A perfect façade with white, straight teeth and a heroically dimpled chin.
Below that was a strong, stable neck, further down the blue costume riding atop sinewy musculature. Jack held up his right arm, flexed the bicep, and was so impressed he was tempted to go fetch a tape measure. This was like getting cosmetic enhancements without breaking the bank.
All up? A living, breathing dead-ringer for Jack Kirby’s late 1960s drawings of Steve Rogers — a.k.a. Captain America — which was, anyway, what the original Southern Cross illustration had aped.
The flag emblem sitting on his hearty chest was pretty much the same one used at the Eureka Stockade fight north-west of Melbourne in 1854 — where the rebellious gold miners had stitched together five eight-pointed stars representing the Crux Australis, better known as the constellation Southern Cross. They’d joined these via a white cross on a dark blue background, one star at each end of the cross and a single star in the centre.
In his costume’s case, however, the middle star was missing. Jack had no idea why this was so. Skewed memory?
Whoever’d been the artist of that original sketch of Southern Cross — the superhero — had obviously been clutching at straws for a symbol of Australianism. To be honest, he might just as well have used the Vegemite logo.
When Jack had once bothered to investigate further, the MADE SIMPLE Self-Teaching Encyclopedia told him the Eureka Stockade was a failed rebellion that lasted just one day. Then again, it ended up inspiring male suffrage and was identified with the birth of democracy in Australia — something everyone had since been deprived of.
Jack returned to the face of this hero, which now annoyed him.
If he looked too long at the flawless mug in the mirror, he felt there was every possibility he’d go blind. He pulled on the mask, and that was somewhat better. It covered everything bar the eyes.
“Done with the preening?”
Jack lifted his gaze in the mirror’s reflection and found Pretty Amazonia standing in the doorway to the bathroom.
She wore her bows and ribbons, leaning against whitewashed wood with her arms crossed, and Jack noted the woman nearly reached the top of the doorframe. Her expression was blank, aside from a vaguely upturned mouth.
“How long’ve you been there?” he asked, without turning.
“Long enough. You all right?”
“Sure.”
“Any aches or pains?”
“Only the ones in my head you warned me about. What’s up?”
“We have a group meeting, another humdrum affair organized by our fearless leader. Lose the mask — we don’t need to follow formalities indoors. But let’s grab coffee this time, so the bugger’s jokes don’t fall flat. Otherwise, it’s downright depressing.”
THE 0R1G1N 0F
S0UTHERN CR0SS
#110
Back in Melbourne, the environmentally lashed, overpopulated last city on earth, Jacob Curtiss lived it up at Hikari Mansion.
Even so, let’s not fiddle round misleading you but leap straight to the point — Hikari Mansion, near the corner of Hope and Elizabeth Streets in the northern suburb of Preston, was a Housing Commission dump.
Likely it’d been named, with perverted jocularity, in homage to the Japanese concept of a ‘mansion’: myriad apartments thrown together in the single building, with each separate flat containing one tiny room and a more compact bathroom. Jacob Curtiss therefore really resided in a box and this box was about twenty square metres.
He’d shared the place with his mother and father, before they were taken away. “Sedition,” the uniforms had said as they shuffled off his parents, with their wrists and ankles shackled, black plastic bags over their heads.
That was when he was thirteen. He’d lived alone in the box for two years.
Jacob had no TV, no electricity — it was cut off when the bills weren’t paid long before — and he stopped going to school on his fourteenth birthday. Figured nobody would notice, or weep, and he’d been proven right.
There were twenty-three other boxes the same size on this floor, twenty-four apiece on the other fifteen storeys of the Housing Commission block. They were shoved full of families and couples and kids and elderly types too afraid to communicate with one another.
Sometimes, when he needed a sense of space, Jacob would trek to an abandoned locomotive graveyard half an hour’s trudge from Hikari Mansion, close by the ruins of Batman Station. There was a gutted carriage there, stripped of anything valuable, parked on uneven gravel since the iron tracks had also been plundered. Usually Jacob sheltered beneath the car with a large sheet of plastic, listening to the rain on top, watching it spatter and torment the mud and eternal puddles.
