Last semester, my students did a research project on Loaves and Fishes. Now, a semester too late, I find this electronic archive of quarterly newsletters from 2010 to 2017.

The post Loaves and Fishes Zine appeared first on Perfect Duluth Day.

So I sat around a table in the Intercultural Center at Lake Superior College, filling my belly with food from Zhong Hua and filling my heart with stories of people coming to Duluth. It was all part of “We are here. Hear us.”

The story prompts were cool. Maybe you’d like to respond to them below?

The next event will be held on Nov. 1 from 5 to 7 p.m. LSC will be hosting Tea Rozman, executive director of Green Card Voices, to hear her story. The Erickson Library and the Center for Equity and Inclusion, long solid partners for diversity initiatives at LSC, will help launch a month-long viewing of the Green Card Voices traveling exhibit.

Walk-ins are welcome, but LSC would appreciate folks signing up so they can be best prepared.  (Although extra food for me is always a plus. Maybe I can register twice for some tasty Chinese from my favorite place in West Duluth.)

The post Telling the Stories of Coming to Duluth at LSC appeared first on Perfect Duluth Day.

In 1999 I was living in Minneapolis, listening to the Legendary Pink Dots. In Duluth, Def Leppard was playing. The audio is available on the Internet Archive.

Concert date: Aug. 7, 1999

The post Def Leppard at the DECC Arena in 1999 appeared first on Perfect Duluth Day.

It was his 73rd birthday. He’d been taken into inpatient psychiatric care the night before, a phone call I had received while out at a bar with a group of friends. We were watching a Minneapolite musician, Dessa, play at Pizza Lucé in downtown Duluth. I liked Dessa’s music, but I really liked her writing. She’d detailed her experience rewiring her brain to forget a dangerous, almost obsessive love affair: the mechanics of love, told in poetry and electromagnetic imaging. Before the psychological intervention, she said, she had a kind of wild and inevitable connection to this man who could not be trusted with her heart. They were incendiary together, in good ways and not: a fire started with a glance, burning down the house with everyone inside. I’ve never had a love like that, but I could feel it anyway — her despair, her passion, and the terrible realization that whatever was happening in her was above or beneath her conscious mind, scratched into her whole brain. Every thought she had about anything traversed the rough path of that scratch — removing him from her heart was reductive: she needed to remove him from the apparatus of her Self, the thing that made her her.

I didn’t understand why this was so moving to me at the time, but now I do.

In the aftermath of my father’s death, I have tried to understand why I was so badly damaged by my relationship with him, the path of his dying, and his death. Obviously, the loss of a parent is a colossal thing: even as an adult, I inhabit the world my father built for me in so many ways. Some of the ways are destructive and poisonous, others are paradigmatic and foundational: this is how I love, this is who I love, this is what I mean by love. While I can describe each of these in voluble and granular detail, I find I cannot discern when what I am feeling is me, and when it is the familiar, rough terrain of one of the deep scratches left in my brain. What feels like instinct is not — instead it’s some wretched pattern of compensation, dressed like emotional regulation. Sometimes this is fine, and other times it’s disastrous: I either disappear from the moment, or I am frozen in it. I often feel as if I am standing stock still in the middle of some twelve-lane freeway while everything whips dangerously around me. In these moments, life becomes an impossible task.

I have devoured tomes of neurology information, watched hours of documentaries and videos, attended thousands of hours of therapy, trying to figure out what happened to my brain, and how to fix it. How do I rewire my own brain?

His birthday. That day, I resolved to bring him both cake and his birthday gifts. The first present, two pairs of sweatpants, purchased because the memory care unit staff had requested I provide him more pants, since his own were growing threadbare. How was that possible? I’d wondered at the time. I’d just bought him a stack of comfy trousers, and his own pants collection had been impressive when we moved him in, a little more than a year earlier. My father had always been such a dandy. He had a trove of impressive and well-tailored raiments when we’d moved him in. As a guy who could only traverse a 20-yard stretch of building, it seemed unlikely he’d been able to wear out the lot so quickly. Later I would learn that clothing in the memory care facility was tough to keep any kind of accounting for: my father would be in other folks’ pants, shirts, and sweaters (he was often wearing someone else’s reading glasses) most of the time, in spite of the labels on the inside of his garments. The staff was stretched to the point of apparent tensile failure: 15 residents to one staff person. That might make an acceptable teacher/student ratio, but all of the residents required advanced “cares,” the kind of help with activities of daily living that most able people take entirely for granted: help putting on clothing, toileting, washing, and eating. It seemed too much to ask that they also keep track of his wool henley, even though that sweater was the one he wore the first time he held his granddaughter. The thing about dying of Alzheimer’s is that 1,000 cuts doesn’t actually kill you. You can live through 10,000, maybe 100,000. It’s astonishing how much one person can suffer, actually, and not die.

I know the brain is a machine. I know we can trick it and fix it, and that Dr. David Eagleman, the brilliant leather-jacket neurologist, stands resolutely on a field of corpses from whose flesh he can find no material, scientific evidence any soul departed. He somewhat apologetically postulates that consciousness is entirely produced by the construct of the brain itself. The ever-changing accumulation of items from the earth gives rise to the body, the brain, and that gives rise to the self, consciousness, perhaps what we call the soul. Eagelman points to neurological damage and disease to support his hypothesis: damage the brain, and the Self — what Eagelman describes as the “unique, personal experience” of being you — is damaged. I think about the way Alzheimer’s kills the brain by making tiny holes throughout: At first, the clever brain just wires around the damage, circumventing the missing tissue. But eventually, the holes are too numerous, and the brain cannot wire around the ghastly lattice that is the remaining tissue. This is when symptoms are evident, and when people are typically diagnosed: when the brain is already extensively damaged. 10,000 cuts, and just getting started.

The second present was a warm blanket — he’d been suffering from insomnia his entire life, but now he was waking and complaining of being cold. The idea of him shivering, awake and alone in that place was unendurable: he was not my child, but he also was. I bought him a ridiculous blanket — a gigantic fluff of a thing. It was heavy and red plaid, and I rolled it into a kind of immense burrito shape before encapsulating it in metallic red paper, adorned with silver stars and green trees. My father’s birthday was December 1, so, like me (December 28), every birthday gift was possibly a Christmas gift, and vice versa. He’d always said he didn’t mind, but then again, so had I. Perhaps we both were lying. But now, I was certain he wouldn’t mind, because he wouldn’t remember.

When he first got sick, he did inexplicable things, like wash his dishes with his fingertips and cold water, forgoing dish soap or anything resembling a sanitary process. He left his tool box open in the middle of the living room floor, inches from his crawling grandchild, who could — and did — easily reach the open razor scraper sitting atop the pile of tools. He used an electric heater to prevent his gas line from freezing, and kept his bacon in the built-in egg-caddy in his refrigerator. He was never a steadfast or predictable man, but he was entirely competent: he rebuilt every house we lived in as children, by himself.

The third present was a small stuffed bear, big enough to embrace, and impossibly soft. This, I reasoned, would be great to have during his geriatric inpatient psychiatric stay at the facility in Mille Lacs, where he’d be for at least two weeks while the medical team there attempted to figure out how to stop him from attacking other people in the memory care unit. The last attack — the reason for the call during the Dessa show, and the subsequent in-patient psych unit stay at the hospital until the transfer to Mille Lacs could be coordinated — the last one was especially terrible. He’d almost killed someone: an 80+ year-old woman, confined to a wheelchair. He’d come up behind her, shoved her wheelchair face-forward into the wall, and then hoisted her back toward his chest by the collar of her sweatshirt, closing off her airway. She came as close to asphyxiation as a person can come.

No one knew why he’d done it — they weren’t fighting, and unlike the other people my father had attacked, had no historic beef betwixt them. I’d have to explain all of this to the geriatric psychiatric team, of course: as his daughter, I was an important reporter of his history before this disease: had he been violent? Was this out of character? The answers to those questions were confoundingly yes and yes — a complicated answer for a complicated man. I hoped I’d get the same intake person I’d had the previous two times my dad had been sent to the MIlle Lacs geriatric psychiatric unit. Reflecting on that, I realized that I’d only ever heard the aphorism “third time’s the charm” said ruefully.

The last gift was a slice of cheesecake, topped with cherry syrup and chocolate drizzle. My dad loved cheesecake, in really any form, as part of his near-legendary love for all things sweet. Before he was sick he’d come visit me and my sister, and he would decimate the confectionery of our houses, leaving just one or two of any cookie, a bite or so of ice cream, or the thinnest sliver of cake. He would consume entire vats of whipped cream, whole tubs of frosting, jars of maraschino cherries, and once, famously, two entire packages of Teddy Grahams cookies. He had laughed hard when I inquired as to the fate of the Teddy Grahams cookies in question. “They’re actually delicious. I’ll get you more.” He didn’t, but when I repurchased them, I tentatively consumed one, checking to see if they were, in fact, irresistibly delicious: they were not. This had made me smile from ear to ear — my father, bewitched by these weird little biscuits, hoovering them up while the rest of the household — including the small child for whom they had been originally purchased — lay sleeping, unawares.

On his birthday, I sat in my car in the parking lot of St. Luke’s, talking to Christine, the intake coordinator for Mille Lacs. She was not the same person I spoke with before, so she had to ask all of the important, but impertinent-feeling questions of me a third time.

Christine was terrifically compassionate, and incredibly knowledgeable. The next time my father almost killed someone, I told myself, I would hope to get Christine. She explained that my father’s history made it likely he’d need to move to a kind of higher level of psychopharmaceutical intervention, having Alzheimered his way beyond the reach of gentler solutions, like Celexa and fish oil. Now, because of how often he’d become violent, he’d need medications to control his behavior that came with what the pharmaceutical community refers to as “black box warnings,” warnings that include death in their list of possible outcomes. She said that, to my father, it would feel like he’d had three beers, all the time. We agreed that this was probably great for my dad, whose ideal state was “guy who’s just finished three beers.” She explained that he would be very different on the new medication. “If you can, spend time with him now, before he comes to us.” It sunk in over repetition: the father I had right now wasn’t coming back.

Sitting in my car, his pile of gifts on the seat next to me, I felt only the rush of blood to my head, the tingling report of my nerves. I moved the cheesecake from the dashboard to the seat, covering it with one of the gifts, to keep the chocolate from melting. I remember these things like little, vivid tableaus, like my mind wants to somehow drown out the scorch of anguish and grief behind the glistening sweat on the cheesecake’s narrow chocolate piping.

I made my way to his room in the hospital. He was dozing on the bed, in a blue and white hospital gown. He was no longer restrained — I understood he had been, earlier, when they first brought him in, before they had sedated him with medication — which was a relief. Although I had seen him restrained with the thin ecru woven straps the hospital used for such necessities many times, it was a kind of dagger-sharp agony to see, every time.

He was, as always, so manifestly happy to see me.

This is a memory I come back to, a moment that happened over and over, when I’d enter whatever room he was in. His face, gray and haggard with too much time indoors and the slack, confused expression with which the disease had replaced his clever, animated one. Suddenly, he’d see me, and when his eyes alighted on mine, he would break into an enormous smile, his eyes sparkling wildly with pure and evident joy. The look of complete delight on his face would transform the whole room around him.’

“Hey, Dad.” I said. As always, I was simultaneously so sad, and so relieved to see him.

“Hi, hon,” he said. He held out his hand, and I grasped it. I sat next to him on a chair, and dropped the gifts and cheesecake on the tray in front of him. He immediately reached for one of the gifts — the blanket burrito — which made me laugh. I had long abandoned any sort of traditional order to our visits — if he wanted to eat his pie before his chipped beef, fine. If he only wanted pie for dinner, so be it. He was dying. Let him sing along to Simon & Garfunkel while he colored pictures of trees and ate successive glazed donuts. Death is so radically exegetic: in a moment, standing in the shadow of it, all of the artifice and machinations we wrap protectively around ourselves to shield us from the inevitable unjustness of death just fall away. There we are, clinging to each other like two monkeys in the rain, realizing that none of our contrivances matter, none of them protect us. Eat the donut, hold my hand, stay with me. The end.

He began to turn the package over in his hands, a wry expression quirking his lips. My father had never, in the whole of my life, simply opened a goddamned present: he always made an elaborate, ridiculous game of it. Maybe he’d take a bite of the wrapping paper, tossing sardonic guesses as to the package’s content while he shook and smashed the gift: Is it a book? He’d ask, handling a precisely-wrapped bottle of whiskey. Is it a new car? We’d be giggling furiously, captivated and entertained, until at last, he’d painstakingly unwrap the gift.
As my father turned the gift over in his hands in that hospital room, he slowly hoisted the package in one hand, like it was a swollen Christmas football. He made noises like a quarterback, counting down to “hut.” I smiled. Dad held the gift up to one ear, like a hilariously cartoony phone, and muttered, “hullo?” Then he held the package in front of his face, and his eyes drifted away, the way they did when he was stuck somewhere inside of his mind.

Alzheimer’s is such a confounding and miserable disease. I thought about Eagleman’s damaged brain / damaged mind theory, and contrasted it with what I saw: one moment, my dad would be lost, the distance between him and himself expansive and hazy, like he had sunk deep into the murky water of his mind, and couldn’t get to the surface. I could always see it in his eyes: they were empty, as though he’d somehow disappeared, the man sitting before me like some copy of my actual father — a fantastic automaton. And then, he’d fight his way back, and was right there, behind his eyes. He could never hang on to that state — it was like an unstable connection between his soul and his body — but when he would surface, it was him. Not a part of him, but him, himself.

“Dad?” I leaned forward, touching his hand. He stared fixedly at the present, touching the shape of one piece of Scotch Tape, tracing a wrinkle in the small rectangle, over and over. “Dad, it’s your birthday. You can open it. It’s for you.” We sat in silence for a while, me waiting for him to come back, and him rubbing the wrinkle in the tape.

