On June 10th, I propose Dark Phoenix Day, an international day of observance in which everyone should go about their business dressed as the evil, sexy versions of themselves.

FAQ:

Q: Why June 10?
A: June 10, 1980 was the publication date of X-Men #134, the first appearance of Dark Phoenix.

Q: Who?
A: Dark Phoenix, the evil version of the character Jean Grey. After being seduced to the side of evil by Mastermind and the Hellfire Club, the release of her inhibitions transformed Jean into a genocidal psychopath with the power of a god.
The color scheme of her costume was nicer, though.

Q: What does that have to do with anything?
A: It demonstrates an important principle that is at the root of Dark Phoenix Day: the bad guys have the best clothes.

Q: Why do comics keep linking sex and evil? Sex isn’t evil / evil isn’t sexy!
A: Don’t underestimate the power of transgression on the erotic imagination. Also, hell hath no fury like an unrepressed superhero.

Q: I am already the sexy, evil version of myself.
A: You can either (i) turn it up to 11 or (ii) use your evil sexiness to seduce and corrupt others to the cause of Dark Phoenix Day.

Q: What’s the difference between this and the Rocky Horror Picture Show / any other masquerade event?
A: Subtlety. Dark Phoenix Day isn’t about parties (although you’re welcome to organize them!), it’s about going out and about on your every day business dressed as a sexy, evil version of yourself. Go to work in that identity, run errands, hang out with your friends. Feel the unease as people notice something… different about you.

[link above should go the the Facebook event page.]

Which brings me to the Phantom. He’s a pretty popular comic character everywhere except the USA, where he was created in 1936 (predating the Batman, and Superman too). The Phantom is a costumed crimefighter based in the African jungle, sort of a cross between Batman and Tarzan. He wears purple tights (his creator, Lee Falk, insisted for many years that his costume is gray), he carries two pistols, you never see his eyes in his mask (which is a classic comic convention that doesn’t translate to any more realistic medium), his headquarters is a cave that looks like a skull, he’s got a dog, a horse a falcon, a girlfriend, a tribe of loyal pygmies and a punch that will mark his enemies with the imprint of his skull-ring. The real cool thing about him, though, is that he’s hundreds of years old, “The Ghost That Walks”, but he isn’t immortal: remember Bruce Wayne swearing to fight crime on his parents’ grave? So this shipwrecked sailor, he swore on the skull of the pirate that murdered his father to fight “piracy, greed, cruelty and injustice”, and to have his sons and his sons’ sons follow in his footsteps.

Which they have, for 21 generations.

I first ran across the Phantom in his Charlton comics’ run, and fell in love with him in the issues illustrated by Don Newton. Newton is a master of texture and shadow, even in this early, sometimes rushed work, and the stories he illustrated were a bunch of self-contained single issue pulp adventures, with the economic storytelling you don’t see much of these days. Newton drew the Phantom as a square-jawed shadowy hero, with the massive and graceful physique of a bodybuilder, pitted him against wonderfully expressive villains against lushly exotic or shadowly gothic backgrounds. This comic is obscure but loved enough that people have uploaded some complete stories: Here’s one about the Phantom hunting down an assassin called the Torch into the lair of an even more sinister villain, probably more fun to view as a slideshow on flickr, and here’s one featuring The Phantom of 1776, which is remarkable because it shows:

1. The Phantom of 1776 is indistinguishable from the modern Phantom, except that he carries flintlock pistols instead of 45 automatics.
2. Ben Franklin threatening the Phantom to get off America’s back over slavery. Better to take them out when they’re little, I say.

Sadly, I can’t find my favorite Phantom strip online, The Triumph of Evil, which is his origin story, as retold in the first of Don Newton’s comics. Basically, Nazis show up and beat up on the natives; the Phantom takes them on, and goes down. Everyone is sure he’s dead; even the locals, raised on the myth of the Ghost That Walks, are shaken that their protector has fallen. However, his son has been riding home, gets to the skull cave, puts on the tights and mask, and, in a dramatic flash of lightning, rises before his enemies: The Phantom Lives!
After his enemies are defeated, the new Phantom takes the skull-ring from his father’s hand and leaves the body in the hidden vault, where the bodies of their ancestors lie. That image, of the hero dying with his mask on, his body hidden by his trusted allies and buried anonymously, secretly; of the son stepping smoothly into his father’s role, donning the mask almost in mid-punch as it were, of a character who remains the same “person”, even though the man behind the mask changes, because those men have shaped their lives for the moment they will have to wear the mask, that is something that sends shivers down my spine and dust into my eyes. So, strange as it may seem, the reason I love the Phantom is that I saw the moment the puppeteers changed, the moment a new person stepped behind the curtain and became the Ghost That Walks.

There are, according to the recently launched World Superhero Registry, more than 200 men and a few women who are willing to dress up as comic book heroes and patrol the urban streets in search of, if not super-villains, then pickpockets and bullies.

They may look wacky, but the superhero community was born in the embers of the 9/11 terrorist attacks when ordinary people wanted to do something short of enlisting. They were boosted by a glut of Hollywood superhero movies.

In recent weeks, prompted by heady buzz words such as “active citizenry” during the Barack Obama campaign, the pace of enrolment has speeded up. Up to 20 new “Reals”, as they call themselves, have materialised in the past month.

- Amateur crimefighters are surging in the US – Times Online [via LMG].

I’m pretty sure most of these people (one wants to call them characters) and their anecdotes have been featured in news stories I’ve seen before, but I like the article’s rethoric, describing this as an emerging sub-culture.

Here’s a video about a group of “supes” from Salt Lake City called The Black Monday Society. They look like LARPers:

British Superhero comedy starting September 18th – via CBR’s Lying In The Gutters.