Speaker 1: Novel. In August, I flew into Seattle to finally meet
Speaker 1: the infamous Phoenix Jones. We've been texting back and forth
Speaker 1: and he'd agreed to meet, so I booked a hotel
Speaker 1: for a few days. On August one, he texted me
Speaker 1: saying he was free later that day, so I asked
Speaker 1: when was good for him, but he didn't respond. In fact,
Speaker 1: he didn't respond to any of my text that day,
Speaker 1: or the next or the next. While I was hanging
Speaker 1: around waiting for Phoenix to get back to me, I
Speaker 1: interviewed a few other Seattle superheroes and former members of
Speaker 1: his crime fighting team, the rain City Superheroes, including one
Speaker 1: guy who had known Phoenix since high school, and they
Speaker 1: all told me variations of pretty much the same story.
Speaker 1: You can't trust anything that comes out of the guy's mouth.
Speaker 1: He was charging people money per month for medical insurance
Speaker 1: that the team's never saw. He's got a drug rob,
Speaker 1: the gambling prob. He's been disgraced from me else he's
Speaker 1: ever been all the team. He's a narcissist, sociopath. He's
Speaker 1: just not a He's not a good dude. If just
Speaker 1: one of Phoenix's former teammates had been disgruntled. I think
Speaker 1: I would have been reluctant to judge him based on
Speaker 1: their falling out, but everyone I talked to had a
Speaker 1: similar story, which made it hard to dismiss their assessment
Speaker 1: of his character. But I wanted to hear Phoenix's side
Speaker 1: of the story before I drew my own conclusions about him. Eventually,
Speaker 1: I had to go back home. I didn't hear back
Speaker 1: from Phoenix until a full month later, when he did surface.
Speaker 1: He texted to say that a good friend of his
Speaker 1: had just died of COVID. He had started a new
Speaker 1: job as a line cook, and his life was really crazy.
Speaker 1: He said, I'm really sorry for being more flaky than
Speaker 1: I usually am. Phoenix said we could meet up, so
Speaker 1: in October I boarded another flight to Seattle for a
Speaker 1: second attempt to hang out with him. When I landed
Speaker 1: the day before I was due to interview him, I
Speaker 1: was amped up, nervous and excited. I also had a cold,
Speaker 1: so I decided to take some night quill and crash
Speaker 1: early at my hotel. I took twice the recommended dosage,
Speaker 1: because you know, why not, and then I got into
Speaker 1: bed and started to drift off to sleep. A little
Speaker 1: after ten PM, my phone rang. It was Phoenix. I answered.
Speaker 1: It was the first time we'd ever spoken. He told
Speaker 1: me that he had some friends over at his place
Speaker 1: and he wanted me to come over and hang out
Speaker 1: so we could build some rapport before our interview the
Speaker 1: next day. I said, of course, I could head straight there.
Speaker 1: He told me he would text me his address, and
Speaker 1: he hung up. I got out of bed and started
Speaker 1: getting dressed, but all my movements felt sluggish. This was
Speaker 1: not how I had hoped to meet Phoenix high on
Speaker 1: night Quill. But when the bat signal goes up, you
Speaker 1: put on your super suit and you rise to the occasion.
Speaker 1: As I was getting dressed, he called me again. He
Speaker 1: said he didn't feel safe texting me his address, so
Speaker 1: he would come pick me up at my hotel. I
Speaker 1: said that was fine and hung up, But it didn't
Speaker 1: make any sense unless he was going to blindfold me
Speaker 1: when I got in the car, I was going to
Speaker 1: know where he lived. It all felt very strange and dreamy.