“Dad, I have to talk to you.” He looked at me, and he slowly came back, adopting his “serious talk” face. “Dad, do you know why you’re here?” I asked. “In the hospital?” He met my eyes.

“I broke people.” He replied, simply. He looked discomfited and meek. I hated it. I shook my head.

I was at a loss. As always, this confounding responsibility to explain to him what was happening. My typical impulse to soften everything like I normally did was utterly tantalizing, a cruel and simple pear on an unreachable branch. I did the rapid thought loop that I’d done a thousand times before. Tell him the same two-truths-and-a-lie that I’d recounted repeatedly: he had Alzheimer’s but it wasn’t that bad, tell him he was intrinsically worthwhile — a person with Alzheimer’s — tell him how big a difference he made in our lives … he could still receive these things and be moved or comforted by them. He believed me, when I said them. That the disease wouldn’t let any of these things endure in his mind, that he perseverated on just the most dismal and despairing of ruminations and concerns made every conversation fraught, iterative, relegated to this new quotidian gallows appeal for spare ounces of joy.

I involuntarily filled with exhaustion and despair in those moments, like those commercials in which a paper towel wicks up blue liquid. I imagine myself consumed by the advancing blue, sitting swollen and saturated, like a bleak and disconsolate Violet Beauregard.

I started out telling him what was going to happen next, what to expect when the world has ended, but you must still stay in it. It emerged as some calcified procedural litany: first the ambulance, then the doctor, this clinic, that clinic, the home, the medicine, his body, his body, his broken body. Was his mind broken? Was his soul broken? Was his mind part of his body? I tore my brain apart for any answer — not just to comfort myself, but so that I could understand what I was losing, what he was losing, what was happening. I wanted to tell him the truth, but I didn’t know what it was.

I was frozen in the 12-lane freeway. So, I told him what I knew: that he was going to take medicine that might kill him, but it would stop him from hurting other residents of the home. He had to take the medicine, I explained, because he had to have a place to live, because he had Alzheimer’s disease, and he was really, really sick. He was dying.

He listened intently while I spoke, and my confounded heart began to collapse inside of me, like some horrendous event horizon that would engulf me, then my father, then this fucking hospital, then the whole world. I started sobbing, ridiculous, wracking, gasping convulsions, like a caricature of lament. I was only grief, manifest.

Scientists of many feathers have long wondered whether or not emotional memories and trauma are stored in the body, in much the same way memories are stored in the brain: a repeated pattern of electrical activity, called into motion by the act of recollecting. Memories, modern neurology asserts, are less like closets full of old sweaters we go and pull out to examine. Remembering is more like reassembling a replica of the electrical signals we experienced when the event occurred. This is why our memory is so fallible: the bus was blue in the world, but in our memory, it is green. We are not perfect machines. So, this freeze-frame electrical pattern might extend into the body, in the fascia, particularly. This memory is particularly acute and complex for pain — physical or emotional. When we are hurt, pain scientists assert, our brains make no real distinction between physical pain and emotional pain. All of the pain of the moment is encoded in our memory, associated and stored together. We learn from pain: we learn to protect ourselves from the things that have caused us injury — physical or emotional. To do this, we experience a sense of danger when we think we’re again in the same situation in which we were previously injured. This is a very complicated thing, in the case of emotional injury, because, without explanation or warning, we can find ourselves feeling deeply unsafe or retraumatized by events or circumstances resembling our actual emotional trauma. Herein lies one way to carve those deep scratches into a mind: repeated experience of the feeling of the trauma can make more and more situations — everyday, safe, ordinary situations — feel desperately dangerous. If the feeling, for example, is an acute feeling of helplessness, even lesser moments of feeling helpless can activate the original trauma. The molehill resembles the mountain, so the molehill is the mountain. The brain, in order to keep us alive, responds to danger by preparing us to flee or fight, and by sending pain, so we do not again repeat whatever hurt us before. Sometimes, this experience is almost unbearable. Sometimes, it is unbearable.

My father reached out and shoved the small table aside and grabbed my arm. He pulled me to his chest, and wrapped his arms entirely around me, like I was a child. In that moment, I was. He crushed me to him, and for a moment, the smell of him, the feel of his arms around me stopped the spinning, creating an entirely safe, quiet, gentle space. He began talking, and although he spoke in word salad, a collection of made-up or random words, I knew exactly what he meant. He was telling me that life dealt people as much good as bad, that nothing was fair. He was telling me that he was sorry I was hurting, and that he was okay. He was okay with it all. He knew he was dying and it was shit, but he was going to do it anyway, and I didn’t need to worry.

Eventually, he released me. I stopped crying, and we opened the last of his gifts. He grew tired, and I covered him in his ridiculous plaid blanket, tucked his plush stuffed bear under his arm, kissed his forehead, and left.

I thought about Dessa, pulling her mind apart and putting it back together again, the pathological love reduced to a nostalgic recollection placed in its spot in the order of her life. The habituated scratches shallower than the healthier new neural networks. Eagleman talks a great deal about habituation and the way a brain is “livewired,” ever-changing in response to experience and stimuli, and I wondered, how was I meant to reconcile or even navigate the paradoxical network of scratches in my own brain: that this man was the safest place for me to go when I was terrified, and that this man was one of the main reasons I was terrified?

My father never stopped recognizing me. He never stopped trying to talk to me, and I never stopped understanding him: assembling his tone, his posture, his gesticulation. The times he disappeared lengthened, and the times he emerged more harrowing. I didn’t and still don’t understand it. The days leading up to his death, he was unable to open his eyes, but he recognized our voices, clutching and squeezing our hands just like he always had. The last time he told me he loved me was weeks before he died. I had read him a chapter of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and then talked at length to him and the caregiver who facilitated the conversation. I told him I loved him, and he said it back, like it was the simplest thing in the world. Like it was any day before this fucking thing happened.

I recently listened to a talk Eagleman did with Sadhguru, a renowned Indian yoga guru and spiritual leader. The conceit of the talk was the vast delta between Eagleman and Sadhguru regarding the nature of consciousness: Eagleman as the scientist straight man, all neurons and material, and Sadhguru as the mystic, handwaving at the numinous. I wanted them to talk directly about why brain damage alters consciousness, the self. But they didn’t — they somehow could never quite get to the same lexicon, instead gently circling any number of other wildly important questions about the human experience. But I was left in stasis, my mind oscillating back and forth between this knowledge of human neurology and my experiences with my father. I wondered if my hope was protectively coloring my perception: would I survive discovering that all we are is that changing assemblage of things harvested from the earth, which give rise to our consciousness, and then see it mutate and disappear with every lost synapse? This, to me, is unbearable: that what my father suffered was about nothing, for nothing, and at the end, he was simply gone.

It’s been a year and a half since he died, and it’s still impossible for me to wrap my head around it. The only thing that has changed is that he is dead. I believe that I will never stop missing him, and never stop trying to get over the mess that loving him so dearly made in my mind. My mind, my most precious refuge. My mind cannot be an impossible place for me to inhabit. I have to find some way to understand this, release it, and move forward, not just without the pain, but the memory of the pain convoluting the world around and inside of me. My own feelings cannot be dangerous to me.

Last week I was leaving a downtown business, and another woman matched my stride down the stairs to the street. She introduced herself, since we’d become de facto walking companions, and she began to share her story. She’d been in a freak accident and sustained a traumatic brain injury. For two years she couldn’t leave her bed. Her prognosis was utterly grim. I nodded soberly, contemplating the horror of such an experience, mourning the pain she endured with her as we walked. “I’m back now. I’m back,” she said. “But for two years it was like I was locked in my own brain. I couldn’t get out, and couldn’t make my brain do what I wanted it to.” While she described her experience, I pictured her Self in a jar inside her brain, trapped like a lightning bug. I thought of my father, of course, and of the day he died.

The moment I heard he was dead, I knew exactly where he was. He was sitting at the head of the LeConte Glacier, somewhere dangerous and devastatingly beautiful, eating a tube of Braunschweiger and drinking a beer. He knew with certainty, for the first time in his entire life, how profoundly and thoroughly he was loved. He could trust it, feel it, in the fabric of himself. Amidst the complex agony and relief of that day, nothing brought me more comfort than that image, and the absolute certainty that it was real. I felt him out there on that glacier. I feel him still. I think I always will.

The post His Body appeared first on Perfect Duluth Day.

Lakeside Presbyterian Church was founded in 1890 and the building shown in this undated postcard went up at 4430 McCulloch St. in 1921, replacing the church’s previous building there.

The caption on the back reads:

Lakeside Presbyterian Church
45th Avenue East and McCulloch Street
Duluth, Minnesota
“Advancing the cause of Christ in the Lakeside area of Duluth since 1890.”

The post Postcard from Lakeside Presbyterian Church appeared first on Perfect Duluth Day.

Duluth’s Blake Shippee has a solo album titled It All Started from a Whisper. The second music video release is directed by Shane Nelson.

Shippee has some heavy background on the song:

When I was 17 my Dad committed suicide. It was during the early summer of ’95 as I was entering my senior year of high school.

As a child my mom and dad had always been divorced, but my dad was always around and loving to us kids. He was a big part of my life growing up. During the last year of his life, he lost everything he owned. He started living out of his car, or with my older Brother in Minneapolis. It all happened so fast. He became severely depressed. I remember reaching out to my high school counselor as I was scared for him and wanted to know if there was something I could do. I remember her saying that I could have him committed, which she had to explain to me what that meant. I wasn’t mentally able to do that, and a month later he had died.

As you can imagine, it was a traumatic experience. I held a tremendous amount of resentment. Now, 27 years later I have just started to reconcile with it all. As I’ve gotten older, I can see how difficult life can be, despite feeling like the luckiest man I know.

The below video is the last track on this album, mostly because I can’t think of another track coming after it. It’s my cathartic release to this experience. It features Shanna and both my girls as they play the family of the suffering husband/father.

Thank you to Eric Pierson for playing the struggling father, as I would not have been capable. A loving thanks to Shanna and my two sweet little pieces of Heaven, Emma Lou and Ava Lee for supporting Dad’s music. Big Bear Hug to my forever bud Shane Nelson for producing this video, he’s amazing. And I would like to give a serious amount of gratitude to the very talented Dave Mehling for producing this track. The song itself might be the best song I’ve ever been lucky enough to write, but Dave helped make it more than I thought it could be.

If you know someone who struggles. Be there for them, love them.

I love you Dad, and I forgive you.

Audio Production
Written by: Blake Shippee
Track Production: Dave Mehling
Engineered: Flip Arkulary
Mastered: Huntley Miller
Guitar/Vocals: Blake Shippee
Keyboard/Effects: Dave Mehling
Pedal Steel: Dave Slattery
Drums: Rick Bruner
Bass: Matt Prois

Video Production
Directed by: Shane Nelson
Produced by: Molly Worre
Post Production: Omni-Fusion.com
Middle Aged Man: Eric Pierson
Wife: Shanna Aldrich
Lasers: Laser Encore
Laser Operator: John Schmidt
Cinematography: Jake Velander
Assistant Camera: Tim Schrader
Gaffer: Tiberius Jay
Grip: Ben Katz
Art Department: Carrie Bush
Hair & Makeup: Ora Jewell-Busche
Production Assistant: Jay Choi
Production Assistant: Hope Wright
Set Intern: Mackenzie D. Hughes
Drone: Nick Karnuth
Location: Pequaywan Lake
Camera: GetSprig.co & Josh Becker
Grip & Electric: Tasty Lighting
Edit & VFX: Shane Rock Nelson

The post Shippee – “Moonlight” appeared first on Perfect Duluth Day.

A look at the fall colors and the general peacefulness of the season in Downer Park, a 17-acre undeveloped space in Duluth’s Woodland neighborhood.

In its series The Slice, WDSE-TV presents short “slices of life” that capture the events and experiences that bring people together and speak to what it means to live up north.

The post The Slice: Fall Colors at Downer Park appeared first on Perfect Duluth Day.

I’m plunking about in the Archive.org site, and this video shows the Duluth harbor as a dystopian nightmare of smoke at about 2:30.

What an amazing transformation how we fuel our ships and how we imagine our port.

The post OMG, that’s a lot of smoke in this video appeared first on Perfect Duluth Day.

Meet the Candidates offers up to five minutes for candidates on the Duluth General Election ballot to speak to their platforms.

All candidates for U.S Representative District 8, Minnesota Senate District 8, Minnesota State Representative Districts 8A and 8B, St. Louis County Auditor-Treasurer and St. Louis County Sheriff races for the Nov. 8 election were invited to make a presentation for cablecast on Public Access Channel 180.  Recorded and produced in the PACT-TV Studio.

The participating candidates are:

Jen Schultz
Jen McEwen
Art Johnston
Liz Olson
Becky Hall
Alicia Kozlowski
Nancy Nilsen
Gordon Ramsay

The post Meet the Candidates: Duluth General Election 2022 appeared first on Perfect Duluth Day.

The latest reference to Duluth in song comes from Maya Hawke, daughter of actors Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke. She released her second album, Moss, in September. The song “Sweet Tooth” mentions an empty theater in Duluth around the 30-second mark.

Saw a movie everybody hated
in an empty theater in Duluth
Swear I really loved it
Love is such a better thing to do

The post Maya Hawke – “Sweet Tooth” appeared first on Perfect Duluth Day.

Who are they? Where are they? When was this? The only clues come from a few scribbles on the back of the photo.

There is a reference to 37th Avenue West, which leads to the notion that maybe the photo was shot in the vicinity of the ore docks and the Wheeler and Wade athletic complexes. There is also the name Ove Olsen.

The post Mystery Photo: Duluth Home Builders appeared first on Perfect Duluth Day.

https://www.duluthnewstribune.com/news/local/transformation-of-duluth-jail-into-apartment-building-nears-completion

The Duluth News Tribune reports that remodeling of the former St. Louis County Jail is near completion. It is expected to open in January as a 33-unit apartment building named Leijona, the Finnish word for lion.

