and able to deal with all of those issues. But they can’t do that if they’ve been injured, maimed, or assassinated. So basically these bodyguards exist to protect the superhero when they’re not actively fighting crime or battling otherworldly monsters that look so much like pop-culture dinosaurs that it’s genuinely disconcerting to paleontologists. (And absolutely maddening to a certain Professor Von Iguanodon.) They protect you so you can continue protecting everybody else.

But being babysat 24/7 is not why you became a superhero (and if it was, you’re a moron. There are easier ways to get a bodyguard). You became a superhero because ever since you’ve been a child you’ve had a reckless disregard for your own life and you finally have the superhuman durability to back it up. So it can take some time to adjust to this new reality. 

First of all, you’re most likely going to need to disclose your secret identity to at least the bodyguards but more likely the entire city government. They might even give you an ultimatum: Tell us who you are or leave town. Some heroes will actually leave town. They’re that dedicated to this whole secret identity bit. We’ve trained them well. Other heroes might just laugh in their faces. Who do they think they are giving you an ultimatum. You once juggled a bunch of tanks. Just to see if you could. How are they gonna make you leave town? Preposterous! Absolutely preposterous. 

Other heroes though, will recognize that in order to be a hero you need to serve your community in the way that they need to be served. At the moment that service requires you to reveal your identity to a select few people so that they can ensure that you can keep protecting the city to the best of your ability. And so they will concede to the demands of the city leadership and they will be assigned a couple of guys in suits to hang out with all the time.

Once you’ve gotten your body guards, let’s call them Steve and Stoove, you’ll need to make space for them in your life (and in your heart). I recommend getting a triple-decker bunk bed for your home, or your hideout. This will be good not only because you don’t have to allot as much space to your new best friends but also because it will allow all of you to engage in some quality bonding time before bed each night. You can learn about all of Steve and Stoove’s hopes and dreams. Did you know that Stoove wanted to be a train conductor? Or that Steve spent a year of his life eating nothing but cinnamon buns? What fascinating people! 

All the same though, it’s going to get grating having them following you around all the time. Especially when you go to superhero galas (which I’m sure exist) where nobody else has to buy extra tickets for their bodyguards. It’s going to be very tempting to try to ditch your tagalong pals and you know what? I say do it! What’s the worse that can happen? You’ll get ambushed by your enemies? Kidnapped by a villain wearing armor made from your one weakness (curdled milk)? Pshaw I say. Pshaw. Ditching your bodyguards should be relatively easy. You’re better than them in every way. Just point off into the distance and say “look over there!” Or blow up something unimportant in the direction opposite of the one you plan on fleeing to. This will give you some quality time to yourself so you can watch movies without fear of being judged for your tastes (who doesn’t love documentaries about commemorative campaign buttons!) or just to be able to some food without having to share it with Steve and Stoove for once! Once they catch up to you, you can just pass the whole thing off as a secret test of character of something and congratulate them for passing by successfully catching up with you! 

Eventually though, you’ll come to love Steve and Stoove and learn to work together in symbiosis. They’ll teach you some legit self-defense techniques (did you know that a very popular self-defense technique is just shrieking in your enemy’s face? 8 out of 10 times they’ll just be so uncomfortable by it that they’ll leave you alone) and you can teach them some of your signature crime fighting moves (that tank-juggling thing isn’t actually all that hard!) they may even eventually join you in the field while you’re fighting crime! Then they can become superheroes in their own right! Steve-Man and Super Stoove! Legendary defenders of the city! Sporting stun guns and cool as heck sunglasses. After that, it won’t be long until they’re assigned government bodyguards of their own and the process can begin anew! You’ll have to get a much larger bunk bed, but as we’ve just shown, the benefits are incalculable! 

#superheroes #superhero #comics #comedy #humor #creative writing #funny #bodyguards #Steven and Stoove #Steve-Man #Super Stoove #juggling tanks #my tanks #superhero galas #objects falling from space #toxic sludge #hate crimes #ambushed