Hello and welcome to our weekly advice column by Captain Happily Married, Edison City’s heroic defender against evil, injustice, and inter-personal conflicts! Today’s topic: the multiverse!
Dear Captain,
So I’m in trouble, like major trouble, and prom’s coming up, and man, I don’t know what to do, you gotta help me.
I mean, you gotta help me, please, sir.
My super-power is laser eyes, and that’s it, not really a problem, but apparently last week when I was fighting robots out in Northview one of them had a weird energy core thing, like it was made of padamantium or something, I don’t know, anyway, it exploded when I zapped it and tore a hole in space, right?
Which is bad enough, but then someone came through, and he looks exactly like me, but, here’s the weird part, he’s not! I mean, he zapped a candy store and laughed at the people running out and stole stuff for himself and I would never do that, sir, I wouldn’t. (I mean, I’d laugh, but I wouldn’t have zapped the store in the first place, I would’ve saved the people and then laugh afterwards. Respecting them, you know, sir.)
And then this guy, who I guess has my memories too and all because of course, goes and does the worst thing of all: before I can stop him, he finds my girlfriend Harriet and breaks up with her! We were only just Facebook official last week, man! Now she’s never going to get back with me, because what do I say, it wasn’t me, it was me from another Earth? She doesn’t even know about my secret identity! So I can’t tell her that, which means I’ve lost a relationship with the best girl ever, which also means I’m stuck for prom, and for all I know the other me is going to the prom as me anyway.
What do I do, Captain?
-Not-Evil Me
Dear Not-Evil Me,
Oh my! That is indeed a disturbing dilemma! It may be of some comfort to know that I have already taken steps to address your problem! For instance, my amazing partner in matrimony, Super Soccer Mom, has already isolated the breach you inadvertently created in the multiversal continuum, and has closed it with a tachyon-filter seal via Winston her enhanced soccer ball! Not only that, but before she closed the breach I and my oldest daughter Meg Atomic located your diabolical duplicate, apprehended him, and sent him back to the Earth to which he belongs! So you need not fear your evil self attending your educational institution’s recreational activities again!
Now then, how to patch up your relationship with your girlfriend, that’s something entirely different. Let me tell you, keeping your superhero identity secret from your girlfriend, let alone your spouse, is no easy thing. The logistics alone can be problematic! Suppose for example that you are on a date with your Harriett and a crisis arises that requires your aid! Do you abandon your date, change into your uniform, and rush to save the day? Naturally you do, duty to the public and all, but then you have to make up some excuse covering yourself, and then another excuse the next time, and then eventually you lose track of the excuses and it begins to pile up. I’ve seen this a hundred times, Not-Evil Me.
There’s really only two ways to avoid this problem. One: tell her your identity from the beginning, and that way you don’t have to worry about keeping it a secret. Two: find out whether she’s a superhero herself, and if she is, she’ll understand the whole thing anyway. She might even take care of the crisis for you, or with you! You can make a date of that! Ah, many’s the happy evening Super Soccer Mom and I have spent foiling bank robberies or preventing apocalypses together. We’ve went out for dinner afterwards, on occasion. There’s a wonderful babysitter who handles the children. Good times.
In justice,
Captain Happily Married
If you’d like to submit questions to be answered by Captain Happily Married or Super Soccer Mom, leave a comment or email with your question! To read a story featuring further adventures of the Captain and Co., go here. For more adventures of the superheroes and regulars in Edison City, subscribe below!