The post Former St. Louis County Jail renamed Leijona appeared first on Perfect Duluth Day.

Get your spooky on with this week’s quiz about upcoming Halloween events! For more seasonal hijinks, check out the Halloween filter on the PDD calendar.

The next PDD quiz will review this month’s headlines; it will be published on Oct. 30. Submit question suggestions to Alison Moffat at aklawite@d.umn.edu by Oct. 26.

Results

You are SPOOKY good at trivia! Bravo!

Better luck next time!

#1 Jody Kujawa curated a month of horror flicks—including a secret family-friendly movie on Oct 29— for this theater.

Greenstone Cinema

West Theater

Marcus Lakes 10

Zinema 2

Check out the lineup on the Zinema’s website.

#2 Touted as “Minnesota’s newest haunted attraction,” Hellwig Hollow is located in this unincorporated community.

Twig

Cotton

Canyon

Wolf

Find out more about Hellwig Hollow on their website.

#3 In addition to their traditional superstition flashlight tours, this museum will also host two haunted Halloween parties on Oct. 29: one for kids, and one for grownups.

Fairlawn Mansion

Lake Superior Railroad Museum

Glensheen Mansion

Duluth Children's Museum

Learn more about Fairlawn’s spooky events on the Superior Public Museums website.

#4 Which local crooner will sing “all the classic horrifying hits” followed by a screening of House on Haunted Hill?

Luke Moravec

Todd Eckart

Alan Sparhawk

Israel Malachi

Learn more about Eckart’s Halloween Spooktacular here.

#5 This local business will host its third annual Great Pumpkin Hunt on Oct. 29.

Whole Foods Co-Op

Duluth Pottery

Lake Superior Art Glass

Bent Paddle Brewing Co.

Learn more the Great Pumpkin Hunt on the Lake Superior Art Glass website.

#6 Which brewery will host a Halloween bash with a mystical market and music by Big Wave Dave and the Ripples?

Blacklist Brewing Co.

Bent Paddle Brewing Co.

Ursa Minor Brewing

Earth Rider Brewery

Learn more about Earth Rider’s Halloween Bash here.

#7 Where will you find a Brainzz trivia event and spooky tours on Oct. 21?

Dovetail Cafe

Pizza Luce

The Depot

Teatro Zuccone

The Depot website has more on the Brainzz event here.

#8 A grand opening of this magical workspace will take place on Oct. 23.

The Village Witch

Lady Ocalat's Emporium

Namaste Gifts and Healing

Reiki Moon

Learn more on the Northwoods Witch website.

#9 Which site will host its annual “scarium” Oct. 25-27?

Great Lakes Aquarium

Lake Superior Estuarium

Marshall W. Alworth Planetarium

Nopeming Sanatorium

Find out more about the event on the Great Lakes Aquarium website.

#10 Heiko Edwardson is organizing a show called “Halloween is for Monsters” at this venue.

NorShor Theatre

Jade Fountain

Clyde Iron Works

Pizza Luce

Find out more details about the show on the Facebook event.

finish

The post PDD Quiz: Halloween Happenings 2022 appeared first on Perfect Duluth Day.

As promised following the initial coverage of the St. Louis County Sheriff race in the primary election, the embedded PDF below contains in-depth interviews with the two remaining candidates, Jason Lukovsky and Gordon Ramsay, about issues that are important to LEAN Duluth. The Law Enforcement Accountability Network is a volunteer-run data-analysis group and public communications resource for organizers working for police accountability.

The hour-long interviews were recorded, and transcripts were generated using a transcription application. In the following analysis, LEAN tried its best to represent the candidates’ larger points. Quotes were edited for length and clarity, with every intention of retaining their meaning and representing the candidates accurately. Full transcripts and audio recordings are available at leanduluth.org.

https://www.perfectduluthday.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/LEAN-Duluth-St.-Louis-County-Sheriff-Candidate-Interviews-2022-General-Election-1.pdf

The post Know Your Candidates: 2022 County Sheriff Race appeared first on Perfect Duluth Day.

Videographer Adam Jagunich captures the fall colors around Enger Tower in Duluth via his Yuneec Typhoon H Plus hexacopter.

The post Video: Fall Colors at Enger Park appeared first on Perfect Duluth Day.

Dick Anthony of Duluth made popcorn in his basement circa 1952 for distribution to local stores, where it was sold in dispensers. The video clip is from the television series “Industry on Parade,” which was created by the National Association of Manufacturers and ran from 1950 to 1960.

According to Anthony’s obituary in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, he moved to Duluth in 1948 and worked as a journalist, news director and on-air personality at KDAL radio and television for 23 years and for six more years at WDSM radio and KBJR TV.

A film of three full episodes of “Industry on Parade” is available on the Internet Archive and is embedded below.

The post Dick Anthony: Basement Popcorn Entrepreneur of Duluth appeared first on Perfect Duluth Day.

Climate>Duluth host Tone Lanzillo interviews Kat Soares of Deep Adaptation Forum, which offers free events and online platforms for people who are seeking and building supportive communities to face the reality of the climate crisis.

The post Climate>Duluth: Kat Soares of Deep Adaptation Forum appeared first on Perfect Duluth Day.

The folks at the Voyageurs Wolf Project keep rolling out the hits with their trail camera videos. Above, clips of the chubbiest bears in Voyageurs National Park this summer. Below, rare footage of wolves eating blueberries — and perhaps the first footage of a mom and her pup foraging for blueberries together.

The post Big, fat black bear montage / wolves eating blueberries appeared first on Perfect Duluth Day.

“The bridge between Duluth and Superior” appears at just after the 1-minute mark in the circa-1957 short film Al-Can Trailer Trek, which promotes trailer traveling. After the quick bridge shot, zoom, it’s straight to International Falls.

This bridge is the Duluth/Superior Interstate Bridge, which was replaced when the Blatnik Bridge opened in 1961. Parts of the Interstate Bridge still exist as a fishing pier on Rice’s Point.

Below is the six seconds of bridge film slowed down by the PDD AV squad.

The post ‘The bridge between Duluth and Superior’ appeared first on Perfect Duluth Day.

Ten years ago today — Oct. 11, 2012 — the Scottish alternative rock band Admiral Fallow performed on KEXP-FM in Seattle, Wash. What does that have to do with Duluth? Well, note the familiar-looking shirt worn by singer-songwriter Louis Abbott.

There isn’t really a clear shot of it until the 10:28 mark in the video, but at that point it becomes clear he’s wearing a Fitger’s Brewhouse El Niño India Pale Ale T-shirt.

The post Admiral Fallow and El Niño IPA appeared first on Perfect Duluth Day.

Ojibwe homesteads, shipwrecks and working class haunts provide just some of the backdrops for works honored by this year’s Northeastern Minnesota Book Awards.

Ten books were selected by NEMBA judging teams from five categories: poetry, fiction, nonfiction, memoir and children’s literature. Lake Superior Writers began the nomination process in early 2022, seeking submissions that substantially represent the history, culture, heritage or lifestyle of northeastern Minnesota.

Founded in 1988, NEMBA has honored authors, publishers, poets, photographers and illustrators for more than three decades, first by the Kathryn A. Martin Library at the University of Minnesota Duluth, and since 2021 by Lake Superior Writers. This is the first year LSW has coordinated the awards, combining books published in 2020 and 2021.

A complete list of nominees for the 2022 NEMBA Awards is posted at lakesuperiorwriters.org/nemba.

POETRY

Winner
Jayson Iwen
Roz & Blud (University of Arkansas Press)
Using haunting, sometimes jarring, juxtapositions of images and stories set in western Duluth and Superior, Iwen presents the working-class lives of an old man and a young woman in an interwoven narrative that echoes back and forth across the St. Louis Bay. The two protagonists never meet, yet their experiences and histories mesh in unexpected and sometimes transcendent ways against a backdrop of urban decay surrounded by the austere beauty of Lake Superior.

Honorable Mention
Peggy Trojan
PA (Kindle Direct Publishing)
Trojan’s poems are simply and plainly articulated, deeply touching and satisfying in their descriptions of a man’s life and times. The collection begins “[m]y father never gets the hang of being dead,” then proceeds to demonstrate that proposition through poems based on memories of the places, people, and everyday objects that shaped him.

FICTION

Winner
Chris Stark
Carnival Lights (Modern History Press)
Stark guides the reader through generations of Indigenous history and wisdom from the stories of an extended Ojibwe family, offering a kaleidoscope of despair and solace. As the novel spirals toward its dizzying and terrible conclusion, Stark’s beautiful prose confronts vital issues.

Honorable Mention
Thomas Peacock
The Wolf’s Trail: An Ojibwe Story, Told by Wolves (Holy Cow! Press)
The Wolf’s Trail takes readers from the beginning of time to the migration of both Ojibwe and the wolf from the Eastern shores of the United States to the Gitchee Gumee, then on to summer powwows, community gatherings and ceremonies. In our journey, we learn the values of the Ojibwe: wisdom, Zaagi’idiwin (love), respect, bravery, honesty, humility, and truth.

NONFICTION

Winner
Tony Dierckins
Duluth: An Urban Biography (Minnesota Historical Society Press)
Centered around the influence of Lake Superior, highlighted by cultural sidebars, and woven together with impactful and infamous historic incidents, Dierckins tells the layered history of Duluth. Thorough research and an approachable writing style combine for a nimble 170 year summary of the Zenith City.

Honorable Mention
Linda LeGarde Grover
Gichigami Hearts: Stories and Histories from Misaabekong (University of Minnesota Press)
This scrapbook of family stories, poetry, and Ojibwe myth, Gichigami Hearts tells the history of Misaabekong, the Point of Rocks, now known as Duluth. Readers are immersed in the Ojibwe worldview and legacy.

MEMOIR

Winner
Lee Radzak with Curt Brown
The View from Split Rock: A Lighthouse Keeper’s Life (Minnesota Historical Society Press)
The View from Split Rock is a recollection of the author’s family’s 36 years of living and working at Split Rock Lighthouse, with stories that reveal personal, professional, and historical perspectives. The authors provide a shining example of how a unique natural landscape and its associated responsibilities can shape the character of individuals.

Honorable Mention
David Backes
A Private Wilderness: The Journals of Sigurd F. Olson (University of Minnesota Press)
Fans of Sigurd Olson might be surprised his personal struggles and self-doubt in A Private Wilderness, a collection of his annotated journal entries from 1930 into the 1940s. Author David Backes provides insightful context and analysis, as well as historically significant images.

CHILDREN’S LITERATURE

Winner
Thomas Peacock (author), Anna Granholm (illustrator)
The Fire (Black Bears and Blueberries Publishing)
The Fire recounts the experience of Elizabeth (Betty) Gurno, a Fond du Lac Reservation elder. When the Fire of 1918 approached, the Ojibwe community worked together to keep all the people and animals safe in the river, through a long, scary night. This thoughtful, detailed picture book can be enjoyed by all ages and is an important addition to the historical narrative of a major event in state history.

Honorable Mention
Kathy Groth
Sunken: Shipwrecks of Lake Superior (Lake Superior Publishing)
This engaging, comprehensive study of shipwrecks of Lake Superior is packed with information, pictures, and maps to entice young readers. Its two main characters interact with a magical map to explore many vessels that came to rest beneath the big lake. A great addition to a personal, classroom, or school library, and the perfect companion for a circle tour of Lake Superior.

The post Northeastern Minnesota Book Award Winners for 2022 appeared first on Perfect Duluth Day.

Duluth’s Blake Shippee, known for his work as front man of the bands Boxcar and Glen’s Neighbor, has a solo album set for release Oct. 12. His new music video is for a song about anxiety. It’s directed by Richard Medek of Bones & Wire. Familiar scenes in the video include the West Theater and Pizza Lucé.

The post Shippee – “Jolene” appeared first on Perfect Duluth Day.

Oopsy Annie tells spooky tales from her recent visit to Duluth — featuring ghostly tales from Fitger’s, Old Central and Glensheen.

The second video doesn’t maintain the “spooky” theme, but does delve into murder most foul.

The post Spooked in Duluth appeared first on Perfect Duluth Day.

Penny Perry talks about cleaning the Determined Mariner statue in Canal Park.

In its series The Slice, WDSE-TV presents short “slices of life” that capture the events and experiences that bring people together and speak to what it means to live up north.

The post The Slice: Who cleans the statues? appeared first on Perfect Duluth Day.

Records of Spring: Spotty

Lightbeams solid enough to climb pierce the windows of the Institute for the Study of Light and Water, rousing my eye like a hibernating bear. Dawn presents a temporal crisis. Borges said no one staying up all night welcomes the dawn. So the arrival of spring at the Institute. Records of spring are spotty. The brook babbled after a long vow of silence. The snow was gone which meant April had definitely passed. Cautious leaves popped out. Then the Institute blinked and endless summer began.

Endless Summer Began

Lilacs on the grounds stirred. As the hops vine unreeled up the base of the observation balcony, and the brown grass flushed with color, budding threatened. Light stretched as the relativistic flowers opened across the hillside. Scent escalated to sickening within days like drowning in lilac syrup. That week was the only thing that ever happened and it is still happening, like Whitman’s lilacs. “When they faded” is the last thing I remember about time.

The Institute failed to note when the grasshoppers, crickets, and cicadas began their day and night Cretaceous music. Comingling with the Institute’s tinnitus, insect heat song faded in until it had always been there to the deep future. Maybe my tinnitus will outlive me and gather with the insects.

Trees enclose avenues in leaves. Hops cresting the balcony, the Institute sails a green sea by a blue lake. Lake Superior, Platonic form where I touched infinity, I am always there. This summer I touch the lake once, a moment emanating from itself, a monopole like a smooth blue marble in my pocket.

