I’m giving this away. I still haven’t shaken the heavy and puzzling feelings I have. So, here’s an idea for new superheroes: The Lethargic Legion or the Malcontents.

Captain Malaise is their leader. No. No spandex here. He suits up in soiled track pants. And his superpower comes out of his mouth like a giant yawn. It’s a soundless banshee scream but it’s super contagious. He shows up and he yawns his super yawn and everyone is overcome with this horrible malaise as effective as a giant wet blanket. Jewelry thieves, dangerous miscreants, smugglers, all sink to the floor, with little sleepy spasms. His greatest nemesis: The Mirrored Menace. An ex-carnie who used to work the fun house with an ax to grind. He’s all decked out in reflective gear from head to toe. Captain Malaise must avoid seeing his own super-powered yawn. Although he is the PR guy for the Malcontents, whenever he appears on TV, he’s behind the silhouette screen.

A young intern is serving as Captain Malaise’s sidekick: Droop. Captain Malaise likes Droop, a frumpy Korean girl, well enough but worries that she’s a little too enthusiastic about her training. There are also the twins, Doom and Gloom. They are unstoppable together. If they can touch hands, a chill rises out of them and renders criminals impotent filling them with a fear of everything. The villains, of course, are always trying to divide them. There is also the husband and wife duo, Pathetic and Apathetic. He hates everything about his life and she’s too bored to care. Pathetic is sexually dysfunctional but he is still in love with Droop. Apathetic is too bored to care and Droop, of course, doesn’t return his feelings. Still, they are a formidable team for the fight for good. Pathetic sends out psychic vibrations that cause people to want to die, immediately; at which point Apathetic sings her siren song which makes people too lazy to do anything about it.

Filling out the Lethargic Legion is the nearly charming French girl, Sue, short for Insouciance, who has a bad habit of leaving missions early to smoke cigarettes or buy new shoes. In action, she is indeed formidable. She has a number of cigarette holders fitted with fabulously secret chemicals that cause people to care very much about not caring. The minute someone comes close to caring about nearly anything, the victim suffers unbearable pain. And finally, the newest Malcontent, the one with the secret past, comes with a sealed CIA dossier and is only known by the codename Slug. He has a receding hairline of greasy grey hair and an ashen complexion. To render a criminal useless, he has merely to remove his glove, which he otherwise always wears, and touch him or her. The criminal is flooded with profound feelings of rejection. When the authorities at last arrive, the criminal is invariably found huddled in some dark corner sobbing like a lost girl. The other members of the Malcontents, those who care enough to conjecture, suppose that Slug might have been an aborted fetus somehow brought to life; that, or an unpublished writer.

SS