

"It was a disorganized clusterfuck," he says, evidently furious with himself, like a virtuoso opera singer who does a flawless performance and then beats himself up. "You don't know anything about me," he shouts, running away onto the Manhattan streets.Įven though the operation seemed to me to unfold with a textbook precision, an embarrassed-looking Zero asks to speak to me quietly. The dealer practically chokes with fright. They look like a pack of dogs chasing a fox. The superheroes surround him, shining torches in his face, screaming, "This is a drug-free park! A drug-free park! People, not drugs!" "Are you the police?" he says, in a small voice. A dealer is standing alone, looking incredibly startled and upset to see 10 frightening men rushing toward him. But these days the media don't really want to know them. "We're not going to comment on Phoenix Jones," snaps Zero, shooting me a look.īefore Phoenix came along, Zero and his crew - headed by the veteran superhero of nine years' standing, Dark Guardian - were America's most famous RLSHs. I think it's going to open a lot of doors for people who don't want to be directly linked to the superhero stigma." "I'm trying to promote a new term instead of 'superhero': X-Alt. "I look at it like a homeland soldier who has stickers on his helmet," explains Zero, a tall, good-looking, blond-haired man. They look quite intimidating, in fact, like a street gang, or some kind of private security detachment dressed entirely in black, with only cursory flashes of color.
#PHOENIX JONES FIGHTS MOVIE#
We meet for a strategy briefing outside a movie theater near Washington Square Park, Lower Manhattan, at 10 p.m. Zero, co-founder of the New York Initiative." A bulletproof vest will be available for your use.

Yes, I can, but only if I accord them "professional respect by cooperating with our scheduling and more importantly our tactics in the field. I receive a very non-comic-book response. And so, in the days before returning to Seattle, I e-mail to ask if I can join them. In fact there's only one other crew out there actively looking for dangerous scrapes, and that's the NYI - the New York Initiative.