Time roars to a standstill. Pestiferous heat piles up without time to dissipate its hazes. Brightness adheres to color as direct high sun pounds the balcony. Deeply-tanned interns install a little putting green up there. Summer rolls on, a long putt on a lengthening green. Joints of summer roll on. Cold beer as the mercury passes 80 degrees Fahrenheit and keeps rolling. The last remaining drops of time boil away in furious air like condensation sublimating off a frosty can. Heat refusing to break on purple water. The Institute eschews air conditioning, windows thrown open remain open. Breeze so faint it doesn’t exist.

Moonlight pushes the air not at all. Nighttime hillside of hopping rabbits, you’d think they might stir the air a little.

Time Laps

Duluth as Vermeer’s Delft. Monet’s Pooh-sticks bridge in Chester Park. Time laps the lakeshore freed by oils on canvas. City-state Duluth views Superior, that burned-out Alexandria, docking structures and silos dreaming of Knossos.

Reading ten books a scrap of late summer light fell among them. Nothing to worry about. In not doing anything this summer, I achieved everything. An intern says “Summer was so short” shocking me. Summer plows on with no sign of time.

A small red dragonfly perched on my shirt as I worked on my putt. I looked up and the sky was full of them, flying out of the lake up the hillside past the Institute. They brought their timelessness with them from the Jurassic. Silent summer lightning in distant cloudbank. Unbroken succession of rainbows. A single sailboat holds up the sky.

The Institute Blinks

The Institute blinks and finds snow 20 inches deep on the balcony, it’s 30 below and dark at 4:00PM. In the middle of summer? At least now it’s always summer.

Index of Jim Richardson’s essays here.

The post The Institute for the Study of Light and Water reviews endless summer 2022 appeared first on Perfect Duluth Day.

https://www.thenorth1033.org/show/the-local/2022-09-30/walt-dizzo-co-hosts-the-local

Longtime KUWS radio host Walt Dizzo crossed the bridge to appear on WDSE “The North” for the Sept. 28 episode of “The Local.” Joining the show’s host, Malachy Koons, Dizzo dove into rare finds from his personal collection to share on the show, which generally features more modern local music. Three tracks were from the present millennium, but most of them were golden oldies. The episode is archived online an can be listened to at thenorth1033.org.

Track List
Small Society – “Live for a Real Good Sound”
Bobby Aro – “Hoom-Pum-Billi-Billi”
Winterwood – “Duluth”
Mynx – “Thinking of You”
Atlantis II – “Starship Rider”
Estate Sale – “Kentucky”
Starling of Athens – “New Born Again Church”
Betty Rahn – “God Save Superior”
Tammy & The Bachelors – “My Summer Love”
Sean Elmquist – “Fatality Move”
Darkhood – “Destination”

The post Walt Dizzo on ‘The Local’ spinning Duluth oldies appeared first on Perfect Duluth Day.

This postcard from the early-to-middle 20th century shows Duluth’s business district as seen from the harbor.

The caption on the back reads:

Duluth is the most westerly port on the Great Lakes. An important center of commerce, the harbor is second only to that of New York City in shipping tonnage. Its Old World picturesqueness and invigorating climate make it a popular summer vacation center.

The post Postcard from Skyline of Business District from Harbor appeared first on Perfect Duluth Day.

There are an array of Low concerts available on the Internet archive. Joy joy joy while also vaguely restful.

The master list of recordings is at archive.org/details/lowmusic.

Links to sample recordings:

• Low Live at Sacred Heart Music Center on 1999-06-11
• Low Live at Norshor Theatre on 1998-11-14

It’s 30 years of amazing recordings of the greatest musical geniuses Duluth has produced. When I lived in Minneapolis, I drove to Madison to hear Low play; when I moved here, I dreamed I would listen to them play out every weekend.

I hope that, when I am in a walker in Aftenro, thirty years from now, I will be able to hear Mimi and Alan play down the hall.

The post Low Concerts on the Internet Archive appeared first on Perfect Duluth Day.

Seventy years ago today — Oct. 4, 1952 — Gen. Dwight David Eisenhower campaigned at the Duluth Civic Center. He won the election a month later, becoming the 34th President of the United States.

President Eisenhower would go on to play a significant role in the history of Duluth. In 1954 he signed the Wiley-Dander Seaway Act, which led to the development of a 114-mile navigation channel in the St. Lawrence River, allowing large vessels to sail from the Atlantic Ocean to Duluth. The St. Lawrence Seaway opened in 1959. Eisenhower spoke at ceremonies in Montreal, along with Queen Elizabeth.

The post General Eisenhower’s visit to Duluth in 1952 appeared first on Perfect Duluth Day.

The Minnesota State General Election will be held on Nov. 8. Above is the front side of the ballot for Duluthians on the western side of the city. Those on the eastern side will see candidates for Minnesota State Representative for District 8B instead of 8A. Duluthians living in the center of the city will also see the St. Louis County Commissioner race for District 1 on their ballots. A few Duluthians on the western edge of the city will also vote on the Minnesota House of Representatives District 3B. And the backside of everyone’s ballot has numerous judicial races.

The darker green area in the map above is the 8A side of the divide; the light green side is 8B. Therefore, citizens east of First Avenue East and Kenwood Avenue will not see the race for Minnesota State Representative for District 8A, but will instead see the option below on their ballots.

The yellow section of the map above shows Minnesota House of Representatives District 3B poking into Duluth. Residents of that part of the city will see the race below on their ballots.

The pink Duluth portion of the map above shows St. Louis County District 1. Residents in that area will vote in the County Commissioner race shown below.

The back side of the ballot, below, has all the statewide and regional judicial races. None of the candidates in those races are opposed on the ballet.

The post Duluth 2022 General Election Sample Ballot appeared first on Perfect Duluth Day.

https://www.duluthnewstribune.com/business/warrior-brewing-company-opens-new-taproom-in-craft-district

The Duluth News Tribune reports Warrior Brewing Company opened a tap room at its Lincoln Park neighborhood brewery on Sept. 24. The brewery began producing off-sale beer for distribution in cans and bottles in 2021.

The post Warrior Brewing opens tap room appeared first on Perfect Duluth Day.

The Youth 4 Socialist Action Membership Handbook is available on the Internet Archive. It’s part of a collection of several documents.

I’d bet there are readers of Perfect Duluth Day who know something of this organization. Maybe tell me what it was all about below?

The post Youth for Socialist Action of Duluth on the Internet Archive appeared first on Perfect Duluth Day.

(Co-written with Allen Richardson)

500 entries, 50 illustrations, 50 footnotes

Contents
1. Preface: I Destroyed the Universe
2. Introduction: Superhero Exegesis
3. Index of the Duluth Superhero Community
4. Footnotes

Preface: I Destroyed the Universe

From the Journal of the Morphogenetic Field Technician: I am trapped far beneath the UMD campus in the Novelty Sphere as the global catastrophe intensifies. My team’s experiments in this underground lab are directly responsible for the apocalypse overtaking the planet. The quakes grow steadily. Portions of the lab visible through the Sphere’s cyclopean porthole have caved in. Soon the roof will collapse releasing tons of basaltic bedrock. If the Sphere’s integrity holds, I will have limited air. One thing I have an unlimited supply of: claustrophobia. It is as if I am in an untethered bathysphere sinking into the mounting pressures of the deep. The Sphere’s instrumentation confirms my worst suspicions: this is no mere global extinction. We destabilized probability itself, and the vertical line on the catastrophe graph indicates structural failure of the universal constants. Like a landslide, the cosmos races toward physical destruction. Gravity will be the first to fail, centered on the Sphere. The well of the Earth is popping like an old spring.

“I am trapped far beneath the UMD campus in the Novelty Sphere as the global catastrophe intensifies.” (craiyon.com/Richardson)

I am inside it like an embryo, in my yellow pressure suit, the nucleus of the concretizing event horizon. I have, in reality, seconds left. At T-minus zero, a highly unlikely black hole will devour the planet and grow at superluminal speeds in all directions until the universe is consumed, every quark, every galactic cluster.

Dr. McPurdy knew as I did. The day we surveyed the city for subjectivity contamination, I remember looking over at him through my faceplate and he was bawling like a baby. Then he doubted himself for a moment and ceased to exist. As his suit crumpled to the ground, I felt the full weight of personal responsibility, heart sinking like an unstable star.

The quakes have reached a fever pitch. I’m shaking around inside the Sphere like a die in a cup. Through the porthole: chaos. A rift opens in the Earth.

But McPurdy had known a solution. Once, in the cafeteria, he whispered, “We thought the Sphere simulated probabilities. But those probabilities exist! You still think it’s only a holodeck of lucid dreams? The Sphere is a dimensional teleporter.”

“The Sphere is a dimensional teleporter.” (craiyon.com/Richardson)

All goes dark except the instrument panel. I can survive this. My probability contamination might destroy whatever universe I flee to. The suit should contain it … Nerves tighten around my heart like a claw. Can I survive the guilt? “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, what I am about to confess will redefine guilt itself. Is there a murder to the 1000^th power? How do you atone for the manslaughter of every inhabited planet ever to come? But your honor, if there are infinite universes, who cares if I destroy just one more?”

“Computer,” I say, “Lock onto my subjective mental coordinates and engage!” The familiar experience envelops me, light stabbing through the porthole until boundaries go indistinct. Shifting parameters flutter like thumbs through pages of an infinite catalog. I range bodiless across an array of files sorted by deviation from reality. It is rare to explore least likely universes. But it has been done. McPurdy encountered universes so bizarrely insane that even the strongest minds would have been unable to cope.

The computer saw I wanted a soft physics akin to the science fantasy of comic books. When the light withdrew: stillness. The sphincter-clenching underground lab disaster had been replaced with a tranquil dream lab. I opened the hatch and stepped out amidst a swirl of vapor. In this lab, I could harness the strange energies I’d discovered in unlikely universes far from our own. A lab in a parallel Duluth where I’d never existed, where no one knew of my crimes. I realized I had trapped myself in a literary device. I was in the middle of a superhero origin story.

The Morphogenetic Field Technician (craiyon.com/Richardson)

Introduction: Superhero Exegesis

I have become a lexicographer of superheroes. Who do I intend to read this exegesis? I have not profiled a readership. It is as much for my understanding as anyone’s. This universe slots neatly into a hermeneutic where my sins may not be so bad. Here, I am just another antihero. My backstory of destroying my universe amounts to a street cred I only fantasized about back home.

I haven’t admitted anything. I never remove my probability containment suit. This world knows me as a pitiable but plucky refugee making an honest go of it. But I haven’t stopped the rumor that I possess terrible powers.

I catalog the superbeings I meet with the zeal of a botanist collecting butterflies. I am creating a field of study. In addition to my new world-saving duties and the protection of the innocent, I archive the endless rogue’s galleries, super teams, and crime-busting legacies that populate Duluth and the reaches of space, time, and the literal heavens.

This is my Tractatus. This is a cosmogony of angels and a demonologia. Gods walk the Earth, natural forces are personified, and individuals are not just characters but character types. I don’t know why I thought this would be a utopia. To my horror, this world is a corrupt one of unending conflict.

And yet, I have solved one of the oldest logical riddles: what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object? In the local idiom, I might phrase it thus: What happens when super-strength meets invulnerability? The answer is: they never stop fighting.

Q: What happens when super-strength meets invulnerability? A: They never stop fighting (craiyon.com/Richardson)

I may be merely externalizing the collective unconscious; if so, this index is a diabolorum of archetypes, complexes, and tropes. I suspect that like Master Chuang of the Warring States, I have become trapped in my own mind, unable to distinguish reality from dreams, or from the hallucinations of the dying.

I can’t prove reality is real. It’s possible I create it outright, although don’t tell the Solipsist I said that. Let’s just say, I’m liable to be walking around in my own skull right now, compressing my last microsecond of life into a subjective infinity.

Yet even with the most perfect mental control — and my probability-altering skills — the world fails to fully correspond to my desires. Did not Jehovah Himself (or JHVH-1 as He is known here) fail to control the contents of His Creation, the externalization of His imagination?

It is indisputable that this universe has a cartoonish quality. Adolescent power fantasies, idealized bodies, etcetera. But the anthropomorphic principle states that if superheroes exist, the universe found it necessary to create them. Is God a holy trinity of Jack Kirby, Chris Claremont, and Grant Morrison, acting on a divine impulse not only of world creation, but of super-fecund character creation?

Capes, spandex, and underwear on the outside of the pants are window-dressing applied to the autonomous avatars populating our minds like the terrors of psychoanalysis.

I admit it is a pleasure to live among them. Paraphrasing Jung, I’m comforted that at the deepest level of our brains, “carbon is just carbon.” Character falls flat. Conflict is kabuki.

Opposing this is the fact of friction. Carbon is in constant conflict. Is not an atom a miniature nation-state world-mind, its stability threatened by feuding strong and weak forces? Collisions and radiations break bonds, provoking uncertainties, every photon a Hamlet. Particle accelerators spin hard-boiled true crime tales with all the elements of legend in unremitting struggle.

Never stop fighting. Fighting is God’s will. But those who oppose you are also holy. To struggle is to honor one’s opponent.

The outbreak of vigilantism in Duluth takes many forms and operates on many scales:

First there are the tenderfoots, little more than poetry-scene posers with hip-hop-style handles implying superheroism. “The Holist” is an effete pseudo-intellectual who privately believes his superpower is to unite disparate academic themes. His nemesis, “The Classical Reductionist,” prowls the cafes and coffee shops always looking for an opportunity to atomize his foe’s lofty platitudes. Their rhetorical battles are local legend. These dramas barely rise to the level of live-action role playing and produce little more street violence than someone getting shoved. But gang fights and street clashes between color-coordinated teams of goons and bruisers have also become commonplace.

Have things always been this cartoonish? Is there any bar in town where a gritty square-jawed crusader for justice hasn’t thrown some perp through the plate glass? Improbable car chases are on the rise, social networks abuzz with reports of intrigue and daring-do, half-glimpsed figures in cloaks and elaborate headgear.