Speaker 1: He told me to meet him out in front of
Speaker 1: the hotel at PM. It was cold and drizzly, so
Speaker 1: I bundled up and stood out on the street corner waiting,
Speaker 1: and then at PM I got a text from Phoenix
Speaker 1: that said, Hey, I hate to be super clicky here,
Speaker 1: I'm having an issue over at my place and need
Speaker 1: to rain check. One of my friends needs to write
Speaker 1: home has been drinking, so I'll um at ten forty
Speaker 1: tomorrow so we can talk. If that's okay, I replied,
Speaker 1: sounds good. What I wanted to say was are you
Speaker 1: fucking with me? Was this some kind of trap? I
Speaker 1: looked around to see if maybe he was sitting in
Speaker 1: a car like a detective on a steak out, trying
Speaker 1: to size me up or something. I really felt like
Speaker 1: he was playing some sort of mind game with me.
Speaker 1: Had his old Superhero crew. I've been right about Phoenix.
Speaker 1: I'm David Weinberg and from the team's at Novel and
Speaker 1: I heart Radio. This is the Superhero Complex, episode two
Speaker 1: of Phoenix Rises. I was really happy to be back
Speaker 1: in Seattle. I used to live here in two thousand
Speaker 1: and seven at the Panama Hotel in the International District.
Speaker 1: I rented a room by the week and worked at
Speaker 1: two restaurants as a dishwasher and Capitol Hill and a
Speaker 1: bus boy in Belltown. I left years ago, but walking
Speaker 1: the streets. Everything felt familiar. My favorite restaurant, ton V
Speaker 1: was still there. I went back to get my go
Speaker 1: to favorite, a plate of grilled meats and vegetables and herbs,
Speaker 1: served with rice, paper sheets, and a bowl of hot
Speaker 1: water to soften the paper and make your own rolls.
Speaker 1: The name of the dish had changed, but it was
Speaker 1: even better than I remembered. I walked the same route
Speaker 1: I used to take to work from the I d
Speaker 1: through Pioneer Square with its old saloons and red brick walkways,
Speaker 1: and then up First Avenue. They mostly felt the same.
Speaker 1: There were a few new restaurants I didn't recognize. The
Speaker 1: Lusty Lady, a peep show venue where you sat in
Speaker 1: a booth and put quarters into a slot to look
Speaker 1: through a pane of glass, and new dancers had closed down.
Speaker 1: From there, I walked along the avenue past the iconic
Speaker 1: Pipe Place market, where the fishmongers were packing up for
Speaker 1: the day. I made my way into Belltown to Black Bottle,
Speaker 1: a wine and topas restaurant where I worked as a
Speaker 1: bus boy. The walk took me through the same neighborhoods
Speaker 1: or Phoenix and his crew did almost all of their
Speaker 1: patrols I stopped at Black Bottle and had a drink
Speaker 1: for old time's sake. Back when I worked there, I
Speaker 1: was friends with a few of the homeless people who
Speaker 1: hung out in the neighborhood. I took guitar lessons from
Speaker 1: one of them, a crack addict named Hans, who was
Speaker 1: really smart. Occasionally he would flip out at me and
Speaker 1: yell a bunch of crazy stuff, but I was never
Speaker 1: scared of him, or of any of the other unhoused
Speaker 1: people who hung around Belltown. But today things feel a
Speaker 1: lot different. The number of people living on the streets
Speaker 1: feel substantially higher than when I lived there in two
Speaker 1: thousand and seven. It seemed like there were a few
Speaker 1: homeless people here and there, But today there are several
Speaker 1: tent cities with dozens of tents all over downtown. After
Speaker 1: I finished my walk down Memory Lane, I wanted to
Speaker 1: see what my former neighbors in downtown Seattle had to
Speaker 1: say about Phoenix Jones a question for a radio story.
