An excerpt from FROM THE NOTEBOOKS OF DOCTOR BRAIN

For a group of men and women who had devoted their lives to saving others, my six psychemotional journeyers were stunningly incapable of saving themselves. That many of them despised each other was obvious to anyone; that each one despised him- or herself was unknown to all of them.

And that is why the F*O*O*J’s Board of Directors ordered them into my care and analysis, since the infighting and dysfunctionality generated by their mutual- and self-loathing threatened to vapourise their organisation, at a time when the F*O*O*J was particularly vulnerable: election time. Three of the six Directorships were up for grabs, and for the first time since the F*O*O*J’s inception, so was the post of Director of Operations.

In theory the most powerful position on the F*L*A*C, the D.O.O. was responsible for setting long-range mission goals, determining strategy and vetting tactics, outlining long-term needs for staff- and materiel-acquisition, and, potentially, had the power to reform the obese F*O*O*J bureaucracy. The retirement of Colonel Strom Flintlock from his grandfathered, unelected position meant that the F*O*O*J was poised for potentially massive change. And while many people assumed that Festus Piltdown III, HKA the Flying Squirrel, was destined for the de facto leadership of the F*O*O*J as its D.O.O., there was a surprise buried beneath the election field like a landmine.

If the F*O*O*J had been a vehicle for national and even global change, the F*L*A*C was the front axis of that vehicle’s wheels. So the candidate--or candidates--in our therapeutic sessions were in desperate need of a good greasing.

BACK ISSUES: THE ORIGINS OF THE F*O*O*J

Forged during America’s now-mythical Golden Age of Heroism to counter the threats of rum-running, communism, juvenile delinquency and marijuana, the (then) Fraternal Order of Justice was Earth’s foremost and finest fighting force. Delivering the decisive blow against the German war machine following the Soviet invasion of Berlin, the F*O*O*J became a planetary icon for justice and freedom, as did its founding members whose names are synonymous with glory: Omnipotent Man, Iron Lass, Liberty Belle, Gil Gamoid and the N-Kid, Captain Manifest Destiny, and their brilliant, mysterious, mystical mentor, the incredible Hawk King.

Returning to America and the expansive East Coast metropolis of Seagull City, the F*O*O*J moved into its first legendary headquarters, the Mando Mansion, and began recruiting among the nation’s growing ranks of costumed avengers.

Thus began the F*O*O*J’s “Silver Age,” whose new stars would shine as brightly as the originals--Siren, the Evolutionist, Flying Squirrel and Chip Munk--defending our country and our planet against some of the worst scourges imaginable: Nemesaur, the Leninoids, Codzilla, Black Mamba, Standing Buffalo, Cosmicus and the Hordes of Entropy... truly an unlimited series.

But in the goggled eyes of some, atomic-powered America of the Silver Age was mutating into something unrecognisable. Gone were the neat pleats and fedoras of the founding era of the F*O*O*J. Now rock-and-roll, the Civil Rights and women’s movements, miniskirts, hippies and drugs were bubbling out of the gutters and recolouring the splash pages of our country.

Like most institutions, the conservative F*O*O*J resisted any change until change was forced upon it, mandated not only by the pervasive influence of altered American mores, but by legal action. Gone was the adjective “Fraternal” because of the Siren’s embittering lawsuit; added was the adjective “Fantastic,” so the F*O*O*J’s heralding acronym could be preserved.

Other change--some with far more sweeping outcomes--were on the way. Warlock War II saw the magical relocation of Seagull City to the West Coast and its integration into the city of Los Ditkos. The War’s destruction of Mando Mansion led Festus Piltdown III to construct a replacement F*O*O*J headquarters, the glittering gold-silver Fortress of Freedom which remains the leading tourist attraction of downtown Bird Island in Los Ditkos. Perhaps most contentiously, as a recipient of federal security contracts under President Nixon, the organisation could not by the early 1970s continue to receive such funding if it remained all-white. Racial integration of the F*O*O*J introduced America to such now-classic crime-fighters as the Spook and La Cucaracha.

Colossal figures were undergoing colossal change.

THE BITTER AFTER-TASTE IN THE CHALICE OF VICTORY

But there’s only so much change any organisation can take before its primary-coloured tunic begins washing out and splitting at the seams.

Integration, popular demands that the F*O*O*J apply itself to new threats such as environmental devastation and domestic abuse, and increasing public concern about due process and the legal loophole-ism that allowed superheroes to operate, meant that the very legitimacy of the F*O*O*J’s mission--if not existence--was in question.

But no one, least of all the F*O*O*J’s founders, could have dreamed of the devastating impact that America’s and the world’s two major victories would have: the almost simultaneous collapse of communism, and victory in the Götterdammerung, the global war against supervillains.

Suddenly, for over two hundred active F*O*O*Jsters, several hundred affiliates, and for the public they were sworn to protect (and whose taxes funded them), the F*O*O*J no longer had any reason to exist.

Fortunately for the F*O*O*J, drugs continued to plague America’s cities, but the battle against this epidemic lacked the sufficient drama to inspire a generation and the media, and initiated as many awkward questions as it answered.