It seems like anybody with either a gravelly speaking voice or the boom of a street preacher feels qualified to don a mask and go prancing about fighting crime. This has led to a cottage industry of basic superhero equipment sold in unlikely places. Hardware stores offer price breaks on bulk orders of grappling hooks. Gauntlets are a prized fashion accessory.

Grappling hooks at Target (craiyon.com/Richardson)

There are obviously several well-funded operations competing for something in town and these characters employ the classic secret identity modality. There is another class of self-proclaimed vigilante: the blue-collar, working-class barely-disguised variety, the dude who wears some dinky mask smaller than a pair of sunglasses, the guy who is always in costume, “on patrol” in the bars, comparing utility belts around the pool table.

But giants stride the horizon. And I have observed an increase in the city’s air traffic. I am not referring to the single-engine aircraft, rescue helicopters, or the contrails launching toward Minneapolis and Chicago from the airport over the hill. I mean I have tracked the movements of superhuman guardians who span the town from end to end as if trying to solve a murder or prevent an apocalypse. The wonder of these people in the sky — angels contaminating with holy radiations — is just another marvel of this crown jewel city, stitching Duluth into the fabric of mythology.

Index of the Duluth Superhero Community

0-9

4-D Woman: Inscrutable woman from a higher dimension

The 19^th Century Pseudonym Gang: Tourist train robbers with 19^th Century pseudonyms:

-Duke Gentilly Hawthorne: Smash and grab

-Iris Hedgerton Proudbush: Femme fatale with a trick shot

-P.W. Prudhomme: The boss

-Twirly McMustache: Antihero bad boy

Twirly McMustache, tourist train robber with the 19th Century Pseudonym Gang (craiyon.com/Richardson)

The 300-Kiloton Megahoes from Allure-6: Galactic refugees from a nuclear sex robot rebellion, led by the C_ntbot-6000

A

The Absorbent Man (aka the Terrycloth Avenger): Wields handcloths and wash-towels made of unstable molecules

The Accountant: Super accountant

The Action Cats: “Who will feed … the Action Cats?”

Action Justice: Raised by super progressives. “That’s why my mom named me Action Justice!”

The Addict: Derives super-powers, and super-liabilities, from use of drugs. Team-ups with the Dealer, the Mycological Man, and Hangover Man

Ad Man: The power to flood a space with ads. The force behind the Exaggerated Man

Adrenaline Man: His seething adrenal gland conveys telekinesis. “This triple espresso will triple my power.”

Agatea (aka the Mother of Agates): A shapechanging woman of living agate with telekinetic agate control

Agatea, the Mother of Agates in her blue form (craiyon.com/Richardson)

Agent Reboot: Back in “The Return of Agent Reboot”

AI Pencil: Artificially intelligent mechanical pencil

A.K.A.: Archnemesis of Vis-a-Vis

The Aller-Gents: “Allergic to Justice”:

-Dander Devil: Evil dandruff cloud^[1]

-Gluten Intolerance Man: Ability to cast food allergies^[2]

-The Sneeziest Man: Hurricane-force sneeze^[3]

-The Snot-Nosed Kid: Harmless until ragweed season, then: snot lassoes. Aspires to join the Secretionists

The Alworth Incident Seven: Victims of irradiation by directionally-altered gravitons in UMD’s Alworth Hall:

-Backwards Man: Master of backward combat, his morals are also backward

-Diagonal Lass: Super diagonal

-Th= Parall=l M=n: Twin tand=m crim= fight=rs

-Perpendicular Man: Master of clotheslining, T-boning

-Sideways Man: Wall-walker who kicks your ass sideways

-Upside-Down Woman: Upside-down blast

The Ambivalent Man: Barely-existent superscientist with the ability to stop existing entirely. Technically exists in every universe but in an infinitely diluted state

The Amphibi-Men: Mutant fish-frog men from Lake Inferior sailing a sunken cargo ship, the Janus, weaponized with an Interdimensional Giant Squid

Andy Freeze, P.I.: Private detective impervious to cold solves cold cases

Andy Freeze, P.I. (craiyon.com/Richardson)

The Anodyne Man: The power to remain perfectly anodyne

Apple Lad: Apple Man’s sidekick

Apple Man: Wholesome depression-era crimefighter, a former minor league pitcher using apples for ammo

Apple Man’s Rogues Gallery:

-Blood Orange

-Green Apple Man

-Killer Kumquat

The Apple Pals: Apple Lad’s plucky kid gang with slingshots full of crabapples

The Aqua Pets: “I hate to say it Chief but this looks like a job for the AQUA PETS”:

-Merbird

-Mercat

-Merdog

The Arm: Artificially intelligent robot limb gone bad; archnemesis of the Leg

The Arm (craiyon.com/Richardson)

The Armless Gunfighter: Foot-based combatant; loads and shoots handguns with his feet, drawing from ankle holsters; also proficient in throwing knives, shuriken, grenades, and parkour

The Asexual Kid: Celibate Man’s sidekick

Athena: Scary angelic space goddess

The Atomic Men: Heroes of World War II:

-Atomic Man: Atomic powers

-Electroman: Master of electricity

-Neutrino Man: Neutrino speed

-Radio Man: Radio powers

-Strontium Lad: Contamination powers^[4]

-X-Ray Lass: X-ray powers

X-Ray Lass of the Atomic Men, 1945 (craiyon.com/Richardson)

The Auditor: World’s most dangerous accountant

B

The Bad Guys Who Never Stop Fighting (aka the Patients of Dr. Lenz): Archenemies of the Guys Who Never Stop Fighting:

-Agent Buzzkill (aka Depression Man): Zoloft opens interdimensional portals in his eyes to a dimension of pure depressive force. Became the Giggler after his encounter with the Tickler

-The Assassins: Mind-controlled “Manchurian Candidate” locals including government officials. They are being weeded out by the Mad Gasser

-The BiPolar Man: Who will prevail in the internal civil war of … the BiPolar Man?

-The H8r: Steel-melting hate rays. Transferable powers; the H8r has been at least three different people

-Dr. Lenz (aka the Scriptivist): Mind control through writing. A UMD professor of psychiatry, he is the others’ psychiatrist and puppet-master. Initiated the Battle of Duluth with a citywide text: “Never stop fighting”

Dr. Lenz, aka the Scriptivist (craiyon.com/Richardson)

-Night Terror Lad: Manifests his nightmares when in REM state

-Nostalgia Man: Nostalgia rays^[5]

-The Obscurantist: UMD professor with fatal jargon

-Placebo Man (aka Righteous Man): Super-powered sugarpill-popper

-Poltergeist Girl: Telekinetic object-thrower, or her pet ghost is, no one knows which

Bad Judgment Man: Super bad judgement. In general he is to be avoided. His bad judgment is very bad, nothing good about it^[6]

The Barometric Man: Barometric pressure control makes him one of the world’s most powerful beings

Baron-zero: The original time-traveler Baron von Bitter from the 17th century, the swashbuckling racist corporatist who spawned many variants in his quest to colonize the timestream for the Dutch East India Company. Stole the steampunk tech of his genius 19th century bride who pursued him into time. One of Baron-zero’s variants, Baron-27, briefly became a superhero in 21st century Duluth with her, the Baroness von Bitter

The Battle of Duluth: When everybody fought everybody else

The Battle of Duluth (craiyon.com/Richardson)

The Bedding Gang:

-The Futon Five: Cotton batting-based defenders

-Justice Comforter: Distributing comfortable justice in these mean sheets

-The Pillow: Restful menace, former pillow fight world champion

Black Mumbler: Super mumbler

The Black Sailboat: Billionaire masked adventurer in a high-tech black sailboat with razor-sharp hydrofoils

The Black Sailboat (craiyon.com/Richardson)

The Black Squirrel (aka Squirrel Man): Proportionate strength and speed of a squirrel, normally contained in a large terrarium/hamster ball. Famously defeated the Germinator who clogged downtown with giant trees

The Black Squirrel, aka Squirrel Man (craiyon.com/Richardson)

Blooper Reel: Bitten by a radioactive videographer, he can see into parallel worlds where everything is fucked up

Blotto the Amazing Drunk as Fuck Telepathic Tapeworm: Symbiotically absorbs/releases alcohol

Braceface: Weaponized cybernetic dental braces

Braceface (craiyon.com/Richardson)

Brobocop: Cyborg cop bro. Partners with Supercop

The Brooder: Super brooding affects the weather

The Buddhist: Vatgrown chimera of genetic engineering, chemistry, and nanotech. The Buddhist’s detached raison d’etre is to take down its creator, Meatco the global megacorporation

The Bullshit Artists:

-Escape Artist: Travels through doors he draws

-Lazy Bones: Skeletal criminal mastermind too lazy to get any of his genius plots off the ground. Sells them to other criminals for booze money

-Razzle Dazzle: Ambush attacker gives you a song and dance first

The Bureaucrat: Super paper-pusher

C

Captain Form: Shapeshifter. Uneasy partnership with Doctor Structure

Captain Intensity: World’s most intense man

The Car: Driverless AI vehicle crime boss, the escaped creation of Drone Man. Archnemesis of the Mann Men

The Car Cult: Secret network of mechanics religiously devoted to servicing the Car

The Car Cult and The Car (craiyon.com/Richardson)

The Catastrophist: John Bedlam, afflicted with a catastrophe gene^[7]

Celibate Man: Immune to seduction. Mentors the Asexual Kid

The Cephalopod People: Body-snatching squid people of Lake Inferior. Possible connection to the Interdimensional Giant Squids

Chemical Man: Chemical vision^[8]

The Chronic Man: Always up to no good

The Classical Reductionist: Atomizes lofty platitudes

The Clops Clan: Redneck cyclops crime family:

-Biclops: Two-eyed cyclops with laser eyes

-Double-Y-clops: Cyclops strongman

-Ma Clops: Cyclops matriarch, laser eye

-Pops Clops: Cyclops patriarch, laser eye

Pops Clops, patriarch of the Clops Clan (craiyon.com/Richardson)

-Psyclops: Cyclops telepath

-Triclopean: Three-eyed cyclops with laser eyes

Cogent Man: Super cogency

The Community DisOrganizer: Super agitator. Frequent host of Blotto the Amazing Drunk as Fuck Telepathic Tapeworm

The Complicated Man: Master of meta-complication

The Concerned Mother: Born with the power to transform into anyone’s mom, the ability to BECOME YOUR MOM. Utility belt of mostly hand sanitizer. “Who can withstand the overpowering concern of … your mom?”

Confused Man: Emits a confusion field he is not immune to

The Court of Smart-Alecky Little Brothers: “The Court is now in session. The objections of the elder party are noted and summarily dismissed (gavels).” The Court shares members with Mrs. Johnson’s 4^th Grade Class, and are the youngest great-grandsons of the Institute of Old Rich Jerks

The Crammenfjorder: Rogue flying cargo ship crewed by scallywags unfailingly loyal to Captain Buck Wild

Cramulons of the ArgleBargle Sector: Race of ruined spacefarers^[9]

Credible Woman: Doubts the unreality of the Implausible Man

The Cryptocracy: Archenemies of the Troll Farm

D

The D-Town Ballers: Non-powered teens who punch above their weight, attracting super trouble:

-Bike Boy: BMX tricker

-Rollergrrl: Roller derby badass

-Sk8r: Skateboard master

Dadbod: Out-of-shape crimefighter

The Danged Man: Claws his way out of Heck to cast mild curses

The Danger Nuns: Hand-to-hand parkour kung-fu freeclimbers. “This bride of Christ ain’t taking any more shit, can I get an amen sisters?”

The Danger Nuns (craiyon.com/Richardson)

The Dart: (aka Dark Dart; The Dart Avenger) Dart-based combatant. Hero of the dive bar scene

The Dealer: Alien drug dealer of alien drugs, occult buzzes, and interdimensional highs^[10]

The Debacle: Writes highly-anticipated fiction that bombs in literary circles^[11]

Demonfolk: Pale hordes from Hell working in Limbo’s the Discarnate Club as a ruse to escape through the mirror to Duluth’s Pizza Luce:

-Abraxas: Bartender

-Cholly: Disher

-Corvex: Bouncer

-Demon Server: World’s most diabolical waiter, earthly agent of the Demonfolk, works at Pizza Luce

-Mixis (aka Demon Girl): Bar manager

-The Negationist (aka Nazi X, Atomik Teutonik): Nazi agent of Demonfolk origin, creates volumes of empty space. Fought the Atomic Men in WWII and is still on Earth allied with The Car

-Phanaghast: Waitstaff

Demonfolk of the Discarnate Club (craiyon.com/Richardson)

The Demonizer: Super gaslighting turns people into demonic combatants

The Demotivator: Motivational speaker by day, inspires total lack of motivation by night

The Destiny Phone: An addict angel traded his paranormal shape-changing AI super phone to the Dealer who lost it in the timestream. Hitler used it to talk with the future and the dead. It sat in Radio Man’s attic for a century, then became App Master’s super phone

The Destroyer: Any small object incinerates in his hands, a power he makes good money with. Pursues the Maker

Diabetes Woman: Hulks out without radioactive insulin

Diameter Boy: Master of circumference

The Dinero Pistoleros: Guns for hire adopting names from old Mexploitation films:

-Baron Cabron: The leader

-Bastardo De Bardo: Soulful one

-Guero Pistolero: The blond gun

-Perdito Bandito: Amnesiac one. The others know he is actually the FBI agent who tried to take them down, incorporated into the team until he remembers who he is, then they will kill him

-Fiero Pistolero: Crazy one

The Discarnate Club: A demonfolk-staffed bar in Limbo where you can see the Pizza Luce bar through the mirror

The Dismissive Man: Deflection powers

DJ ESP: He knows what you need to hear

Doctor Love: Emits a field which induces eternal love, then he dumps you leaving you helplessly in pain^[12]

Doctor Structure: Structure blast. Uneasy partnership with Captain Form

The Dodecacriminologist: Detective from the 12^th dimension. Beef with 4-D Woman who he finds incredibly basic

Dragonfly Man (aka the Man-Dragonfly): UMD researcher transforms into humanoid dragonfly after ill-advised experiment

Dragonfly Man (craiyon.com/Richardson)

Drone Man: Master of drone warfare, creator of The Car. Former member of the Mann Men until he betrayed them in Kandahar

The Duluth Autonomous Navy: Ragtag volunteer fleet of small watercraft

Duluth Rangers: Local superpowered minor league baseball team^[13]

The Dynamosaurs: Sauropod-based adventurers:

-Gynosaur: Were-woman dinosaur turns into a human woman

-Reptaurus: Lizard-bull hybrid

Reptaurus of the Dynamosaurs (craiyon.com/Richardson)

-Triscaratops: Triceratops whose horns shoot fear

E

Earwig Man: Earwig-themed super-suit including (leaky) stores of earwigs. Earwig Man is in fact terrified of earwigs but as long as the suit’s neck baffle holds, they won’t be able to get into his helmet

The Embassy: An interdimensional embassy populated with high-tech weirdos

Emu-You Bar & Grill: Amish outlaw Menno Zwonk’s roadside hive of scum and villainy outside Superior, Wisconsin. Horror barn in back. Specialty: emu burgers

Epidermis Lad: Super skin grafts

The Ersatz Cats: Team of pretend cats. Beef with the Action Cats

The Esthetician: A villain who, during hand-to-hand combat, swabs your pores, pops your blackheads, and salt scrubs your skin. “Your face looks amazing — have you been fighting … the Esthetician?”