Speaker 1: It wasn't hard to find people who had interactions with him,
Speaker 1: People like these kids I met outside of a rave. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've seen him like a lot, a lot like bothering
Speaker 1: drunk kids on the sidewalks and stuff like that. What
Speaker 1: do you think about him? I thought it was cool
Speaker 1: at first, um and then I just thought he was
Speaker 1: annoying because he wasn't actually really helping anybody. He was
Speaker 1: just being annoying. Like he would literally find kids that
Speaker 1: were too drunk and passed out, or claim that people
Speaker 1: who are about to leave were drinking and driving, even
Speaker 1: if they weren't. He would just find anything he thought
Speaker 1: you were breaking the law about and harass you. He
Speaker 1: was just a jerk, they told me. He ended up
Speaker 1: being the real life equivalent of a quote from the
Speaker 1: Batman movie. You either die a hero or live long
Speaker 1: enough to see yourself become the Villainy might ask you
Speaker 1: a question for a radio story. Another guy I met
Speaker 1: worked at a restaurant downtown. I had a few encounters
Speaker 1: with Phoenix. One time I saw him, Uh, what was
Speaker 1: it on the waterfront and he was talking mad and
Speaker 1: he was talking match it to me and my friends,
Speaker 1: and it was funny because like, we work down there,
Speaker 1: what are you doing? They made him. The guy told
Speaker 1: me that he used to hang out with some friends
Speaker 1: in a parking lot in Belltown when they got off work,
Speaker 1: smoking weed, kicking it, you know all I've done. Ship
Speaker 1: One day, he was there smoking with his friends and
Speaker 1: Phoenix showed up. Him and his crew were like just
Speaker 1: staring at us like they're gonna, like he's gonna do something,
Speaker 1: and we're smoking weed and we're in fucking bell you know,
Speaker 1: we're sucking downtown in Belltown. It was hilarious. Like, dude,
Speaker 1: and I read comic books. I'm not going to nerd
Speaker 1: out right now, but it's just funny how there's plenty
Speaker 1: of superhero work, plenty of people to save, plenty of
Speaker 1: criminals to catch, and this motherfucker's looking at me smoking
Speaker 1: weed right now. All of these stories made me wary
Speaker 1: of Phoenix, and I was upset because the only reason
Speaker 1: Phoenix had agreed to do an interview with me was
Speaker 1: because we were paying him several thousand dollars. I've been
Speaker 1: a journalist for fifteen years and I've never paid a
Speaker 1: source for an interview. It's generally considered unethical, and I
Speaker 1: understand all the arguments against it, but I'm also aware
Speaker 1: that as a journalist, I have the power to shape
Speaker 1: how the world sees Phoenix, and he will have to
Speaker 1: live at the rest of his life with the consequences
Speaker 1: of how I portray him. Meanwhile, I not only get
Speaker 1: to walk away from the story when I'm done, I
Speaker 1: get paid. Lots of people get paid to make this story.
Speaker 1: That imbalance of power doesn't always feel fair to me,
Speaker 1: and I see a valid argument for paying people for
Speaker 1: their time. The issue I had with Phoenix would that
Speaker 1: after sharing all these stories from his former teammates and
Speaker 1: from people around Seattle, I felt uneasy about rewarding him.
Speaker 1: But I also felt that Phoenix deserved to tell his
Speaker 1: side of the story, and the only way that was
Speaker 1: going to happen was for me to hand him an
Speaker 1: envelope full of cash. Phoenix was late, but he did
Speaker 1: show up to my hotel that morning. He was wearing
Speaker 1: glasses and a blue plaid button down shirt and black pants,
Speaker 1: with a tactical belt that had a larger than normal
Speaker 1: canister of pepper spray, along with a few other gadgets.
Speaker 1: This was deep into the COVID pandemic and he had
Speaker 1: a mask with him, but it was made of hard plastic,
Speaker 1: had an American flag and an eagle printed on it.
Speaker 1: I remember thinking that he looked nerdier than I was expecting.