Most of his time, however, the boy was home.
In his particular 202 cubicle, Jacob hoarded things, mainly books. A number of these had been left behind by his parents, like the dog- eared, constantly underlined and asterisked Penguin Classics paperback of Thomas More’s Utopia, which belonged to Jacob’s father. The others he collected from derelict houses, junk piles and rubbish bins, many of the books water-damaged — yet legible regardless.
There was a black-bound hardback of The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett, published by ImPress Mysteries, New York, with an old price sticker on the back in Indian rupees (175 Rs).
He had eighteen of the full set of twenty-five volumes of the MADE SIMPLE Self-Teaching Encyclopedia, published far back in 1964, yet still in relatively good nick despite the mould.
One of Jacob’s favourite tomes was a hefty hardcover from 1970, titled This is Australia, by M. Sasek: a simple picture book with vivid red binding that had a painting of a girl holding a koala. She was dressed in a check one-piece with a boater on her head.
Another prize was S. D. Robinson’s The History of Art, published through Wyeth Press in Boston, 2011. This boasted either a legit- imate previous owner’s name or a dadaist pisstake —‘Dick Mutt’ — scrawled inside the front cover in thick black ink. Some of the pages had been loose, but he sticky-taped these into submission.
Not to forget the Unabridged Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Classic Cars: The Globe’s Most Fabulous and Innovative Cars and Hot Rods, 1920 to 2000, edited by Buster Camshaft. Given the length of this tome (it clocked in at six hundred pages), the publishers were able to fit the exceptionally long title on the spine.
But Jacob’s pride and joy was another kind of printed matter.
Several plasti-board boxes sat in the middle of the room, packed with hundreds of ancient comics from the 1960s. These particular containers, unlike the residential boxes hereabouts — which were sterile and lacklustre — sheltered a sense of wonder.
To deter the constant humidity and dampness, every issue was individually wrapped in a plastic sheath, each a full sixty microns thick, seven and a quarter inches wide by ten and a half inches high, bearing a one and a half inch tuck-in lip.
Between books, the boy would slip out a random comic, throw himself on the worn floral carpet that pretended to hide the concrete slab beneath, and flick through pages defining an alien realm in which justice was king and superheroes fought the good fight to uphold dignity and equality. There was laidback humour in them, too, a sunny-side-up sense of cheeky bravado — since the world wasn’t the dystopia that existed just outside the door to his box.
Jacob read by plasti-wax candlelight or, depending on the time of day, via the distorted illumination courtesy of a giant Hylax neon advertisement outside the only window. And he knew a happiness he otherwise didn’t think could exist.
On the walls inside his box, on every bit of existing space of the dirty beige wallpaper, between bookcases and stacks of books, were paintings of superheroes and monstrous villains in action and in flight.
Since Jack wasn’t the finest artist, these were glorious, idyll-defining eyesores.
On the rare occasion, Jacob broke away from escapist paperwork and murals to stare at the single, square mirror above the sink.
&
nbsp; This was filthy, stained with toothpaste, soap, morsels of rotted food. He hadn’t cleaned it since his mum went away. Beyond the gunk, he could make out his reflection: overgrown, mousey-brown hair past his shoulders that hadn’t seen scissors or a brush in two years, join-the-dot freckles scattered across a pale face. The tiny beginnings of downy hair on the chin. Skinny as. Shorter than other kids the same age.
His dad’s razor-set lay abandoned at the bottom of a plastic basket next to the sink, but the remaining blades were rusty and he’d wasted the can of shaving foam doing decorations on the window last Christmas.
Jacob regarded his brown eyes. They looked hollow, dark rings beneath, nothing to sustain them aside from reading matter.
While roving about the box, the boy usually wore one of his father’s t-shirts, a faded black number a couple of sizes too big, threadbare, unwashed for months — it still somehow reassuringly smelled of his dad’s cologne.
