Last weekend, my team publicly released Mr. Amazing on YouTube, a short film we shot at the end of 2020 on a budget that we scraped together with the change we found in the cushions of my couch. In a time when many us were trying to figure out what we were supposed to do with ourselves, a lot of really talented people came together to create a film that was better than I could have imagined.
With the help of an amazing artist and comic book aficionado, Tom Ryan, we also made a comic book that serves as a prelude to the film. We have developed a complete back story, outlined both a feature film and a television series, while continuing to develop a comic book narrative that is moving forward, albeit slowly.
The character has proven to be much more meaningful than I ever expected. I think about him all the time. Every time a see a lightning bolt flash through the sky, I smile and think “Mr. Amazing is here!”, since his power is electricity. In fact, I was on my way to sign copies of our first comic when an intense lightning storm shut down the airport and diverted me back home. I guess he didn’t feel like it was time yet.
Maybe now it is.
There is a photo of me, sitting in the bar that Mr. Amazing inhabits in our short film. I am wearing the last gift my step father ever gave me, basking in scenes that I thought only existed in my imagination. I remember the feeling in that moment, remembering the heroes that saved me, both real and imagined, and how perhaps I was finally on the way to finding the hero in me. At the time I knew a long journey was ahead of me, but I didn’t know how long, how hard or how beautiful it would prove to be.
When I was little my favorite movies were all Superman films. Back then, you didn’t really own movies, they were too expensive. You rented VHS tapes from the local video store. So, whenever we went, I made a beeline to the Superman section. By the time I was old enough to pay attention, there were 4 Superman movies: the first 3 Superman films and Supergirl. Every time we went, if I was given a choice, I would get whichever one was available, but I really loved Superman III. While the first two are much better films, I was a little kid and the goofier tone and the faster pace was much more aligned with my sensibilities.
Superman III featured a Superman corrupted by a type of kryptonite that makes him evil. There’s a scene where a now haggard looking Superman sits at a bar in Smallville drinking whiskey. A crowd gathers outside, calling him a bum. He shouts at them and turns to run off. A young fan of his, Ricky, is excited to see him because, despite Superman’s haggard appearance, he still sees the hero he remembers. Superman runs off, but Ricky shouts “You’re just in a slump! You’ll be great again!”. As Superman flies away, he hears Ricky’s voice echo in his head, driving him mad, until he literally must confront himself. When the good side of him, symbolized by Clark Kent, wins, he fully remembers who he is, rips open his shirt and the familiar John Williams score rises to meet our hero.
I loved that shit.
I loved it, because even as a four year old, I was keeping a dark secret, one that divided me against myself and made me feel like I was Clark Kent, battling the powerful, angry Superman inside of me.
A week before Thanksgiving in 1992, Superman died. I was 10 years old at the time, and though I loved Superman, I had never owned or collected Superman comic books. But this one, I had to have.
Nowadays anything that happens in comic books stays in that world. But, in 1992, the death of Superman was a big deal. I heard about it watching CNN Headline News before school (I was a weird kid). The anchor read the headline in a somber tone and explained “After a short series of issues covering his funeral, no further issues are planned.”
Superman, it seemed, was really about to die. For good.
I was emotionally affected. Superman had been the symbol of hope for me. I related to him, and he reminded me that despite this dark secret I still carried, it had not destroyed the hero inside of me. But now he was dying. What did that mean about me?
A week after Superman died in the comics, my family moved in with the real life Superman who would end up saving me, Lyn Taylor.
My mother was abusive to me in the most horrifying ways. Until she met Lyn. There was something about him. His patience, his kindness, his quiet certainty, his love for me, it all combined to form a kind of protective shield around me. Living with Lyn meant for the first time in my life I knew what safety felt like. I knew what love felt like. I knew the feeling of approaching a day with optimism instead of fear.
After we moved in with him, he made it his personal mission to help me find and collect every single one of the Superman dies comics. Saturday mornings were spent going around to newsstands and comic book shops until I had copies of the 7 issues that made up the full tale of his death. Once that was done, he took me to collect all 10 of the funeral issues. Then came Action Comics #500, an issue that DC refused to preview, The Return of Superman.