Speaker 1: I greeted him outside the hotel and then walked him
Speaker 1: to my room, a pretty standard chain hotel room with
Speaker 1: a window looking out into the courtyard. I rearranged the
Speaker 1: furniture and set up a makeshift recording studio with a
Speaker 1: small table a couple of mikes. Phoenix actually kicked off
Speaker 1: the interview by asking me a question. He wanted to
Speaker 1: know what other superheroes I had talked to. Um, I've
Speaker 1: talked to Red Ranger Service. Yeah, Um, Crystal Marks, she's
Speaker 1: a clown ghost good night, Jack, Okay, you talked to
Speaker 1: ghost of me Jack nice and Kay. Yeah. I was
Speaker 1: gonna say that you probably only talked to clowns. But
Speaker 1: the list you actually gave us pretty solid. I mean, um,
Speaker 1: justin service like man, but Red Ranger, for example, right,
Speaker 1: like he actually puts himself in the middle of scenarios
Speaker 1: in situations. He's not trained, and he's not like a
Speaker 1: skilled fighter in any way, shape or form. But but
Speaker 1: just being there is effective. Ghosts. I've known him since
Speaker 1: high school, one of the best crime fighters that excited
Speaker 1: kicked you could have even if we don't like each other. Effectiveness, effectiveness,
Speaker 1: I don't really care. Like he's fucking great at his job,
Speaker 1: So whether he likes me or not, in go buck himself.
Speaker 1: Having critiqued the rest of Seattle's caped crusaders, Phoenix wanted
Speaker 1: me to know that he was the only true crime
Speaker 1: fighter among them. Stops three What does that mean? Yeh
Speaker 1: three and fifteen crime stops like where a cop has
Speaker 1: showed up, arrested that person and taking them to jail
Speaker 1: for the crime I have. I have three fifteen right,
Speaker 1: no one else has even a hundred. And some of
Speaker 1: those claimed three fifteen stops were pretty extraordinary. I stopped
Speaker 1: a sex trafficking ring. I technically stopped a homeland active terror.
Speaker 1: I've been in seventeen knife fights and I've been stabbed
Speaker 1: twice and the guy got shot and I had end
Speaker 1: stepping on his arm to stop the arterial bleed. Over
Speaker 1: the course of the interview, Phoenix made a point to
Speaker 1: explain that he is not a normal person. What might
Speaker 1: cause you or I to run away in terror? He
Speaker 1: handles like a train warrior, like this one time on
Speaker 1: one of his early patrols where a guy pulled a
Speaker 1: knife on him. The first guy who ever stabbed me
Speaker 1: on street. I was like, hey, that was a good one.
Speaker 1: You win today. I caught him next time and beat
Speaker 1: the crap out of him, Like, you're not gonna hurt
Speaker 1: me in any kind of physical way to cause me damage.
Speaker 1: I find it comical and don't even think about pulling
Speaker 1: a gun on him. This guy tried to kill me
Speaker 1: and pulled a gun and try to chase me around
Speaker 1: a card and I took him down obviously. I mean,
Speaker 1: you have a gun at close range, I'll win every time.
Speaker 1: And then there was the time he was scouted by
Speaker 1: the federal government. The FBI basically wanted to like make
Speaker 1: a list of all superheroes and kind of their activities
Speaker 1: and what they do. And I agreed to some things
Speaker 1: with the government. The government agree to some things with me,
Speaker 1: and we went our sep away. Do you still have
Speaker 1: a relationship with the federal government. Yeah, this was one
Speaker 1: fact I was not able to verify. But in the moment,
Speaker 1: as Phoenix rattle off story after story of his crime
Speaker 1: fighting exploits, I started to believe him. I think part
Speaker 1: of it is his charisma, which is undeniable. And when
Speaker 1: he started talking about the intricacies of the law and
Speaker 1: the justice system and law enforcement, I realized he's one
Speaker 1: of the most intelligent people I've ever met, and I
Speaker 1: kind of fell under a spell. At one point in
Speaker 1: the interview, Phoenix even turned me into one of his
Speaker 1: martial arts students. Check this move out. This is make
Speaker 1: fight stance back right. So now you can touch me
Speaker 1: and I can touch you right. That's called if I'm
Speaker 1: here right and I take a half step this way.