Possessing a titanic legacy impossible to exceed, but no longer possessing a substantial-enough organising objective (a contemporary “mythic narrative”), the F*O*O*J’s workplace dysfunction soon became a matter of public record. Bickering among heroes transformed itself into publicised personal attacks and escalated into lawsuits, public brawling which shattered whole city blocks, and finally criminal charges against legendary heroes in front of a mortified America.

Released: Jack Zenith’s sensational Two Masks of a “Hero,” the era-shattering tell-all and the very first investigative book on the F*O*O*J with a credible inside source--Clifford David Stinson, HKA the Blue Smasher.

Revealed: Decades-old internal conflicts, lurid allegations of harassment, assault and perversion, cases of heroes gambling on the outcomes of their own super-battles, countless tales of substance abuse, power-fixation and dimension-shifting, and most shocking of all, the outing of dozens of secret identities.

Reduced: Dozens of heroes who had traipsed across our globe like gods above the Trojan War were revealed as the lawyers, scientists, industrial magnates, romance novelists, husbands, wives and robots they actually were.

For a world weary and wary of secrecy among the powerful, Two Masks of a “Hero” was an electro-magnet for public scrutiny and outrage. Demands exploded for the full disclosure of F*O*O*J mission records and especially its financial accounts. On the advice of managers, attorneys and P.R. agents, some heroes pre-emptively revealed their own identities in order to shape perception about themselves and their careers and thereby limit the damage from on-going and future investigations.

The shattering of the old paradigm was loud and shrill enough to cause permanent damage to the ears of some heroes, and as the ear is the centre of balance, the psychological disequilibrium that followed cast many costumed crusaders onto the grimy, vomit-streaked barroom floors of their careers and personal lives. Golden Age icons and F*O*O*J-founders such as Gil Gamoid and sidekick the N-Kid, implicated in a heinous conspiracy and revealed at trial to be suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, were sent to languish in the psychic detention facilities of Asteroid Zed. And while rumours of sightings persisted, since 1975 the immeasurably masterful Hawk King had withdrawn to his mysterious Blue Pyramid, accepting only a rare audience for his cosmic counsel.

If Golden Age greats such as Gil Gamoid and the N-Kid could disintegrate, and if visionary founders such as Hawk King could abandon the world of men, then surely the epoch of the invincibles was as done as that of the dinosaurs.

The resulting shockwave through the hero community saw not only more published tell-alls, but a tornado of resignations, divorces, self-exile, and even suicide. And so the new generation of 1980s and 90s crime-fighters, the so-called “Digital Age” warriors, was all dressed up... but with no place to go.

America not only didn’t need heroes any more--it no longer believed they existed.

HYPERPOTENIALITY IS FIRST AND LAST A STATE OF MIND

Such a private and public crisis of confidence was the case as the F*O*O*J stared into the new millennium.

Lacking a substantial external threat around which to create a new mission, while teeming with internal contradictions which threatened its cohesion, the Fantastic Order of Justice found itself in a crisis that could only be resolved by looking within, especially for two generations of its most conflicted members.

Adding into this instability was the imminence of a power-vacuum. Following the long-awaited retirement of the last “grandfathered” board member of the F*L*A*C, America and the F*O*O*J membership were about to elect, for the first time, the F*O*O*J’s Director of Operations. While most tunic-watchers had originally assumed that Silver Age stalwart the Flying Squirrel would glide into the F*O*O*J’s commander-in-chieftancy, the nation was about to be shocked by the dark horse candidacy of a man who had the potential to snare the Squirrel. And except for the fanatical conspirators involved, no one could have guessed how that election would lead directly to the July 16 Attacks.

Facing this complex interconnection of social, political and psychemotional chaos, none of which could be resolved by teleportation, spirit-gems, kraton beams or an old-fashioned “dust-up,” I charged my six sanity-supplicants with a new mission. That mission was for them to come to terms with the very ordinary, very fragile defining human experience: fundamental emptiness and limitless fear of meaninglessness, or what I call the crisis of infinite dearths. If your own identity is mission-rooted, and your mission is now complete, how could you not be as confused as to who you really are?

Directed to me by the winds of their own confusion, my patients arrived at my Hyper-Potentiality Clinic yoked by wagon-loads of psychemotionally dysfunctional produce. Other than this group’s toxic mutual antagonism, chief among the disruptive behaviours reported to me by the F*L*A*C were:

• the questionable competence and unrealistically unflappable optimism of Omnipotent Man,
• the bullying, aggression and rage of the Flying Squirrel,
• the micro-management which devolved into nano-management by Iron Lass,
• the social inappropriateness bordering on sexual harassment of the Brotherfly,
• the narcissism and self-absorption of Power Grrrl, and
• the insubordination and racial antagonism of, and unapproved investigations by, the X-Man.

Even during that first session, I had recognised an encyclopedia of psycho-social crises besetting the group--unmanaged anger and guilt, sexual confusion, the Uranus Complex, Secret Identity Diffusion and the Saviour Complex chief among them.

Clearly, ahead of us lay a titanic struggle to resolve the problems of such great powers. But of course, with great power, there must also come great psychoanalysis.