Superman’s return would not be straightforward. His adopted father, Jonathan Kent, has a heart attack and passes out in a field. In the afterlife, they meet each other and Jonathan tells him he must come back. Superman agrees, only as long as Jonathan comes with him. Jonathan awakes and says he’s alive. Around that time, 4 different Supermen appear across Metropolis.
For the next several months, an extended storyline followed the adventures of all of the Supermen as the reader attempted to figure out which one was actually real. Ultimately, one of them turns evil and attempts to take over the world, and the real Superman awakens, with reduced power in his Fortress of Solitude.
The story took nearly 9 months to complete, which meant weekly visits to the comic book shop with Lyn. He took almost no interest in the story, but seemed to bask in my enthusiasm, as I showed him the cool covers and told him about how the Cyborg Superman seemed like the most realistic Superman because the metal in his body was from Krypton, or how it could also be the Eradicator and how much I liked the cool sunglasses he wore.
After Superman had fully returned, albeit with long hair, in the most 90’s thing ever, I lost interest. His weekly adventures seemed so much less consequential. But by then, Lyn and I had found other activities to enjoy together. During the basketball season he’d drive me to practice or my games. When the summer arrived, we’d go out and play golf together in the 110 degree Tucson heat.
My mother had scared me into keeping her abuse of me a secret. I pushed those stories into the corners of my mind for fear of death. After a few years with Lyn, I thought I might never have to examine those corners again. My life was good. The secrets were buried. Perhaps a normal, maybe even a good, life awaited me.
The thing about buried secrets, about buried trauma, is it refuses to stay buried. Even if you don’t want to acknowledge it, especially if you don’t, it has a way of taking over. It did for me. My 20’s were an amazing set of oscillations from self-destruction to self-redemption and back again.
By the time I turned 19 years old, I had two sets of twins, under the age of 2 years old. I worked two manual labor jobs, before needing to be hospitalized from heat exhaustion. Then I figured out a way to get to college, taking 24 credits my first semester to accelerate my path toward graduation. Though I’d always wanted to be a writer, I finished with a degree in mathematics.
I got a job as a financial advisor right before I graduated and became one of the most productive first year advisors in the company, before being promoted to leadership. Shortly after, my wife and I divorced, and I fell headfirst into alcohol. When the dust settled, by career was gone, I had 3 consecutive DUI’s hanging over my head, which meant a felony in Nevada, and no hope for the future.
I went to AA and got sober. My ongoing sobriety was enough to convince the judge to let me off, combining two of my DUI’s into one and dropping one of them to reckless driving. After some traffic school, community service and paying some fines, I was going to be able to live a normal life. Within a few months I was back to being a financial advisor, I was working out 6 days a week and within a year I was making more money than I’d ever made.
Personally I was depressed. My relationships were a collection of toxic messes I continued to accrue, drawing people in and then pushing them away. Until after 8 years of sobriety and approaching the pinnacle of success in financial services, I dropped a grenade into my life and quit.
I still wanted to be a writer. But something held me back.
One year later, Lyn was dying. I realized I needed to confront it, so I made it a point to call him regularly and visit. I recorded conversations with him. I told him I loved him. I sat with him as he approached the end.
He hung on for much longer than we expected. The summer of 2020 were extremely painful and heart breaking. He couldn’t let go. I didn’t want him to go.
Then, on August 18th, 2020, my real life Superman died.
The night before I had intense dreams. I felt like something or someone wanted more from me. I woke up, unsure of what it was asking. I laid in my bed for a few moments trying to unpack what I was feeling, until the thought hit me.
I have to write.
I walked over my window and watched the sun coming up over Las Vegas. I stood in prayer or meditation, basking in the sun. I thought about Lyn, who had been on the verge of death for months but unable to go. I thought about how I needed to let him go. The thought echoed again.
I have to write.
I walked over to my normal chair, where I’d have my coffee and plan my day. The moment I sat down, my phone rang. It was my mother. She didn’t ever call this early. I knew before I answered exactly what she was going to say.
“Lyn died this morning.”
Okay, Lyn. I’ll write.
A month or so before, I had connected with the director and filmmaker, Ben Robertson. I’d told him I’d always wanted to write a film. We had talked through some ideas to make a short film. He picked one he liked the best and I told him I would work on a script, but I hadn’t gotten much done.
It was a superhero idea I called Mr. Amazing.
The next day I started and within a few weeks I had a script for a 30 minute short about a hero rediscovering his power.