The Exaggerated Man: Superpowered PR team led by Ad Man makes him larger than life

The Exasperated Man: Sworn foe of Jabber Jaws

The Expanding Men: The power to get fat

Expository Dialog Man: Power to provide explanatory voiceovers

Extant Man: Existence-based powers

F

The Falling Man: He can’t fly but he can survive falling out of airplanes. “Send in … The Falling Man”

The Fatal Bodyguard: Max Coffin is haunted by the client he couldn’t protect

Fire-Ant: Spirit who animates colonies of fire ants^[14]

Fire-Ant (craiyon.com/Richardson)

The Flashback: Disables opponents by triggering debilitating flashbacks

Flo the Neanderthal: A Neanderthal witch-doctor imported from 100,000 years ago by the time-traveler Baron von Bitter (Baron-zero) for her combat prowess

The Foodies: Archnemeses of the Lasanguinator and the Omeletteer:

-Baker X: Silat-style stick fighter who uses stale French bread as weapons and throws crescent rolls, biscotti^[15]

-Brut Force: A deadly shot with a champagne cork and other champagne-based weapons including the champagne saber. “The Champagne of Killers”

-Cheese Wheel: Master of circular cheeses

-The Esculent Man: “I’m fit to be eaten!”

-The Human Artichoke: The leader. Basically a giant artichoke

The Human Artichoke, leader of The Foodies (craiyon.com/Richardson)

-The Molecular Gastronomist: “My umame sense is tingling!”

-The Sous Chef: Second-in-command

Freeskater: Patrols the wild ice of deep winter in lonely vigils. Winter identity of Lake Superior Aquaman

The Functionary: Government stooge codename from WWII to Present Day. Superhero liaison

The Functionalist: Super functional foe of Captain Form and Doctor Structure

The Fundamental Premise: Archnemesis of The Persistent Misunderstanding

The Future-er: Archnemesis of The Past-er

G

The Germinator: Causes seeds to exhibit super-growth, carries a utility belt full of seeds. Famously beaten by the Black Squirrel after growing giant trees downtown

Ghost Writer: With his flaming skull and laptop, he opens the infernal browser with a rush of brimstone, his bony fingers typing the narrative of the damned

The Giggler: Telepathically provokes giggling. Used to be Agent Buzzkill until the intervention of the Tickler

Glass Lass: Made of regenerative organic glass, she is a glass shape-shifter with full glass control

Glass Lass (craiyon.com/Richardson)

Go-Getter: A speedster with the power to be just faster than you. Diabolically finishes your sentences

The Golems: Elemental monsters:

-Angel of Machines: Ancient god of iron possessing a giant robot minotaur. Occasionally merges with the Industrial Kid

The Angel of Machines (craiyon.com/Richardson)

-The Burning Man: Fire monster responsible for the Hinckley Fire and the Bakken Blowout

-Dark Vapor (AKA Scaldman): Master of steam, fog, smoke. Masquerades in human form^[16]

-Shit-Thing (aka the Execrable Shit-Thing): Shit monster (also member of the Xcre-Men)^[17]

-Ur-Thing: Giant possessing features of the landscape

The Golfers: A golfer and his caddy solving mysteries and fighting crime with their knight-and-squire relationship, infiltrating villainous country clubs, and recruiting other super golfers to the cause:

-The Caddy (aka Caddy Lad): Quick with a 9-iron

-The Golfer: Golfer-detective with perfect aim

-The Golfer of the Mystic Arts: “By the Crimson Clubs, I command you — sink that putt!”

-The Human Golf Ball: A man with the proportionate strength, speed, and aerodynamic qualities of a golf ball

The Human Golf Ball of The Golfers (craiyon.com/Richardson)

-Mini-Golfer: Golfer with shrinking ability

The Grandma: Martial arts centenarian assassin still has a move or two especially with her new hips. Has killed with a hatpin

The Green Dandy: Disarming green fashion sense^[18]

The Guys Who Never Stop Fighting: Superhero collective. Archenemies of the Bad Guys Who Never Stop Fighting:

-Baron-27: The singular good variant of the 17^th Century time-traveler Baron von Bitter (Baron-zero), with his multiple evil variants trying to colonize the timestream for the Dutch East India Company^[19]

-Baroness von Bitter: 19^th Century time-traveler with multiple good variants. Has maintained a secret lab in the Old Central clock tower since 1892. Ex-wife of Baron von Bitter (Baron-zero)

The Baroness von Bitter, time traveler (craiyon.com/Richardson)

-The Industrial Kid: Controls industrial materials, occasionally merges with the Angel of Machines

-The Mad Gasser: Simon Battle stole his own gas warfare suit and now haunts a secret base under the steam plant. Fumigating the embedded Assassins of Dr. Lenz makes it look like he’s declared war on the city

The Mad Gasser (craiyon.com/Richardson)

-The Morphogenetic Field Technician (aka M-Tech): Superscientist from another dimension. Probability-altering powers. Contaminated with a probability-destabilizing field which may be destroying the universe

-Osiris: Scary angelic space god. Weakness: cosmic love problems

H

Hangover Man: Being super hungover gives him the strength of ten men. Team-ups with the Addict

Hapless Man: Schizophrenic who makes suits of armor out of soup cans and is always getting crazy injured

The Hermaphrodoxy: Alien religious zealot asexual hermaphrodite starfish who generate their own silica weapons and consider sexual species demonic:

-Hermaphrodox: Herald of the Hermaphrodoxy. Closeted sexual super starfish

-The Parthenogenerator: Mountain-sized slime god of the Hermaphrodoxy. Lives in Lake Inferior. Once ate the Lakewalk

The Parthenogenerator of the Hermaphrodoxy (craiyon.com/Richardson)

High Prices: Super inflation ability^[20]

The Hipster Whisperer (aka the Hipstererer): Mind-controls trendy people. Beef with the Jaded Hipster

Hitler’s Nephews: Old man Nazi gang elected to higher office. Team-ups with Nazi Girl and the Negationist of the Demonfolk

The Holist: Power to unite disparate academic themes

Horroratio: Giant orator

Hurricane Eyes: Wind vision from irises that spin like jet turbines. Air intake on the back of his head must remain clear

Hurricane Eyes’ eye (craiyon.com/Richardson)

I

The Impactor: Living meteorite launched at the beginning of time by forgotten gods to kill the dinosaurs. Now employed as a kinetic weapon by the US military

The Implausible Man: Doubts Credible Woman’s super-credentials

Indefatigable Man: Powers include super-indefatigable Fortress of Imperturbability

Indubitable Man: Super indubitability

Inside-Out Man: His organs, blood vessels, and lymph nodes are on the outside of his body, providing distracting gross-out factor^[21]

Insouciant Lad: Tousle-haired menace

The Institute for Sideways Research: Founded by Sideways Man in a wing of the Morphogenetic Field Studies Institute

The Institute of Old Rich Jerks: The great-grandfathers of the Court of Smart-Alecky Little Brothers

Interdimensional Giant Squids (aka I.G.S.): Lovecraftian horrors squeezing through wormholes to colonize other dimensions

The Interesting Man: Devastatingly interesting

The Intermittent Man: Might return

The Intervenor: Saboteur who prevents things from happening

The Iron Clown: Clown of iron

The Irrecusable Man: A judge born with the power to hear any case, no matter how relevant to his personal life

It Girl: Fashionista with weaponized It bag and literal stiletto heels

J

The Jaded Hipster: Duluth’s most pretentious superhero, although of course he’d really prefer to be thought of as a villain. Beef with the Hipster Whisperer

JHVH-1: Overlord of time, space, and dimension; has forced gods of other pantheons into service as angels

K

Kali: Scary angelic space goddess

The Kayakers of Tomorrow: Kayak tour lost in time

Knife Boy: Several Knife Boys exist in alternate Duluths. They come to this one to team up:

-Knife Boy 1: Child inventor of knife-shooting crimefighting apparatus

-Knife Boy 2: Knife-throwing circus orphan defends the streets

Knife Boy 2 (craiyon.com/Richardson)

-Knife Boy 3: Generates knives from his body

-Knife Boy 4: Laser knives

K-ROC: Escaped super K9 unit tears drug users to shreds looking for its ball. Working through the underworld toward the Dealer

L

Lake Inferior: Secret Hell-lake in a giant cave under Lake Superior where monsters live

Lake Superior Aquaman (aka Freediver X): Subsurface adventurer

Lake Superior Chemical: Chemical plant on the St. Louis River responsible for outbreaks of mutagenesis, tied to the origins of Chemical Man, Slippery Girl, and the Amphibi-Men. The plant’s weapons division developed the prototype suits now used by the Mad Gasser and Lazer Blade. Drone Man used the plant’s vat of chemicals and nanobots to create The Car

The Lake Superior Submarine Fleet: Ragtag volunteer fleet sailing homemade submarines

The Lasanguinator: Mob enforcer cannibal who turns his victims into blood lasagna.^[22] Has team-ups with the Omeletteer. Archenemy of the Foodies

The Last Gun on Earth: Shootist from the future with the last gun on Earth finds himself outgunned in our time but not outsmarted

Lava Lass: Lava vision. Beef with Hot Mess of the Terrible Exes

Lava Lass (craiyon.com/Richardson)

Lazer Blade: Laser warfare suit stolen from Lake Superior Chemical by a bank robber

The Leg: Artificially intelligent robot leg. Archnemesis of The Arm

The Leg (craiyon.com/Richardson)

The Limbo Babies: Army of spirit babies

Lowball: Deflates expectations

M

The Maker: Her uterus can produce any small object, making her the target of kidnapers and extortionists who universally underestimate her abilities. Pursued by the Destroyer

The Mann Men: Black-ops team with full operational autonomy. Archenemies of The Car and Drone Man:

-Agent Fruit Loops: Masochist martial arts master with insane pain threshold

-The Bastard Killer: Crazed sniper^[23]

-Big Gun: Wields giant weightless gun

-Breacher: Explosives expert

-Major Mann: Major Gloria Mann, super tactician, the leader

Major Gloria Mann, leader of the Mann Men (craiyon.com/Richardson)

-Super Driver: Only member of the team with super abilities. Her vehicle-centric telekinesis allows driving of any vehicle above and beyond its performance specs; she is the only person who can drive The Car

ManWorm: Tapeworm-based character with all the trimmings

Market Manipulator: Infernal market control

MasterMime: Silence-based powers. Sworn foe of the Silent Man

Meatco: Global megacorporation with their dirty hands in everything

The Mediator: Advanced mediation skills

Mega-Merganser: Magical giant merganser. Peak size is large enough to eat cargo ships, the transformation displacing enough water to flood the lakeshore from Duluth to Ontario. Opponent of the Merganser Men

Meme Man: Weaponized memes

Menno Zwonk: Amish outlaw shootist animal-smuggler crime-boss restauranteur. As lethal with his weaponized animals as he is with a gun. Battles the Ramrod Auto Parts Gang for control of the lucrative garbage and sewer rackets

Menno Zwonk, Amish Outlaw (craiyon.com/Richardson)

Mentor: Super memorization techniques

The Merganser Men: Were-waterfowl opponents of Mega-Merganser^[24]:

-Diver: Strongest swimmer

-Mergus: The leader

-Seaduck: Bravest

The Miasmic Man: Meta-miasmic mutant

The Morphogenetic Field Studies Institute: Superscience institute founded by the Morphogenetic Field Technician. Base of the Guys Who Never Stop Fighting and the Weak Men

Multilateral Man: “There are many sides to his position for is he not … The Multilateral Man?”

The Mycological Man: Microdose-based powers. Linked to The Dealer

The Myth-anthropes: Greek myth-understood monster team-up:

-The Fury

-The Gorgon

-The Harpy

-The Siren

N

Nazi Girl: American insurrectionist white supremacist Russia-loving wannabe-spy. Team-ups with Hitler’s Nephews and the Negationist of the Demonfolk

Necromone: Death scent warns of danger

Nepotism Lad, Esquire: The power to bypass qualified applicants

The New Agers:

-Crystal Face: “Fuck these hippies always touching my head …”

-Feng Shui Man: Heightened senses detect super relationships between objects

-The Numerologist: Armed with an infinity of powerful numbers

-Pee Drinker: Gains super strength for one hour by drinking his own pee

-The Placenta Men: Eating placenta confers special powers. “Placenta powers, activate!”