Speaker 1: Now your hands don't reach anymore. It's about the circumference
Speaker 1: and radius of a circle. One thing that is undeniably
Speaker 1: true about Phoenix is that he was a professional mixed
Speaker 1: martial artist and a damn good one. In his fights,
Speaker 1: he only lost five matches. But there were other parts
Speaker 1: of the story had my doubts about. So after our interview,
Speaker 1: I set out to verify some of his claims, starting
Speaker 1: with his origin story, which perhaps unsurprisingly sounds like it's
Speaker 1: been ripped straight from the pages of a comic book
Speaker 1: that's coming up after the break. Hmm. Every superhero has
Speaker 1: an origin story. Spider Man bitten by a radioactive Spider,
Speaker 1: wonder Woman carved in clay and given superpowers by the
Speaker 1: Greek gods. Captain America, a frail young artist infused with
Speaker 1: a super soldier serum, and the story Phoenix Jones had
Speaker 1: been telling to the media for years sounded like one
Speaker 1: of those classic comic book storyline, though it could also
Speaker 1: be the origin story of a super villain. I was
Speaker 1: wondering if we could just start at the beginning of
Speaker 1: your life and like you could just give me your background,
Speaker 1: like where you were born and where you grew up
Speaker 1: and that kind of stuff. And I also want to apologize.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you've answered a lot of these questions a
Speaker 1: million times. Actually no I haven't. Because I don't answer
Speaker 1: those questions. We can start to getting my crime fighting career.
Speaker 1: Phoenix said he wouldn't answer any questions about his life
Speaker 1: before he became Phoenix Jones, which surprised me because he
Speaker 1: had talked about his upbringing to other journalists in the past.
Speaker 1: The one thing we know for sure is that Phoenix's
Speaker 1: real name is Ben Fodor and he was born on
Speaker 1: ma that's documented in court records. But after that we're
Speaker 1: reliant on Phoenix's account. And according to him, he was
Speaker 1: born in Texas and he had four siblings, but he
Speaker 1: was the only one of them to be sent to
Speaker 1: an orphanage. He says at five years old, he was
Speaker 1: removed from the orphanage and given back to his parents.
Speaker 1: According to that account, one day, he was riding in
Speaker 1: the car with his dad when they stopped at a
Speaker 1: convenient store. Ben stayed in the car and his father
Speaker 1: went into the store and never came back. Apparently he
Speaker 1: tried to rob the convenience store, but the store owner
Speaker 1: had a gun and he shot Ben's dad and killed him.
Speaker 1: Ben was around seven years old at the time, sitting
Speaker 1: in the car alone until the police showed up and
Speaker 1: found him. Later in his life, Ben says he learned
Speaker 1: that the man who was killed was not his biological father,
Speaker 1: and that his real father was a man who had
Speaker 1: an affair with his mother, and that was the reason
Speaker 1: he was the only one of his siblings who was
Speaker 1: given up for adoption. Ben has told journalists in the
Speaker 1: past that his mom was also a criminal, a drug
Speaker 1: dealer who got busted trying to use her baby carriage
Speaker 1: to conceal illegal drugs. In a previous interview for a
Speaker 1: book about his life, Ben was asked about being the
Speaker 1: child of criminals. This is what he said. You have
Speaker 1: to make a choice. You can say I'm going to
Speaker 1: be a product of my environment. And grow into a
Speaker 1: criminal and just be like everyone else, or you can
Speaker 1: say no, I'm not going to do that. After the
Speaker 1: man he thought was his father was killed, Ben says
Speaker 1: he was put back into the orphanage, where he lived
Speaker 1: for the next three years. He says he had to
Speaker 1: let sea in a speech impediment, and he was bullied
Speaker 1: a lot by the staff and other children. One of
Speaker 1: his only friends at the time was a kid who
Speaker 1: liked to torture animals. But when he was nine years old,
Speaker 1: he was saved from all the trauma and misery of
Speaker 1: his Texas childhood. He was adopted by a woman in Seattle,
Speaker 1: a wealthy widow who had several other adopted children. He
Speaker 1: says that when he moved to Seattle and settled in
Speaker 1: with his new family, it was the first time in
Speaker 1: his life he felt truly cared for. Around that time,
Speaker 1: young Ben Photo also discovered a new world that he
Speaker 1: fell in love with, something that would change the course
Speaker 1: of his life. Comic books. That was in Nightwing. A lot.