Even though the screen-printed writing on the tee sat in reverse in the mirror, he could recite the slogan in his sleep:
‘Go to Hell? I’m Already There.’
#111
There was a letter that Jacob read and re-read, on dozens of occasions — so many times that it was worn out and the words faded in the folds. This correspondence had been written using a manual typewriter on foolscap, and the writer resorted far too often to semicolons, but even so it caught his imagination and went thus:
TO: MR STAN LEE,
PUBLISHER, MARVEL COMICS
Dear Stan,
Please find enclosed an idea.
I suppose I’ve directed this letter and the accompanying idea to you personally because of the admiration I bear towards you in the creation and fermenting of such ideas as The Fantastic Four, Thor, The Avengers, The X-Men, et al. That, and the hope that you will see something of use in the enclosed idea, or perhaps pass it on to someone else to consider it. P’raps even just glance at it?
I’ve been an ardent fan of Marvel since 1974, at the tender age of nine, when I chanced to pick up my first copy of Captain America; and ever since then I’ve wondered why Australia couldn’t have its own icon of superherodom. Britain has gained Union Jack and Captain Britain; Canada has Vindicator/Guardian; Africa the Black Panther. Yet we down here in Australia find ourselves cheering on Americans, Brits, Canadians,
Africans, Irelanders, Norse myths, heroes of Grecian antiquity — but no Australians. At times it gets frustrating because there’s no-one from “here” to follow. Marvel at least recently gave us the character of Gateway, but his is a minor role, and the only one in each of the major comics production houses. Australia is a country of over sixteen million people, of which 90% live in the cities. Is one person all we would have in the superhero market?
So, with these details in mind, we come to that accompanying piece of Australianism, that you could perhaps utilize or develop upon if ever you get the compulsion to create an Aussie counterpart to your very own Captain America. I call him SOUTHERN CROSS. Why Southern Cross? It’s an idea with a long history, beginning ’way back in high school with those absent-minded doodles that appeared on my lecture pads; evolving into the characterization pictured overleaf. The “Southern Cross” is actually a constellation visible only in the southern hemisphere, and it appears on the Australian flag. The version of it employed on our hero’s tunic is a derivation of the rallying flag of the Eureka Stockade in the nineteenth century — Australia’s first and only rebellion, and revered ever since as a libertarian struggle against repression (in this case, British rule).
The letters ‘S’ and ‘C’ that appear on our hero’s back are fashioned into the shape of boomerangs (another Australian symbol); his costume is navy blue, with white detailing; his power is ambiguous — it’s the one thing that I couldn’t resolve, even after all this time! An idea could be that the character had a mutant power of repulsion of any sort of blow struck against him…Thus you could play with the notion that, although he’s a national hero, Southern Cross is also a mutant, and gets caught up in the whole mutant hysteria?
Anyway, do with him what you will; hopefully, use him. If not, get some sort of idea from his draft and create something else! Just remember that there are a large number of Marvel fans down here who could do with a “home hero”. Earlier this year I spent a week in Los Angeles, and a week in New York, and was struck by the increased awareness most Americans now possess with regard to Australia — so couldn’t Marvel lead the way and extend that awareness by a foray into the untouchable grey zone down under?
I have my fingers crossed. And my toes. Thanks for bothering to read this slightly long-winded letter. One thing I’d really appreciate is to hear from you or your colleagues by return — giving an indication of what you think about my idea, and also if you could fill me in about the possibilities of writing something (anything!), okay?
Thanks,
Yours faithfully,
Wally Deaps.
#112
As it turned out, Jacob found Heropa while wandering a rain-drenched street (Grandview Road) just beyond the ramshackle, junk-cluttered entrances to Hikari Mansion.
He’d been scrounging for something to eat, having rifled through various moss-green plastic rubbish containers, while evading police and security types, but found most of the bins filled with murky water — nothing edible nor potable.
That was when a fossilized hippy/homeless man — in all probability the geezer juggled both the professions — sidled up to him with a handful of soggy paper flyers.