Just as my task was to help the F*O*O*Jsters accurately envisage their own contra-efficiencies, so is it your mission to recognise your own. Periodically throughout this book I’ll be asking you to write down your answer to the generation-appropriate question I posed to my “Big Six” throughout our explosive time together. Keep your responses in a journal, and then reflect how your response changes depending on the exercises and processing you’ve experienced to date.

For Golden and Silver Age heroes: What will it mean for your life, and your view of yourself, if the glory days never return?

Omnipotent Man: “I’m good. America’s good. And being good is great.”

Flying Squirrel: “Given these pathetic invalids, America needs me more than ever.”

Iron Lass: “Never was it glory, but ever justice that I sought.”

For Digital Age heroes: How will you face knowing that you will never exceed, or even equal, the accomplishments of your predecessors?

The Brotherfly: “Brotherfly be fine. Always has been. He’s a survivor.”

Power Grrrl: “They never looked inside themselves. I won’t make that mistake.”

X-Man: “Who are they to be equal to? Deserve victory. Period.”

GAZING INTO THE DUSK

At the precise moment all my sanity-supplicants had reconvened in the Verbalarium, I was summoned by my secretary to take a call. Knowing that only a true emergency could have motivated my Ms. Olsen to have disturbed the sanctity of a session, I took a call from the F*O*O*J’s Director of Investigations, the Spectacle.

Outside of the view of my patients, the world as I knew it shattered. And while none could have then known, that information in that call led directly

to the abomination called the July 16^th Attacks.

Exerting every erg of professionalism at my command, I re-entered the discussion chamber with a visage of calm detachment.

As I continued around the circle, the Brotherfly glanced up at me anxiously. For the first time since I’d met him, his face and posture betrayed an emotion other than flip playfulness, playful flippancy or hyperscrotal lust. Perhaps his legendary “fly-feel” was tingling, hinting to him the horror of what I was about to reveal.

“My friends,” I said finally, clearing my throat. “I have some... very difficult news to share with you.”

“What, Doc?” asked the Brotherfly.

“The man... the hero... you knew as the incredible Hawk King... is dead.”

Everyone stood, their faces focused on mine.

Jaws unlatched, relatched.

“Vut?” said Iron Lass, at last. “You caun’t be--Frau Doktor, zat’s impossible--Hawk Kink caun’t--”

“Now, ma’am-doctor, you musta gotten yer facts wrong on that one, cuz evrabody knows that ol Hawk King can’t--”

“Miss Brain, I do believe you’re flipped your substandard lid. Master Hawk King is an Egyptian deity--dying, by definition, is one of the few deeds beyond his potential--”

“How?” yelled X-Man, standing, the sole voice of non-denial. “How? Damnit, how?”

“The call came directly from the F*O*O*J. Major Ursa had an audience scheduled at the Hour of the Ninth Gate last night... but the Ka-Sentinels at the Blue Pyramid never showed up to let her inside the retaining wall--”

“Ze Kingk never missed an appointment,” said Iron Lass. “Not in over fifty yearss, for any reason--”

“When there was still no response by 10 am today, Major Ursa and the Spectacle led a team back to Sunhawk Island. The gate was open, the Ka-Sentinels were in a state of stupefaction, and the Pyramid portal was open. They found Hawk King lying on his back inside his Duat Chamber, gripping his crook and flail.”

Silently they sat, but their eyes were screaming.

“The Spectacle’s preliminary call,” I concluded, “is natural causes.”

“‘Natural causes’?” spat the X-Man. “Closest thing to invincible, closest thing to omniscient, and suddenly, just like that, dead by ‘natural causes’?”

While the rest of us stood impotently, Kareem lowered himself back into his chair, his face ripped by rage, and then suddenly, horribly blank. And incongruously in that expressionless void, tears seeped from his eyes like pus from open sores.

“No way. No way was this natural causes,” he muttered, staring at the seam where one wall crashed into the next. “Hawk King was murdered,” he said. “And if someone could kill him, that means all of us, and the world... are in for some serious shit.”

INTO BATTLE: BUT WHERE--AND WHO--IS THE FOE?

Ironically, at the exact moment that global peace has triumped, the gravest threat to superheroic mental health is paranoia. Although super-citizens now can bask in the summer sun of safety, the hypervigilance of their careers has cast them into a winter of ODI-CFFB: obsessive defensive-ideation/compulsive fight-or-flight behaviour, much in the way that a satyr or nymphomaniac, if placed in solitary confinement, may fall into chronic masturbation with attendant carpal tunnel syndrome.

The death of a loved one or a revered icon is often a trigger for paranoia, but that paranoia speaks to a deeper drive than fear. Paranoia is a defiant charge to a cold, unfeeling cosmos, “Hear me! I exist! I’m important!” Because after all, if “someone” is actually orchestrating the chaos of the universe against you personally, then you do matter. When no one seems to care anymore, at least “enemies” give you the feelin you do.

As we’ll see through our time with the F*O*O*Jsters, above all psychic threats, paranoia holds more destructive potential than even Cosmicus, the Digester of Worlds. As the old saying goes, paranoia can indeed “destroy ya.”