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Dander from FOX, Kareem. This is an advance copy of Billi Biceps’s tell-all autobiography, Butch Like Me—”

“I don’t know anything about Billi Biceps, Jaylene—she was never in the F*O*O*J, she doesn’t—”

“Billi said she was the victim of a cruel lie—that her year-long relationship with Power Grrrl was nothing but a heartless sham—”

“—I’m here to investigate an attempt to assassinate one of this country’s most esteemed superheroes, part of an ongoing investigation into the assassination of the most esteemed superhero—”

“—a heartless sham designed to cover up the fact that Power Grrrl was never a lesbian, that in fact she was having a secret affair with you.”

Suddenly every camera and microphone was shoved in Kareem’s face, and for the first time since I’d met him, he was speechless.

“How do you explain this, Kareem?” said Jaylene. “You, the radical, militant, antiwhite, Black Power crimefighter, sleeping with someone that Hero Threat calls ‘a skanky, white, crypto-sexual, pop-tart heroine-poseur’?”

André howled from above, buzzing his wings in hilarity. “And he aint even supposta be sleepin with no ladies at all, no how!”

Cameras swung up toward the Brotherfly. “Him an all his Forty-Two-Chamber-havin blackocentric homies, they all supposta be ‘chaste,’ an now it turn out he been doin the chasin, an that he been lying down on the job to be eating off th’blond rug?”

“Shut up, you mak-head! Look, Jaylene, your allegations are a complete, utter colostomy bag! I—listen, I never, ever—”

“How do you respond to newly surfaced documents, Kareem,” said the newswoman, “showing that you actually hated Hawk King?”

“WHAT? Are you NUTS?” he shouted. “What kind of insanity is that? Hawk King was my hero! My teacher, leader, and mentor—”

The statuesque reporter took out a thin newspaper. “This is a 1984 copy of Mama Said Punch Whitey in tha Throat, the Langston-Douglas underground newspaper you used to write for under the pen name Anavidge Blackman. You wrote, quote, Hawk King…is a stooge for F*O*O*J-led white domination of the planet, end quote. And in another article,” she said, producing that issue, “you wrote, quote, I’ve been proudly hating all my life, hating the nation of millions holding us back. We opposing jive turkeys.”

Cameras were clicking, whirring, and whining faster than ever. Kareem’s face had drained to beige.

“Because your allegations about Hawk King’s secret identity,” said FOX’s Ms. Dander, “and the alleged ‘secret connection’ you supposedly shared with him have been the key to your electoral legitimacy—”

“Tomorrow, look, tomorrow, everyone—listen! I’m scheduled—I told you all at Hawk King’s funeral that I would be revealing the contents of Hawk King’s final papyrus, contents which will—”

“—a papyrus whose authenticity, given your molecular word-powers, will be impossible to prove, I’m sure,” said Jaylene Dander, who then shook the newspaper articles in the X-Man’s face. “But how do you rate your chances of being elected Director of Operations, Kareem, now that these extreme documents showing your extremist views have seen the light of day? How can you expect voters to trust a white-hating extremist?”

“How do I—I don’t hate white people! You just used the word ‘extreme’ or ‘extremist’ three times, you freaking Hyksos—”

Kareem spluttered to a stop while cameras clicked all over him like a plague of crickets.

“No kot-tam comment!” he yelled.

He shoved himself into the choke of reporters, trying to wedge his way back inside the grounds and through the gate. Blocked by photographers, he finally started shoving and cursing and got shoved back and cursed at, which made him counter-counter-shove and -curse. Every moment of it was immortalized in photographs and news video that soon would be beamed around the nation.

“You’d better back up off me, punks!” Kareem yelled, swinging blindly and punching a coiffed white reporter in the throat, knocking him to the ground gasping.

In the ensuing chaos, Kareem scrambled up the wrought-iron fence, but while clearing the top spikes, he snagged and ripped his pant legs with a cartoonishly extended tearing sound while he fell. He bounded back to the Squirrel Tree with his torn black trousers flapping like pirate flags while the cameras recorded every second of his ragged retreat.

When Distraction Becomes Destruction

Left unchecked, the quixotic and paranoid paradigm so typical of superheroes can become self-destructive at even the cellular level. In fact, the awesome psychic weight of believing that others depend on you for their very lives can be lethal. For instance, new mothers suffer from postpartum depression not only because of tectonic hormonal shifts, but because of the juggernaut realization that motherhood will be a lifelong, relentless burden of worry, moral (and mortal) responsibility, and embittering power struggles.

Iron Lass had labored as protectress for two thousand years, but the protector burden had finally crushed her immortal-immune response, giving rise to a lethally opportunistic infection from an otherwise minor attack. X-Man’s Herculean yoke was his Racialized Narcissistic Projection Neurosis—his irrational urge to view all phenomena as the effects of a vast, encompassing, imaginary “white power structure,” rather than recognizing the inherently orderless nature of human societies, the fundamental indifference (or seen another way, impartiality or justice) of the world, and the inescapable ennui that ultimately euthanizes all joy, satisfaction, and human connection.

When dysfunctional self-distraction devolves into delusional self-destruction, neurosis turns into psychosis. If Iron Lass and the X-Man could not discharge their neurotic need to be needed and their yearning for vengeance against nonexistent enemies (whether Menton or “the Man”), their psychotic mortiquaerotic (death-seeking) urges would seal their doom…and the F*O*O*J’s with it.

CHAPTER NINE

Paranoia: It Can Destroy Ya

MONDAY, JULY 10, 3:57 P.M.

XCommunication

It was the morning of the press conference, Kareem’s first statement to the press since the previous Wednesday’s shocking revelations. At the back of the Fortress of Freedom’s Hall of Proclamations, I was standing beside the Brotherfly looking at a veritable herd of journalists awaiting their chance to graze upon a fallen hero’s next words—perhaps the final words of his career.

While some of Kareem’s comrades had turned out to show their support, including attorney Tran Chi Minh, Original Fabulous Man, and the L*A*B’s Shango and the Player Hater, the absence of the majority of