-Qigong Man: Reiki-based martial arts master with crystal brass knuckles^[25]

Qigong Man’s crystal brass knuckles (craiyon.com/Richardson)

-The Sociopathic Naturopath: Fatal chiropracty using acupuncture needles with undetectable homeopathic poisons^[26]

The Non-Canonical Men:

-The Diuretic Four^[27]

-Fun Hulk: Always up for drinks

-The Goetic Four^[28]

-Love Hulk

-The Patristic Four^[29]

-Reverse Hulk: Turns normal in times of stress

-Scrupleman: Last son of Encrypton

-The Stochastic Four^[30]

-Swamped Thing: Too busy to manage the Green

-The Uncredible Hulk: “Me hear it on Fox News, wreck stuff”

The Nuclear Family:

-The Absent Father: Intangible and invisible with silent interior monologues

-Babysitter X: The power to make you go to bed

-Big Sister: Giant five-year-old

-Supermom: Does everything

-Twister Sister: Tornado powers

-Ultra Baby: An adorable indestructible super-strong baby who babbles preciously through highly commercial adventures. “Who dares change … the Ultra Baby?”^[31]

O

The Off-Color Men: Rogues gallery of Blue Man:

-Agent Orange: Mutagenic orange being

-The Magenta Men: Proportionate strength and speed of magenta

-The Red Scare: Master of fear tactics

-The Sepia Seven: Faded villains hiding out in old photographs

The Sepia Seven, enemies of Blue Man (craiyon.com/Richardson)

-Violet Ultra: Nonhuman light being^[32]

-The Yellow Peril: Casts people in the wrong light

The Omeletteer: Omelette chef/mob hitman prepares his victims’ faces in omelettes. Team-ups with the Lasanguinator. Archnemesis of the Foodies

The Orca Corps: Experimental orca whale adjunct to the Great Lakes Coast Guard

Overbite: Steel teeth flake into razors he spits with deadly accuracy; rows of bullet teeth rotate into their place

P

Paramotor Patrol: A trio patrolling the city in powered paragliders

The Parliamentarian: Super legislator^[33]

The Past-er: Archenemy of The Future-er

Perfectus (aka Mr. Perfect): Irritatingly perfect being

The Persistent Misunderstanding: Archnemesis of the Fundamental Premise

The Phantom of the Cross Country Trails: Skiing ghost

Pickax: Master of weaponized pick axes

Plot-Device Man: Wielder of the feared Deus Ex Machina

Plot-Twist Man: Master of unexpected outcomes

Plutonium Woman: Toxic assassin

Pop Star X: Went rogue subverting Disney formula

The Power Trio: Super local band more powerful together than apart. “Saving the world … through music”:

-Guitar Hero: Telekinetic guitar control

-The Percussionist: Super-strength drummer^[34]

-The Psychoacousticon: Alien robot super bassist plays sick chord progressions from other planets

The Psychoacousticon, bassist of the Power Trio (craiyon.com/Richardson)

The Probe: An AI probe from Proxima B that lay dormant in the solar system until Lake Superior Aquaman issued a planetary distress call, activating The Probe which threatened to destroy Earth to solve all our problems

Procrastination Man: A week of inactivity followed by an hour of the most amazing work ever seen

Professor Appleton: Horticulturalist breeder of Apple Man’s preternaturally hard apples

The Punctuation Men: Rivals of The Vocabuconstabulary:

-The Colon: “We’re not finished here.”

-Commander Comma: Pause powers

-The Ellipsis…: Gazer into long distances

-Exclamation Man!: Master of emphatic statements

-“In Quotes Man”: To hear him speak is insufferable

-Irony Lad: “In Quotes Man’s” sidekick

-The Italicized Woman: Conveys emphasis, stress, or status by standing at an angle

-(The Parenthetical Man): The world can be saved without him (maybe)

-Period Girl.: “This. Ends. Now.”

-Question Man?: Uncertainty blast

-SemiColon: The Colon’s sidekick

SemiColon’s body armor (craiyon.com/Richardson)

The Persuant: With his super warrants, he is archnemesis of the Recusant

Q

Quaser: Quark lasers

R

Ra: Scary angelic space god

The Ramrod Auto Parts Gang: Gangster redneck family of Wisconsin patriarch Buzz Ramrod, at war with Amish gangster Menno Zwonk over the lucrative garbage and sewer racket

Raven Girl: The ability to turn into a conspiracy of ravens

The Recurring Man: “I’m back, bitches”

The Recursive Man: Hard to get a bead on

The Recusant: Archnemesis of the Pursuant

Retcon Man: Updated version of 1930s character The Mongoloid

The Retroviral Man: Proportionate strength and speed of a retrovirus

The Re-Un-Undead: They still live again but they’re looking pretty bad

Reverse Phoenix: Stevie Phoenix dies when raised from the dead. Immune to zombie bites

Robot Rickshaw: Inventor-musician with a wearable band of musical robots

The Rummager (aka the Filer; The Straightener): Breaks into houses and rummages around – doesn’t take anything^[35]

S

Safe Word: Makes every ending a happy one

Salt Woman: Made of living salt, salt control powers

Salt Woman (craiyon.com/Richardson)

The Sasquatches: Local sasquatch family roaming the wild with their pet anthropologist:

-Big Mo: Beleaguered Sasquatch dad

-Daisy: Sasquatch teen

-Lars Johnson: UMD anthropology student disappeared into the woods years ago

-The Professor: Daisy’s inept sasquatch suitor

-Virginia: Tolerant sasquatch mom

Savant Guard: Genius shield-slinger with a cutting edge

Savant Guard arriving before anyone knows he’s needed (craiyon.com/Richardson)

The Scar: His scar from a cursed blade is a dimensional portal releasing eldritch energies

The Secretionists: They have beef with the Xcre-Men:

-Back-Sweat: Literally sweats bullets. “I’m breaking a sweat — Duck!”

-Booger-Bomb: Flicks boogers made of plastique generated by his super nasal cavities

-Count Ejacula: Singlehandedly responsible for the Twin Ports’ epidemic of gay vampires with bite marks on their penises

-The Dischargress: Mistress of discharge

-Fistula Girl: Fistulas bursting with metatoxins, protective layer of impenetrable slime

-Gobsmack: Spits great glop gobs with impact of a bean-bag gun^[36]

-Howard the Duct: Meta-perspiration^[37]

-Milk Nozzle: Lactation blast^[38]

-Pizza Face: Superacne^[39]

Pizza Face of the Secretionists (craiyon.com/Richardson)

-Spider-Choad: Ejaculates weblines with which he swings through town, erecting nets, snagging bad guys^[40]

-The Squirter: It’s not pee

-Waxworks: Super earwax generation and control^[41]

Shoe Lad: Champion of footwear

Shot Gundersen (aka the Iron Man of the Saginaw): Oversized metal-man wielding giant shotgun with taconite pellets for shot

Silent Man: When he has nothing nice to say he kicks your ass. Sworn foe of MasterMime

The Simpletons: “To me, my Simpletons! The chairman of the Senate Stupid Committee wants to have a word with you…”

-Bighead

-The Bionic Yokel: Archnemesis of the Yahoo

-The FuckMook: A supermook

-The Mook: A regular mook

-Nimrod

-Slackjaw

Slippery Girl (aka Friction Woman; The Tribologist): Friction control. The one who finally nailed Backwards Man in the Alworth Incident

Sock-Puppet Man: Impersonates his own archnemesis who doesn’t exist

Space Garbage Man: Teams up with Super Firefighter for some re-entry jobs

Space Garbage Man (craiyon.com/Richardson)

The Solipsist: Projects his desires to cancel the world^[42]

The Species-ist: Born without intra-species recognition or facial recognition, he thinks everyone is an alien invader

The Spin Collective: Super fire spinners

The Star Lawyers:

-Astro-Lawyer: “I’ve got to make the jump to hyperspace to serve these papers!”

-Attorneynaut: “Is gravity a taxable benefit?”

-Criterion, the Star Prosecutor: Heavenly special prosecutor of the spaceways dropping cosmic indictments

Criterion, the Star Prosecutor (craiyon.com/Richardson)

-The Paranormal Paralegal: “Earth has to file a restraining order.” The court receives dark depositions in a legal black hole of inexorable summons

-Ultra-Barrister: Author of the space law of Astro Liberum

Suicide Hookers: Kamikaze assassins with dynamite sticks in their butts

Suicide Man: Can defeat any enemy as long as he kills himself in the process

Supercop: Bulletproof master of community relations. Partners with Brobocop

Supercorpse: Endlessly regenerating metacorpse^[43]

Super Customer: “Let’s go down and get another action cone!”

Super Firefighter: Flameproof, super strong, wields enchanted firefighter’s ax. Teams up with Space Garbage Man for some re-entry jobs

Superhero HD: Masked crimefighter/high-definition livestreamer with mad social media presence

Superhusband: Powers of adaptability

Super Nurse: Super front-line first responder with the power to keep you alive

Super Nurse (craiyon.com/Richardson)

Superscience Philosopher: Power to transcend all paradigms

The Super School:

-Mrs. Johnson: Super teacher turning her classes into elite crimefighting kid teams

-Mrs. Johnson’s 4^th Grade Class: Super students. They have dealings with the Court of Smart-Alecky Little Brothers

-Mrs. Johnson’s 5^th Grade Class: Rivals to Mrs. Johnson’s 4^th Grade Class

-The Principal: Super administrator who runs the Super School

-Superintendent: Master of ISD 709

-SuperSuperintendent: More powerful than the Superintendent

The Surrenderer: Battle cry is “I surrender!” Superhuman ability to surrender at any moment, disorienting his opponents^[44]

Synchronicity Man: Super synchronistic. Brother of Catastrophe Man^[45]

T

Teen Exo-Planet: Moody telepathic planet in the outer rim, tortures the sensitive with emo broadcasts of sullen entitlement^[46]

Teen Exo-Planet (craiyon.com/Richardson)

The Teens Who Never Stop Fighting: Powered teens beefing with the D-Town Ballers:

-Antidote: Her touch produces miracle healing enzymes

-App Master: Wields super phone, sometimes is the super phone (aka the Destiny Phone)

-Average Girl: Supernormal wrecking machine

The Terrible Exes:

-Cold Fish: Radiates subzero temps in her arched eyebrows and frosty silences

-Dick Move: Control over dicks

-Hot Mess: Bitten by a radioactive neurotic, her magma powers chaotically slorp lava everywhere. Beef with Lava Lass

Hot Mess of the Terrible Exes (craiyon.com/Richardson)

-Mansplainer: Overwrites reality with his bald assertions

-Terrible X: Possesses all the powers of a terrible ex. The leader

The Tickler: Super tickler. By tickling Agent Buzzkill he accidentally created the Giggler

Time Stocker: Grocery clerk helps shoppers in the past in a store built around a temporal anomaly

Tinnitus Man: Emits blaring noise from his ears

Trench Raider: Amnesiac mute World War I action hero from No Man’s Land in 1914. Has team-ups with Baroness von Bitter; she gave him a geokinetic blade with a super-tunneling ability

The Triggerer: The psychic power to trigger opponents. “You’ve been … triggered!”

Troll Farm: Archnemeses of the Cryptocracy

U

The Unidentified Man: Impossible to remember this man, alleged former Governor of Maryland

V

Vis-a-Vis: Archenemy of A.K.A.

The Vocabuconstabulary: Rivals of The Punctuation Men:

-ALL CAPS MAN: THE POWER TO MAKE EMERGENCY BULLETINS

-The Authoritarian Grammarian: Vengeful prescriptive linguist

-The Bloviator: International agent of trade unions

-The Commentariat: “These anonymous internet haters have great vocabularies … looks like the Commentariat is at it again.”

-The Conjugatrix: “Conjugate this!”

-The Emphatic Man: Blusterous hyperbole^[47]

-The Gasbag: Is it his radioactive asshole, or his radioactive rhetoric? Both stink

-Jabber Jaws: Master of empty verbosity. “Your son suffers from a ludicrous condition known as hyperbanter and must be raised in this Bantertorium.”

-Metaphor Man: Mentor of the Simile Kid

-The Simile Kid: Sidekick of Metaphor Man

-Substanceless Lad: Jabber Jaws’ sidekick

-Trope-a-dope: Cliché-based combatant

-Upshot, The Denotative Man: Communications expert

-Wordsmith: Forges bladed words, letters, and symbols – “A word can kill …”

Wordsmith’s bladed letters of Damascus steel (craiyon.com/Richardson)

W

War Effort: Super war lobbyist^[48]

Water-Jet Hamster-Ball Man: Crimefighter inside a man-sized bouncy hamster-ball kept aloft by water jets

The Waterworks: Cries rivers from firehose eyes. “Uh oh, here comes the Waterworks …”

The Weak Men: Pet project of the Morphogenetic Field Technician to unite weakly-powered individuals into a fighting force equal to a single superhero:

-3rd Nipple Man: Precognitive itchy-nipple danger sense

-Big Hand: Possesses a large hand

–Blue Man: Turns things blue. Was once trapped in a Vermeer

Blue Man (craiyon.com/Richardson)

-The Boneless Man: Literally a flesh blob, writhing and pupating. May be thrown to entangle

-Breeze Boy: Generates light breezes

-Papercut: Power to cause extremely small cuts. The most powerful Weak Man

-Paper Man: Made of paper, controls and generates paper. Do not corner him in a paper mill or a library

The Wedding Party: Ghosts of a wedding motorcade terror attack endlessly drive around the city looking for a phantom reception. Prominent members:

-Ghost Bartender: Mixes ecto-cocktails in the back of the ghost limo

-Ghost Bride (aka the Wedding Ghost): Her rage and grief at being denied her special day gives her the power to open Hell

Ghost Bride (craiyon.com/Richardson)

-Ghost Driver: Limo driver ghost

-The Haunted Groom: The only living being in the entourage. Despite his PTSD, survivor’s guilt, alcoholism, and fear of his own ghost bride, he solves mysteries with the occult aid of the Wedding Party

-The Ring Bearer and the Flower Girl: Child ghosts

The Weeping Meteorite: Space rock colonized by telepathic exo-lichen 12 billion years ago pines away for the past driving away all in earshot^[49]

The Working Mother: Super thrifty^[50]

X

The Xcre-Men: To counter the Secretionists, Professor Xcreta formed his uncanny Xcre-Men:

-Colostomy Bag Lad: Wielder of colostomy bags

-Death Fart: Fatal flatulence^[51]

-Diarrhea Lass: You won’t like her when she’s angry

-Fartnado: Farts destructive funnel clouds

-Professor Xcreta: Visionary gastroenterologist^[52]

Professor Xcreta of the Xcre-men (craiyon.com/Richardson)

-Shit-Thing: Shit monster (also member of the Golems)

-Spastic Colon: Troubled hero-in-training

-Urea Lad: Super acidic urine^[53]

-Urethra Man: Wields pinched adamantium urethra and iron bladder muscles, slices foes in half with his pressurized urine stream

Y

The Yahoo: Backwoods defender of the coarse and uncouth. Archnemesis of the Bionic Yokel

Z

Zombie Paul Bunyan: Giant zombie lumberjack with ax-hand

Zombie Paul Bunyan (craiyon.com/Richardson)

Footnotes

^[1] A ghost made of dandruff, Dander Devil began life as a normal man, albeit with a severe case of dermatitis. As a teen he realized he had telekinetic control over his dandruff, lifting it off his head with a thought and sending it in wisps up people’s noses to spark debilitating allergenic reactions. Soon he realized his mind was inextricably linked to all dead skin cells. Great clouds of dander rise into the air above the crowds, including from pets and wild animals, responding to his will, coalescing into tentacles and hands that pick pockets or assassinate public officials. I was the one who finally killed him when my super-team fought the Aller-Gents on the rooftops of downtown Duluth; I fired my wrist-mounted laser and he took it straight through the heart, plummeting off the back of the NorShor Theater into a dumpster. Sadly, he only became more powerful than I ever imagined; his mind escaped into the dandersphere and he remains at large.