Speaker 1: As a kid, I never really resonated with comics because
Speaker 1: they didn't really do anything I understood, But Nightwing was
Speaker 1: something that I understood. Night Wing is part of the
Speaker 1: Batman's superhero family. Like Bruce Wayne, he doesn't have supernatural powers.
Speaker 1: He defends the innocent with his strength and agility. Nightwing
Speaker 1: wears a black supersuit with the blue chevron across the chest,
Speaker 1: similar to the gold one on Phoenix's costume Batman and
Speaker 1: Robin Right. Robin eventually grows up and be sends his
Speaker 1: own superhero called Nightwing. He's like, I don't want to
Speaker 1: be a sidekick in like little Shorts. I'd rather fight
Speaker 1: some crime. He goes through and like really trains and
Speaker 1: he doesn't win a lot at the beginning. It's a
Speaker 1: grind for him, and it was one of those things
Speaker 1: where I was like, I see that, I understand that,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. There are a lot of
Speaker 1: different versions of night Wing that spanned several generations of
Speaker 1: the d C Comics universe, but the one that resonated
Speaker 1: with Ben was the series that was written by Devin Grayson.
Speaker 1: Devin Grayson Man, she kills it and it's like really
Speaker 1: realistically believable. In March of two thousand, Grayson became the
Speaker 1: first woman to create, launch, and write a Batman comics series.
Speaker 1: And it's almost as if fate had set her on
Speaker 1: that path, given that she shares the same last name
Speaker 1: as Dick Grayson. The guy who becomes Robin night Wing
Speaker 1: is very interest because Dick Grayson starts as Robin. You know,
Speaker 1: he's there as a kind of Watson figure, Sherlock Watson figure.
Speaker 1: He's there so Batman can talk to him. Robin was
Speaker 1: put in to give kids somebody to identify with. This
Speaker 1: is Peter Coogan, a man with a very specific superpower
Speaker 1: writing and editing. I could join the X Men, but
Speaker 1: I'd be running the writing center at the Xavier Academy.
Speaker 1: And much like the X Men, he uses his superpower
Speaker 1: to help other people, to enable them to better pursue
Speaker 1: their ontological vocation of humanization. In other words, he's an academic.
Speaker 1: I do have a PhD in superheroes. Coogan teaches superheroes
Speaker 1: and comics at Washington University in St. Louis. He's also
Speaker 1: the director of the Institute for Comic Studies, and he
Speaker 1: spent a lot of time thinking about Nightwing. Night Wing
Speaker 1: works as a really interesting figure. He lost his parents,
Speaker 1: just like Bruce Wayne did, but because he had a
Speaker 1: parent figure Bruce Wayne and another parent figure, Alfred, he
Speaker 1: was able to become a more integrated adult. Dick Grayson
Speaker 1: is healthier than Bruce Wayne, and so I think that's
Speaker 1: one of the things that night Wing represents, that represents
Speaker 1: a more healthy version of the superhero. He has chosen
Speaker 1: to become a superhero in a way that Bruce Wayne couldn't.
