TOMMY JENKINS
Killing the Super Avenger Ken Miles killed The Super Avenger on a Monday afternoon, and that night, when he went to bed, he felt cool and hopeful knowing the next morning would be clear and full of possibility. The tension knot in his neck, an unyielding marble at the top of his spine, was gone. Killing The Super Avenger did what Advil and Goody’s Powder and even a masseuse named Marla couldn’t do. Ken was thirty-eight years old, shaved his pale white skull every other morning, and needed to lose fifteen pounds. With the death of The Super Avenger, for the first time in over a decade, Ken had no deadlines to meet the next day or the next week or the rest of the month. He had choices, lots of them, and the fear sparked by that openness thrilled him. It only took a couple of weeks for the angry emails to start. Rumors had swirled for days, people posting on TheSuperAvenger.com message board about whispers of distressing news regarding The Avenger. How did rumors like these begin? Ken read the message board every day and tried to respond to emails from fans. Now almost all of his emails begged him to say that rumors on the website weren’t true. It had been Ken’s idea to start the site several years ago as a way to interact with the fans, let them feel closer to the process, and even gauge their reactions to plot twists. A lot of the fans felt part of The Super Avenger; they’d read the comic almost since the first issue, they’d grown up with him, they treated him as if he were more than real, as if his two-dimensional life constantly wrapped itself into their own. When large hailstones of hard times fell on The Avenger, these fans’ lives darkened, their bitterness expressed in sentences of all caps letters: THE AVENGER’S LIFE SUKS AND SO DOES MINE! Ken tried to reassure such posters, telling them things would work out for The Avenger. He’d bounce back strong and decisive. Ken would type in short, clear, grammatical sentences, hoping his rationality and calm would seep 78 | Raleigh Review