^[2] That innocent bagel and cream cheese you had for brunch suddenly has you doubled over with abdominal cramping, your throat closing shut in anaphylactic shock.

^[3] Born with a condition that exaggerates the volume of his sneezes, at first he was simply the world’s loudest sneezer, known on the street as Sneeze Boy. However, his condition progressed. Now he is not only ear-splittingly loud, but his sneezes cause sustained hurricane-force winds. Maintains a utility belt of different sorts of pepper to modulate his ability.

^[4] Officially, Strontium lad got his powers via blood infusion from Atomic Man, and then X-Ray Lass got her powers from Strontium Lad. However, rumor has always favored semen-based transmission in each case.

^[5] “I am a gazer into distances, weaponized wistful gazes, my powers are evocative, an emotion parasite, I spend a lot of time in museums, I’m freaked out by babies because newborns are nostalgic for the world beyond death, they yearn not for the womb but for the pre-womb …”

^[6] Bad Judgement Man, A Love Story: “I’ll just let my wiener do the thinking. The wiener is the sensible one: ‘Have you met this guy’s brain?’”

^[7] Enormous disasters follow this schlumpy, haggard loser wherever he goes, yet he remains unhurt and one step ahead. He is a non-combatant but causes great problems for others. Over time he learns to keep a lid on it better, but the gene invariably expresses itself again and he is carried around the globe on a string of improbable cataclysms. His powers are canceled when near enough to his brother, Synchronicity Man.

^[8] “Chemical vision,” i.e. his eyes shoot chemicals. Also has a “chemical punch” with exploding chemical pustules on his knuckles. A product of Lake Superior Chemical.

^[9] The Cramulons’ planet was destroyed by the Impactor nine billion years ago.

^[10] See “The Addict.”

^[11] “‘The Catastrophist of Literary Criticism,’ my new book is Fuck the Reader, the sequel to my not-at-all successful book Fuck the Publisher, and my famously short-sighted series Fuck the Distributors.”

^[12] Voted “Least Favorite Supervillain” by the Guys Who Never Stop Fighting.

^[13] Part of a super-league of traveling ball teams. They bus town-to-town, solving mysteries, helping people, fighting crime, with powers they use primarily to play sports.

^[14] She wills a “body” of fire ants to inhabit, and grows to giant size with alarming quickness. A Texas transplant

^[15] Sourdough so sour it melts faces … fresh baguettes slung across his back like Deadpool. He fights for control of the lucrative upscale bread market.

^[16] “… the form of a vaping man dressed in black with an upturned collar and a fedora.” In this form he is known as Dark Vaper.

^[17] Dr. Alec Bolland of WLSSD fell into a cesspool spiked with an experimental enzyme formula. He emerged to find his body tissues replaced with living excrement. He soon realized he not only controlled scat with his mind, but he had become a powerful elemental being, a brown God. Even with his newfound powers however, he cannot win the heart of his beloved, a comely sanitation engineer who finds him sickening. This led to WLSSD’s unfortunate “King Kong” incident.

^[18] So impeccable it allows him to move between warring political factions as an information merchant. His pleats are so sharp, his bling so dazzling, hostility is negated and admiration is produced. No matter how aggressive his opponents, they cannot help pausing to contemplate the thoughtfulness of his ensemble.

^[19] It’s consensus in angelic circles that the Baron and his bride have made such a mess of things that time travel must be closely regulated.

^[20] See “The Working Mother.”

^[21] He is a nauseatingly upbeat extrovert that everyone wishes would shut up, or, depending on the day, he is an endless whiner who can’t even sit down because it’s all just too gross. “Inside me there is a right-side-out man who wants to get out.” Mission: turn Inside-Out Man inside-out into the Right-Side-Out Man. Fired from the Weak Men: “You see, Inside-Out Man, it’d be great if you had even basic computer skills. We need more than gross-out I guess. What we’re saying is, stay here and goof around on social media but you’re too gross, which is saying you’re not gross enough.” Inside-Out Man cried inside-out tears, his tear ducts visibly pumping on the outside of his eyes like wriggling pupae.

^[22] Menno Zwonk’s henchman and kitchen manager.

^[23] The Bastard Killer shoots loud motorcycles that wake the baby. Tracks down and shoots purveyors of internet viruses. Shoots child pornographers on sight. He is the mystery assassin who shot up so many KKK rallies that they quit having them. He hates being awakened from dreamy slumbers by inconsiderate noise makers. Witnessing excessive belligerent rudeness drives him to murder. A master drifter, he utilizes all the black ops military-espionage techniques available to fulfill his purpose: kill the bastards.

^[24] Were-mergansers, born with the ability to transform into man-sized diving waterfowl. Several times the size of normal mergansers, the Merganser Men have their proportionate abilities. They can fly in excess of 100MPH. They swim through the water like they’re wearing jet-packs, flexing their massive strength and constitution to power through the fluid medium. They can hold their breath for an hour. They use their powers for good: rescuing swimmers, sailors, and the like.

^[25] “I don’t have to touch you to knock you out, these knuckles punch your chakras. I am over here doing a visualization of lovingly giving you a beatdown.”

^[26] He once killed a man with a moist towelette.

^[27] Mr. Bombastic, Irascible Woman, The Human Touch, The Ever-Lovin’ Fling

^[28] The Invincible Irony Man, Kaptain Amerika, The Mighty Bore, The Incredible Schmulk

^[29] Featuring Mr. Patristic vs. Protractus

^[30] Mr. Stochastic, Indivisible Woman, The Human Porch, The Bling

^[31] Ultra Baby, kidnapped for ransom in his crib/playpen of alien supermetals, winds up heartwarmingly decimating the mafia. Adorably crawls through hot lava. Runs amok on a submarine, killing hundreds. Admiral Hardcheese: “What is not clear to me is who authorized the presence of a superpowered baby on the flagship of the US submarine fleet.”

^[32] Accidentally created during Blue Man’s clash with The Red Scare

^[33] Local politician with uncanny knowledge of dark maneuvers in the Rules of Order and anachronistic laws still on the books. She lays the legislative groundwork for a takeover of the city by a secret society of anarchists, Brautiganist poets sentencing criminals to koans. She helped local superheroes successfully petition the city council to leave a downtown crane in place because it was a hub for grappling hook users who keep the crime rate down.

^[34] “The John Bonham of Krypton”

^[35] “Looks like we’ve been hit by the Rummager.” “Your reign of rummagery is over!” “For am I not—the Rummager?” “The Filer didn’t notice that the Straightener made the scene kinda quickly; how did he know unless … Filer, you mean to tell me you’re the Rummager? Kinda making a lot of work for yourself …” Breaks into the manuscript library. “I love to rummage and I love to un-rummage … I am Janus-faced, chaos and order rolled into one…”

^[36] Also pops out glop-balls from sphincters on his wrists.

^[37] Origin: experimented on by a deranged dermatologist.

^[38] Endless streams of mother’s milk under pressure comparable to twin firehoses.

^[39] Radiation exposure caused mutagenesis of the bacteria in his pores.

^[40] With a double-tap of his prostate.

^[41] Animates his copious earwax into funky celebrity dummies that stumble around town like an army of zombies.

^[42] All in his head.

^[43] From the Journal of the Morphogenetic Field Technician. “Endless autopsying of a self-regenerating corpse… has time slowed? … constantly revealing secrets of its murder, a well of info … because of the body’s Heavenly origin, revelations of its murder reveal all murders … any crime can be solved via dissection of the exquisite corpse … its necrotic healing factor restores and binds the body’s fatal wounds, sealing my exploratory incisions in the chest cavity. Morphing, the wounds are all wounds, every possible wound. I identify and re-identify entry and exit holes. The blood’s chemical analysis percolates at finer and finer search parameters. The corpse contains within its volume the history of forensics and crime … God of the underworld, both dead and alive? Or is this Abel, murdered in the prehistory of time?”

^[44] “Give yourself to your enemy. Let the conflict wash over you. Let the enemy have his way with you.” Submitting selflessly, the Surrenderer super-surrenders, effortlessly ending the conflict, smashing stalemates with his will alone: his steadfast, unbreakable, iron will to give up. He lays down his weapon, dramatically foreshortened and heavily inked like an old Jack Kirby drawing leaping off the page with power and dynamism as he fails to use it. In every conflict, no matter the difficulty, the invincible Surrenderer finds a way to throw his hands in the air.

^[45] Well-dressed playboy so in tune with his environment that he is always in the right place at the right time. On Saturday nights at Dublinn Pub, he uses his uncanny perfect timing in a screamingly funny stand-up comedy act. After bar close he wanders the nighttime cityscape, calm and unhurried, effortlessly saving lives and changing people’s destinies just by being there. Guns jam, cars miss pedestrians by a hair’s breadth, the whoosh of a butterfly’s wing is enough to stop a train from derailing when he is around. He is often the only one who can approach the Catastrophist, since he never receives injury even when strolling through large-scale calamities.

^[46] “Do your parents know you’re out here, Teen Exoplanet?” Teen Exo-Planet: “My mother, a gas giant, would say, ‘You look hungry, Teen Exoplanet dear. Let me fix you some nice hot planet soup. Dear, if you don’t stabilize your orbit, you’ll never develop higher lifeforms.’ So I screamed, ‘I don’t want higher lifeforms! I’ll never stabilize my orbit! You’re not the boss of me!’ I developed higher life anyway, then rocketed through the solar system and threw myself into the sun. It was glorious but I returned horribly burned, a foolish and regretful Icarus, my hissy fit a civilization’s destruction, screaming humanoids in a fire hurricane…”

^[47] Traps his victims in an overheated maze, the Hyperboligeum.

^[48] “I start wars the old-fashioned way: politics.”

^[49] Only The Impactor can take it.

^[50] See “High Prices.”

^[51] Even the faintest whiff is instantly fatal.

^[52] To wipe evil from the earth. He summons them with the unifying cry, “To me, my Xcre-Men!”

^[53] As long as his bladder is full, he is a force to be reckoned with. I witnessed him collapsing a construction site onto the Secretionists by peeing around the base of it in several spots like a dog.

Parts of this essay originally appeared in the Transistor. More Richardson writing here.

The post Index of the Duluth Superhero Community (the Richardsonverse) appeared first on Perfect Duluth Day.

The new Trampled by Turtles album Alpenglow is scheduled for release Oct. 28. The album’s producer, Jeff Tweedy wrote the song “A Lifetime to Find,” which he recorded with his band Wilco for the album Cruel Country.

The video features a series of Polaroid photos of the band and everyone involved during the recording of Alpenglow at Wilco’s Chicago studio, the Loft.

Sidenote: Trampled by Turtles is helping to raise money for Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness by partnering with Sportsmen for the Boundary Waters in a silent charity auction that runs until 6 p.m. on Oct. 10. Items include rare memorabilia, outdoor gear, experiences, signed posters, and even the band’s stage owl.

The post Trampled by Turtles – “A Lifetime to Find” appeared first on Perfect Duluth Day.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Ci-HS9zumdS/

The annual biochemical process is underway in Duluth and surrounding areas. Progression of fall and peak leaf colors can be tracked with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources’ Fall Color Finder.

Featured here are select images from Instagram showcasing nature’s palette.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CjDShcWOoFD/

https://www.instagram.com/p/CjDS7zGOrgt/

https://www.instagram.com/p/CjDXTT8uF_5/

https://www.instagram.com/p/CjBkDfaprlg/

https://www.instagram.com/p/CjBrgbGpAU5/

https://www.instagram.com/p/CjBmcbXJ_Re/

https://www.instagram.com/p/Ci8qUBjs8Ck/

https://www.instagram.com/p/CjIfU0MO2kV/

https://www.instagram.com/p/CjIfDw2OH63/

https://www.instagram.com/p/CjGA5pjuaP1/

https://www.instagram.com/p/CjGI-CZr6nM/

https://www.instagram.com/p/CjFM0bQOKzN/

The post Selective Focus: Fall Colors 2022 appeared first on Perfect Duluth Day.