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Sometimes people tell me, “Wow, Fantasto-Man, your powers are amazing!” Sometimes, they don’t even have to tell me. Often they won’t say it aloud, but I just sense them thinking it, using my incredible powers of telepathy. Or sometimes I hear them subvocalize it using my super-hearing. Often, I’ll accidentally catch a glimpse of someone writing it in their diaries using my fantastical abilities of X-ray and telescopic vision.
And yes, these powers have saved the world countless times, brought me incredible fame, and are super fun to mess around with in my spare time (I went to the moon this afternoon!!!), but I’ll be honest with you—these powers are a terrible curse.
Not a literal curse. I wasn’t cursed by these powers by a witch in a swamp, like my colleague Swamp-Beast was. And good thing, too! Then I would look like an inhuman creature made out of mud and plants, instead of having this handsome face that’s made Super-People Magazine’s “Sexiest Super-Man Alive” issue three times.
No, I’ve had these powers since the day I was born, thanks to the incredible misfortune of having the world’s two greatest superheroes for parents. Many normal people tell me how great this is, but you can only have so many incredible adventures in Atlantis, Hollow Earth, Dino-Island, Ranktor (Mars’ capital city), and Alternate Earths 2 through infinity before it starts to get old. You’re better off doing whatever it is normal people do, like going to Disneyland—though I will admit, Disneyland is a lot cooler on Earths 7 to 39.
And yes, my parents have given me lots of guidance about how to be a hero—teaching me how to defuse bombs, efficiently clear out a burning building, stop a tornado, and land a plane with no wings. They even taught me how to literally travel back in time on the rare occasions I made a mistake.
But my parents have given me something horrible, too. Their ridiculously high expectations! Yes, I am the most powerful person to have ever lived, and yes, using my natural abilities and parents’ guidance, I have not just met but always exceeded those expectations with basically minimum effort, but it’s exhausting! Or it would be, if I was capable of being exhausted, instead of kept constantly alert and awake 24/7 by my superhuman physiology.
The fate of the world is on my broad, muscular back, every single day. And sure, crime is lower than it’s ever been and natural disasters aren’t that common, so I have a lot of downtime. But it’s hard to enjoy that downtime knowing that you could be called out at any moment. I don’t lose sleep over it (as I’ve said, I don’t need to sleep), but it’s hard for me to enjoy spending time in my city-size fortress in Antarctica filled with one-of-a-kind wonders that would blow your mind when I know I could have to divert an asteroid at a moment’s notice. No, don’t worry, asteroids aren’t that common—it really only happened once, I’m sure you remember. I was on the news for weeks, and was given countless awards and honors (or, it would be countless for a regular person; there were 54,679).
Dating is tough, too. I may have been voted the “Sexiest Super Man Alive” three times, but in my secret identity, I’m just an amazingly attractive regular-man. It’s impossibly hard living a double life, you wouldn’t believe it. I have to talk with women about regular things like the news, movies, and our shared common interests, instead of just hopping over to the Andromeda Galaxy and painting them a portrait using the vivid colors of a dying nebula’s plasma clouds.
Plus, once I’m dating someone, my nemeses are always trying to kidnap them! It’s never a real problem, I can always save them (unlike of my less super-powered colleagues, who sometimes can’t make it in time and have to hold themselves responsible for the tragedy of their lover’s death), but it sure is annoying. And then, sometimes they fall in love with the super-version of me, not knowing who I am!
Why do I have to be so incredible in every way, you know?
It’s not like a get a free pass in life, either. I still have to work a regular job (part-time, mainly for appearances and so that I don’t get bored). That means dealing with all the stresses like getting my work in on time (super speed will only get you so far) and coming up with good ideas (done in collaboration with a super-computer my parents salvaged from a distant planet).
And you wouldn’t believe how hard it is to get wifi when I work from home in my Antarctic fortress. I rerouted a satellite and it seems to be working, at least for now. But what an ordeal!
The incredibly huge inheritance I got from my parents only goes so far, and doesn’t make up for the awful tragedy that led to my receiving it. I miss them terribly.
Oh, no. It’s fine. They’re still alive, they just faked their own deaths to “get away from it all” for a while and get their nemeses off their backs. That means I had to take over a lot more of the family super-hero business, though! What good is a huge family fortune if you have to do work for it?
Often, when I save a helpless citizen from a collapsing building, or rescue a worker trapped on train tracks, I’ll wish I was that person. Things just seem so much easier and simpler for you regular people. And I guess, no matter how amazing my powers of super speed, super strength, X-ray vision, telescopic vision, invulnerability, heat vision, freezing breath, flight, super hearing, telekinesis, shapeshifting, and teleportation are, there are some things I just can’t change.
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