The Adventures of Me 2001

You can meet Marvel and DC heroes in these adventures, plus heroes of my own designing. Ever since my own world nearly ended, I fade in and out of existence alongside the Marvel heroes. I'm kind of like that Access guy, except instead of going to visit Superman, I get to read stories about a guy named Ellipsis. But I still get to meet the DC heroes, whenever they come to visit the Marvel Universe.

This year, you can meet my relatives. Oh joy.

The Luciferpower. (17 April) Last year, I got the Jehovahpower. This year, I get powers from the Dark Side. And it's no fun.

• I've got a new superpower, straight from Lucifer. It's driven me mad, before I can figure out what the power is. I've retreated to Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, where I first lived on my own. As I cower in a basement there, my mother arrives and suggests I cut my hair to fix the problem. Not that this will work... but Mom always was able to annoy me. This time, she annoys me back to sanity.
• It seems the Luciferpower automatically summons evil people to my side. So the 100 (or so) most evil people in the world are assembled in this apartment building where I used to live, preparing to conquer the world.
• Of course, this attracts the attention of law enforcement authorities. But I now have Wacopower too, so anyplace I'm in can withstand a siege. (Too bad I didn't have that the time the evil robots attacked.) The city of Waco's even given me a certificate saying I've spent three weeks sober, found their Map Museum, and had the best vacation ever. How modest of them. (16 April)
• Later, I try to use the Luciferpower as a Word of Command, to stop people who are trying to set fires with natural gas hoses. It doesn't work, so I call for gamemasters. Amazingly enough, someone responds!
• They say, the Luciferpower only works to make people do evil. If I want to stop them from doing something evil, I have to give them something else evil to do instead.
• Well, by then it's too late. The building's on fire, good ol' Waco style. I'm outside talking to angelic gamemasters, so I escape. But everyone else gets taken prisoner - if they're lucky. Score one for the angels.

• The Galactus Arena. (22 April) People play basketball in a spherical structure, which supposedly used to belong to a Devourer of Worlds, retired. He used it as a personal shuttlecraft.
  • By the way... This guy's supposedly been turned into a sun, which will supposedly cure his hunger for all time. Has anyone ever considered that suns get hungry too? Let's hope we're not around when this one goes supernova.
• The Messiah-Chicken. (24 April) Perdue Chicken has taken over an old spaceship of Thanos, for use as an experimental chicken breeding facility.
  • Thanos spends lots of time farming, in between his own adventures. He developed a taste for it, a few years back. But he renounces that life, when he gets a danger signal from his downed spacecraft, which is now used as a factory compound.
  • People are running in panic when Thanos arrives. He kills the first one he finds, but when children appear, he leaves them alone.
  • A giant messianic chicken is on the rampage outside. People are safe if they stay inside away from windows.
  • Thanos sends Rick Jones and me to fetch him a T-shirt. We stay away from elevators too. But Rick and I don't get along too well. It seems I remind him of a certain death-god (other than Thanos, that is). I decide not to admit to having defeated Thanos to become Deputy Champion of Death.
  • Thanos uses the T-shirt as a distraction, while he assembles machinery on the roof to destroy the chicken.
• Earth in the Crosshairs. (27 April) Neo-Nazis have been brought to justice again. I had nothing to do with it this time, but I do have some experience with them. So, I get to examine how their mind control device and their explosives are the same substance. I got some the same way the Feds got extra stuff from the moon: unannounced extra missions. It was aliens we were worried about, not Commies. Earth in the crosshairs really motivated those astronauts.

Against the Gods. (7 June)

• The office is going to the beach, where some of us can go kayaking. I've got my inflatable kayak, but before I can set it up, I'm swept out on the water.
• I manage to link up with three of my friends, then start testing my survival lights. Only half of them still work; the other half are soaked.
• Then something happens, and Mom's telling me how sweet my survival lights are. Uh oh, I'm in the land of death now.
• And now I get my chance to find out what I'd do if the gods themselves told me to work harder. For the record, I'd oppose them. But luckily, I find the elevator out, and don't press the wrong button.

Conqueror Day, or Back in NYC. (12 June) In my experience, the apocalypse always begins in New York City. Why should this time be different?

I've taken a job as a field support contractor for Stark-Fujikawa, who inherited the system maintenance contract for Avengers Mansion. Iron Man wanted them out from the contract, but as long as they signed a non-disclosure agreement and promised to send contractors who'd been in Avengers Mansion before, he didn't have a lot of legal recourse. And that's a pretty short list of contractors. I was near the bottom, but everyone else was busy.

• "Master Triathlon" turned out to be just "Triathlon", a new hero. His super-power is, he's three times as good at stuff as the best human athlete. Really.
• When I saw Triathlon, he was in the computer room, surrounded by a bunch of Blue Screens of Death. Which is itself pretty attention-getting, except he was staring at a holographic head-shot of a purple-masked man who was saying, "Your challenge is to fix these computers!" Then the hologram blinked out.
• Well, Triathlon may be three times as computer-savvy as the best jock, but it's still good I was there to help. It was a virus that I'd never seen before, but then, most viruses are. And they all go away if you replace the hard drives and the right bit of ROM on the control card, then reinstall and restore from backups.
• Then the hologram face came back, saying, "You cheated! You had help!" Triathlon, to his credit, said, "Nobody said this wasn't a team event." And so Triathlon and I were declared a team.

• Darkseid is human now. He can resurrect himself and others with the Omega Force, however. So he talks me into laying on train tracks with him. He says I can die first, so I'll be stronger. Do I really have to go through with it? (28 September)
• I'm part of a secret conspiracy. All Vermont maple syrup is secretly our substitute sauce. All Sunday comic strips are ours too, designed at a central location in front of a bank. People love to watch us lay them out. (29 September)
• Dr. Doom is on a commercial for Latverian tourism. He says even the Human Torch has a credit card linked to a Latveria Air account. Torchy probably just signed something without looking. (18 October)
• Meanwhile, there's a new version of the Bible, wherein the prophecies have modern cities like Los Angeles and Ocean City inserted. They're eerily accurate-sounding. (20 October)

• There's one household in Tennessee where the son is coming of age. The father has challenged him to prove his worthiness. The son has chosen a sort of Battle Chess as the challenge.
• They play the game in the expansive family household, taking opposite ends of the house. They recruit their friends to act as pieces. The son's friends are all mutants, so he might actually win.
• But the father is influential. He's gotten the Tennessee Titans to postpone tonight's football game two hours, so it won't conflict with the chess game. And he's invited spectators, including myself.