This man, sixty-odd, had on a tattered vinyl poncho with peace symbols all over it in various shades of discolour. He had dreaded hair and a dreaded beard in which Jacob could not spy a mouth, and he stank of mould, incense and mothballs. The mouth was confirmed by wafting breaths of something unbrushed for an agonizingly long time.
“Looking for escape from the madness, my boy?”
“Not interested.” Jacob circled past, hoping to put some space between him and the stench — he pictured some indoor acoustic guitar circle singing ‘Kumbaya’ to the accompaniment of god-awful bongo drums.
“Wait, wait. Hold your over-excited horses — whoa, Nellie!”
The Hippy thrust a sagging, half-torn flyer into Jacob’s hand before he had the chance to snatch his fingers away.
Jacob looked at the message; worried it might carry some breed of smell bacteria and wished he’d brought along a pair of salad tongs with which to hold the thing. There was a poorly drawn picture of a masked man, a bit like Batman’s sidekick Robin as he was conceived in the 1950s, smiling, with no worry in the world.
The caption beside this junior hero’s head was written in bold caps that said HEROPA and, in smaller lettering — the ink of which was starting to bleed —Escape to a new life of heroes and adventure!
“Come along anytime,” the Hippy urged, at the same time that he leaned closer with stinky fumes.
Jacob tottered away, trying hard not to screw up his face. “Got no money. Can’t afford it.”
“Heropa costs nothing.”
“Everything costs something.”
“In this case? Only your leisure.”
There was the hook. Free, and a timewaster to boot. Jacob finally looked into tired, slate-coloured eyes. “What’s the catch?”
“No catch. But you look like you could use a romp, if not a bite to eat. Too young to get about with that hangdog countenance you’re folded up in. This here is everything you ever dreamed about in comicbooks.”
“Who says I dig comics?”
Grey peepers sidled down. “The t-shirt, my boy. The t-shirt.” He pressed a finger into Spider-Man’s print-faded forehead. “I can tell you have a hankering for some place better than this nightmare in motion.”
#113
The ink-bled address scrawled on the flyer ended up being a ruse.
The place was an old, boarded-up milk bar that hadn’t seen custom in at least a couple of decades. Jacob had kicked the door with wh
at — frustration? A sense of bitter reality? Of course it was a hoax. What’d he expected? Escape? There was no escape. The world was the world.
Jacob walked from beneath a sheltering doorway, back out into the deluge. His clothes were already soaked through, his skin itched. Precisely the moment a tiny woman approached, wrapped to the nines in torn plastic garbage bags.
“Heropa?” she inquired.
“You were scammed too?”
“No scam. It’s real. But you need to go some place else. First up, a question: How did Peter Parker become Spider-Man?”
“You’re kidding?”
“Fine. See you.” The little lady turned about.
“He was bitten by a radioactive spider. Any fool knows that.”
She chortled while coming back. “Not so many fools as you’d think. Go here.” The Bag Lady showed him a different address, and retracted it as he reached over. “No, you remember. Safer that way.”
“For who?”
“Everybody.”
“Who’s everybody?”
“You’ll find out when you get there.”
“That address?”
“No, silly. In Heropa.”
#114
The address the Bag Lady offered up led him to an empty lot. A man hidden in a waxy, plasti-board crate in the corner of the open space, secure from the downpour, asked a different question after Jacob politely knocked.
“What were the names of Batman’s parents?”
“Thomas and Martha Wayne.”
“Listen carefully,” the unseen Box Man’s voice said from within. “I’ll give you the next directions only once. I don’t care if the rain is making a racket and you can’t hear me properly.”
“I can hear you okay.”
“Aren’t you the lucky one?”
Third port-of-call was a three-storey, nineteenth-century redbrick warehouse down a flooded laneway. There were beaten-up old skips, fallen walls and rusted shopping trolleys littered about that together prevented access by any means other than foot. This was tricky enough, since it required a lot of climbing and much slippage.