When I wrote Mr. Amazing, the memories of my abuse were still buried deep down in the dark corners of my mind. It was so deep, that if you’d asked me about my childhood, I would have honestly told you that it was pretty normal. I had a hard time remembering most of it, at least the stuff that happened before Lyn came around. But, I didn’t think much of it. Intentionally.
I imagined Mr. Amazing as a superhero from around the time I was collecting comics, the mid 90’s. He had been struck by lightning as a kid, and then developed the power to control electricity. This allowed him to do most of the things that Superman could do, like use electromagnetism to fly, or zap bad guys the way Superman used his heat vision. He was also mostly invulnerable and his cells were impervious to aging.
He had gone into hiding after a villain darker than any villain in the comic books appeared, a wealthy financier, who liked to kidnap and sexually abuse children. After catching him, the Wall Street Slayer, as we he was called, got off because Mr. Amazing refused to reveal himself. Mr. Amazing, in a fit of rage, unable to tolerate that an evil man with enough money would be able to torture and abuse children, murders him. He immediately becomes the prime suspect and goes into hiding, giving up his powers and living his life as a civilian.
Until one night at the bar.
In other words, sexual abuse is the catalyst for Mr. Amazing to hide his power, to pretend to be something he’s not.
I had never written, because I didn’t believe in myself, because I was shrouded in shame. I was shrouded in shame, because of the sexual abuse I’d experienced as a child.
When I wrote the film, I hadn’t yet acknowledged that about myself.
A few years later, I decided to make a comic book about Mr. Amazing that would tell the story of Mr. Amazing right before he meets the Wall Street Slayer and “dies”. We created a fake cover for it, which featured corner art inspired by the early 90’s Superman comics. Since Superman died in issue #75, we called it The Electrifying Adventures of Mr. Amazing, #74.
It features a character called the Prophet, who carries around bottles of liquor that he lights on fire. He claims that his job is to burn things down, so Mr. Amazing will demonstrate his power and show the world he’s truly a God.
By the time I got the finished issue, my life was becoming increasingly difficult. I had made the choice to give up my lucrative and easy life as financial advisor to become a creative. Reading through the comic, it seemed like I might be both the Prophet and Mr. Amazing. Maybe I was burning my life down to show myself how truly powerful I am.
Or maybe I was just crazy.
Over Thanksgiving last year, Lyn was on my mind as he always was that time of year. A friend of mine asked if I would be willing to write a short script for another DC superhero, The Green Lantern. The Green Lantern meant a lot to him, it reminded him of his grandfather who had recently passed away.
I got a copy of the Green Lantern Secret Origins comic book and read through it. It turns out Hal Jordan, The Green Lantern, had been an Air Force Test Pilot. Lyn was in the Air Force and had always wanted to be a pilot. Hal’s true power was his ability to overcome fear. He had gained that power, not by his ring, but from confronting the death of his father.
I read the comic and wrote the script in a day.
We filmed the Green Lantern over a couple of days, with the change we scraped together from the cushions of our couches. The costume, developed and constructed by Christopher Rogers, looks better than any costume the Green Lantern has worn in any of his film adaptations. It quickly gathered attention as the costume and the actor that played Hal Jordan both looked perfect together. It looks like the big budget Green Lantern that fans have been waiting for.
The actor, Mark Justice, also happened to play another superhero that meant a lot to me: Mr. Amazing.
I figured that the fact that we were getting some attention suggested we should do what we can to promote our short film. I encouraged Ben to release it on YouTube, and figured I would write a short essay about why the character was so important to me.
I remembered how Superman had been the inspiration and then I remembered how much I loved the movies as a kid. I remembered how the abuse was just beginning and how I clung to Superman as a symbol of hope.
I also remembered how much I loved Superman III, a movie I hadn’t watched in several years.
In the Mr. Amazing short, a now adult fan of his sees him in the bar. He is excited to see him because, despite the fact that Mr. Amazing looks haggard and defeated, he still sees the hero he remembers. After a long conversation in which Mr. Amazing reveals why he went into hiding, the fan, Paul, tells him he’s still a hero if he chooses to be.
Mr. Amazing walks outside having confronted himself and sees a guy with a knife approaching a woman. He fully remembers who he is and turns, flashing with lightning as the score rises to meet our hero.
I love that shit.
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