Welcome to the world of Edison City, where the never-ending battle against the forces of evil includes everything from the Owl Bandit taking over the subway line downtown to the Antichrist trying to rewrite history aboard the HMS Titanic. Anything and everything is a possibility here, including flying sharks. Especially the sharks.
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Previously, an apparent civilian named Wyatt Roberts, with the guidance of a Helpful Onboarding and Processing for Employment (H.O.P.E.) had just accidentally shot down the superhero Captain Midnight and then escaped in a stolen car. We’ll return to Wyatt’s story later; for now we follow Captain Midnight as he finds himself in an uncertain afterlife…
Captain Midnight waited unhappily at the gates of Heaven. “Excuse me?” he called yet again. He’d lost count how many times he’d tried to get someone’s attention. Time didn’t seem to matter up here. “Well, I suppose it wouldn’t,” he admitted sourly to himself.
“Hello?” he called. No answer came from behind those eternally majestic doors. “Look,” he said, “I’ve spoken with Nathaniel and Tabitha, and now Tabitha again, and all I said was I wanted to see a superior so I could get this straightened out, all right? If I mispoke…”
The entry to Heaven remained steadfastly closed. “Okay, I should clarify, it’s not that I don’t want to go to Heaven!” Captain Midnight said, and for the first time a note of fear entered his voice. “I don’t want to go to the other place either! Or Purgatory, even; I heard that was a possibility, but actually, the point is, with my abilities, I don’t actually have to! I can keep on resurrecting myself indefinitely! It doesn’t even involve dark magic or anything, it’s just advanced science, is what it is! Indistinguishable from the other after a certain point, right? Isn’t that what they say? Isn’t it?”
He could see his reflection in the shining walls. He didn’t like it. “Look, really, even if what I did wasn’t exactly in the rulebook, if you know what I mean, it still helped, and doesn’t that count for something? Look at all the people I’ve saved! The apocalypses I’ve averted, I mean, if that doesn’t count than I don’t know what does! And I can do more, a lot more, if you just open up and let me talk to someone, all right?”
The billowing white clouds around him seemed a shade less billowy, and he thought he heard a rumble of thunder. A chill ran through Captain Midnight’s soul, which was already plenty chilly enough.
“You don’t understand, it’s not fair, damn you, not now, not now!” he exploded. “I was this close to greatness, this close, and then some unknown just blasts me out of nowhere? I don’t even know who the man was, damn it all, and you’re going to let him get away? You’re going to let me die without not knowing? I have to go back, don’t you understand? And I’m going, whether you like it or not, just you see if I don’t! So there, blast you!”
He swirled his cape in as dramatic a fashion as he could still muster, and said the words that had always worked for him before. The clouds split in a terrific thunderclap; that hadn’t ever happened but Captain Midnight appreciated the effect. Then he began to fall, and for a fleeting instant he thought he was returning to life just as he always had, and then all at once he landed on an uneven surface of hard black obsidian rock. Before him rose another gateway, this one marked with a single phrase. Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate.
He’d studied Latin in learning the incantation that kept his own resurrections going; he knew what those ancient words meant. He tried to back away, to call for help, but it was too late. His screams echoed off the unforgiving rock long after the gates had closed behind him.
I just want to say I love the psychology/theology on display in this episode. Captain Midnight is SO full of himself he's going to argue with the divine and make demands. But he's a hero, right? What about all the good things I did? But at the end of the day, it's all just for his own vanity, his own gratification. And Heaven don't play that game.
> but actually, the point is, with my abilities, I don’t actually have to!
Uh oh, hubris