Speaker 1: When Robin becomes Nightwing, he moves to the suburbs of
Speaker 1: Gotham City, to a rough neighborhood called blood Haven and
Speaker 1: becomes a cop. He does that because he wants to
Speaker 1: be part of society in a way that Batman both
Speaker 1: doesn't and can't. Dick Grayson is available to be identified
Speaker 1: with as a healthier response to trauma and Batman, and
Speaker 1: I think that's what draws people to him as a character.
Speaker 1: As a young kid, his parents died in a circus accident, right,
Speaker 1: but he could have done whatever he wanted. Batman's is different, though,
Speaker 1: because when his parents die, he trains, but he has
Speaker 1: this financial backing, right is I guess trauma allowed him
Speaker 1: to be Batman, right? Night Wings make it a choice.
Speaker 1: He goes to college, has a girlfriend, he lives a life,
Speaker 1: tries to keep it all together, but he's no way
Speaker 1: traumatized children personalized trauma. They always find a way to
Speaker 1: blame themselves, like I could have done more right, and
Speaker 1: that drives Batman, But that does not drive Nightwing. Night
Speaker 1: Wing was I was helpless and I won't be helpless anymore,
Speaker 1: and that resonates him with me more. Why do you
Speaker 1: think it resonated with you. I think as a kid,
Speaker 1: everybody has a little sense of being helpless. I certainly did.
Speaker 1: And training for a mission or a goal something like
Speaker 1: that is just it's like empowering, Like you just feel
Speaker 1: this like like energy that nobody knows. Ben Photo knows
Speaker 1: that energy. Well. Whatever helplessness he felt after being given
Speaker 1: away by his parents, he compensated for by throwing himself
Speaker 1: into all kinds of activities. I did double dus for
Speaker 1: a while, won the bunch of scape competitions. I was
Speaker 1: a national bowling champion as well as martial arts. There
Speaker 1: was also debate, club horseshoe throwing, and even competitive dance.
Speaker 1: He seems to have taken on every challenge he could
Speaker 1: in an effort to prove his worth to his adopted mother.
Speaker 1: In fact, he said in the past to journalists that
Speaker 1: he was driven to be the best that everything he
Speaker 1: could because he was trying to show her she made
Speaker 1: the right decision by picking him over all the other
Speaker 1: children at the orphanage. Everything I ever touched. If it
Speaker 1: was a competition for it, I wanted to try it.
Speaker 1: Although Ben has the story of his childhood with journalists
Speaker 1: over the years, he's left out some key details, like
Speaker 1: the names of his birth parents and the man who
Speaker 1: he thought was his father, which makes it nearly impossible
Speaker 1: to fact check his version of what happened. But I
Speaker 1: was determined to verify at least some of his claims.
Speaker 1: If you go into the National Bowling Museum in Hall
Speaker 1: of Fame, I'm in hometown Aroics for three games under sixteen.
Speaker 1: The International Bowling Museum and Hall of Fame refused to
Speaker 1: release any info about Ben without his member number, which
Speaker 1: I didn't have, but we were able to find his
Speaker 1: old high school by process of elimination and called up
Speaker 1: the old coach on the bowling team. She said she'd
Speaker 1: never heard of a Ben Fodor and then said to
Speaker 1: leave her alone. But just before hanging up, she said
Speaker 1: that hypothetically, if she were us, she'd call up the
Speaker 1: United States Bowling Congress and asked for member details and
Speaker 1: They immediately dave us Ben's records and they verified that
Speaker 1: Ben in fact did achieve two perfect scores of three
Speaker 1: hundred and bowling under the age of sixteen. That's twelve
Speaker 1: strikes in a row. We started calling around to bowling
Speaker 1: alleys that were near where Phoenix lived and eventually found
Speaker 1: a place called ken Moore Lanes. When the owner of
Speaker 1: Joanne answered the phone, she said with a sigh, ah, yeah,
Speaker 1: benor I know him. Ken Moore Lanes is just northeast
Speaker 1: of Seattle, not far from the shores of Lake Washington.
