San Fran Media Blitz...

...AND A SF RLSH ON THE RUN

By now, I think the readers of Heroes in the Night know how this shakes down- one media outlet goes "Hey! We got superheroes here!" and then the rest of the local press dog piles on.

We had a fair media blitz here in Milwaukee in October/ November last year. New York City/ New Jersey is a perennial favorite. London has pretty "keen" on the story the last couple of months. An of course Phoenix Jones has Energize Bunny'd the Seattle media since November.

Even smaller towns have had mini blitzes--consider for example the Bar Harbor Batman or the Viper.

Next up looks like San Francisco.

It starts with an article in a publication called The Bold Italic by Justin Juul titled "San Francisco Bay Guardians" in which the author follows around Motor-Mouth, Night Bug, Justified, and Kingsnake. Juul has a humorous and frank take on the story, dressing up as a RLSH himself ("Nightman") for a patrol and sharing the ups and downs of being on street level. The lay out of the article is pretty spectacular- it includes several illustrations of an artist's interpretation of RLSHs and a video at the end.
You can find the article here:
thebolditalic.com/JustinJuul/stories/777-san-francisco-bay-guardians

The story was then picked up by the local NBC affiliate and a website called SFist.

My only complaint is that two out of three of these sources have one very major fact wrong- they claim RLSHs were born because of Kick-Ass in 2008. That is completely false. As my well informed readers know, the term Real Life Superhero can be dated back to the 1980 secret superhero manual "How to be a Superhero," penned by the mysterious Night Rider. Other prototypes existed before him. The more modern incarnation of the RLSH began to develop in 2005-2006.

HELLPOOL ON THE RUN

Also related, this breaking news out of San Francisco: Motor-Mouth claims that his former team mate, Hellpool (formerly Hellhound), not only swiped half his name and his aesthetics from comic book character Deadpool, but engaged in actual thievery as well. Heroes in the Night did a Hero Profile on Hellpool back in early September HERE.

In a bulletin titled "RLSH WARNING ABOUT THE RLSH KNOWN AS HELLPOOL" Motor Mouth warns:

"So it was brought to my attention on Saturday by a fellow Californian RLSH that Hellpool, my former teammate, is city hopping (currently in San Diego). To give all of you fair warning, he is NOT to be trusted. He is wanted for a burglary case in San Francisco besides having a lengthy rap-sheet from Oregon to California (a journalist I know & trust investigated that via the SFPD). Again, he is nothing more then a con-man & is NOT to be trusted."

Motor Mouth also added to me in an e-mail: "(Someone)did some digging into Hellpool and discovered that he is indeed wanted by the SFPD. Any RLSH's doing work with him are for sure putting themselves at risk, both legally & reputation wise."

Bay Area RLSH Workshops

Pictured: Kingsnake(L) and Motor-Mouth conducting a self defense workshop

The North Cali Pacific Protectorate has been busy lately! The crew includes Motor-Mouth, Hellpool, Kingsnake, Mutinous Angel, Citizen Change, and Mega-Rad (and someone named Inferno Wolf, I think.)

Motor-Mouth, Hellpool, and Citizen Change stepped out to do some RLSH style crowd control during a recent riot in Oakland. When I heard about it, I called Motor-Mouth and got the story recorded first hand. It is a good story and one of the last things I'm doing for the book is transcribing it for a chapter titled "On the Street."

It is paraphrased in Motor-Mouth's profile that was posted yesterday on Peter Tangen's site HERE.

The RLSHs also appeared as guests on the Creepy Kofy Movie Time show, a regional late night B-horror show.

Their most recent event was a two day set of RLSH workshops, patrols, and handouts.
Besides midwest guest Overwatch, they were also joined by a group of college students, who were introduced to RLSH via Heroes in the Night.

Watching the workshop, L-R: Two fellows from the school documentary project, an unknown RLSH (possibly Overwatch?), Mega-Rad, and Hellpool.

I talked with two of the people involved with the project by e-mail. Joseph Lambert explained the project.

"We are doing a project for our school. Basically, we [my team and I] go to a Graphic Art college near Pixar Studio's in Emeryville. We are assigned to do a Documentary to see how well we work as a Team on a film project. There are the four of us; Emma, Derryl, Ray, and Myself. The project is due in about a week, we're running way behind, but we should be fine! One or two of the RLSH's requested that we blur out their faces, when seen unmasked. An easy task. We definitely want to respect their wishes, not only for the sake of respecting them as people, but also because they've helped us out a lot on this project."

I also asked Joseph about the experience over all.

"It was cool to see. Real people, doing this. They don't have to do it, but they do it because 1. They want to. 2. They believe in it. and 3. Because if they don't... who will?" Joseph says he has a RLSH name picked out- "Super-Guy" and that another one of the guys working on the project has thought about joining the RLSH ranks.

RLSHs on a handout mission after the workshops.


Emma DuPell also is a member of the team working on the project and I asked what she thought of the experience.

"What I thought of the super heroes at first was 'Ok, they're regular human beings who get bored and patrol their areas, cool.' But as I got to know them more I learned they're not just regular human beings who dress up and patrol, they also help the homeless and keep an eye out for drunk partiers (not a word, I know) so that they go back to wherever safely. It really surprised me how dedicated and serious these guys were and I wish they were given more credit. Otherwise they were really nice guys, I loved talking their ears off and I would love to go out with them during another one of their patrols."