Speaker 1: You don't realize just how massive it is until you
Speaker 1: step inside. Ken Moore Lanes was the largest bowling alley
Speaker 1: in Washington, fifty lanes. This is Wesley used to work
Speaker 1: at ken Moore Lanes. When you walked in, it had
Speaker 1: like the old style of bowling alley, you know, beer
Speaker 1: on the tables, kind of dark, but it was like
Speaker 1: an enjoyable place where you can bring your family and
Speaker 1: had the league nights. When I first got there, you know,
Speaker 1: smoking was still allowed, so it still was all smoky
Speaker 1: in there. Once smoking was banned, it got a little cleaner,
Speaker 1: a little nicer. Some knights that get a little rowdy,
Speaker 1: little rough, but most nice were just calm. It was
Speaker 1: a really enjoyable place. Wesley worked at ken Moore up
Speaker 1: until two thousand and seven when something happened. I'm actually
Speaker 1: not allowed in ken Moore Lanes. Um band self inflicted stupidity.
Speaker 1: That's Joanne, the owner of ken Moore Lanes. The story
Speaker 1: of why Wesley is banned from the bowling alley is
Speaker 1: for another time in the place. We're here to talk
Speaker 1: about young Ben Fodor and more specifically to find out
Speaker 1: if the origin story Phoenix is telling is true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I kind of do remember the first time I did
Speaker 1: meet him. Um, we always had people come in there,
Speaker 1: and I always like to give people help him out,
Speaker 1: like him discounts on bowling. Uh. This lady came in
Speaker 1: once and she had foster kids, and UH gave her
Speaker 1: some discount of some bowling, and I remember one of
Speaker 1: them was this like little skinny guy kid or glasses,
Speaker 1: look a little nerdy, and he always enjoyed bowling, and
Speaker 1: UH kept coming back and he just kept hanging around
Speaker 1: there learning from people how to bowl. What was your
Speaker 1: first impression of him, Oh, like he was a nerdy
Speaker 1: little kid that got picked on at school, a little insecure,
Speaker 1: didn't really know himself, you know, a little preteen. I
Speaker 1: knew he was adopted. He had struggled with, you know,
Speaker 1: being picked on and bullied as a kid and not
Speaker 1: feeling accepted, and so I think the bowling alley like
Speaker 1: he felt accepted there and like people wanted him. Wesley
Speaker 1: says that Ben wasn't a natural bowler, but he was focused.
Speaker 1: He was there all the time, learning from people that worked.
Speaker 1: They're just watching people bowl, hanging around, just picking it up.
Speaker 1: But yeah, he worked at it. A few years went by,
Speaker 1: and by the time Ben was in high school, he
Speaker 1: was one of the top bowlers in his age group.
Speaker 1: According to Wesley, he went from being the shy, insecure
Speaker 1: kid too well the opposite around high school. All of
Speaker 1: a sudden, this skinny little kid turns into this young
Speaker 1: man like with muscles. All of a sudden, you know,
Speaker 1: he starts like filling out and he starts bowling better,
Speaker 1: starts again. Some someone to his ball. The way he
Speaker 1: bowled is very exuberant. The way he would all of
Speaker 1: a sudden just throw the ball, be all cocky, run
Speaker 1: down the lane, start showboating. You know, this is like
Speaker 1: a fifteen year old kid, jumping around the lanes, yelling
Speaker 1: at his other competitors. Very enthusiastic in his bowling. Ben
Speaker 1: wasn't just running up and down the lanes. When he
Speaker 1: hit a strike, you would run onto the lane itself
Speaker 1: and taking full advantage of the slick wood surface. He
Speaker 1: would break dance at the time. He had a flat
Speaker 1: top haircut Allah kid and play and Ben would taunt
Speaker 1: his opponents after a strike by strutting around and showing off.
Speaker 1: If you're the flat top baby, he always had the
Speaker 1: flat top. He had that before fighting. He always had
Speaker 1: the big hair. Yeah, he had a T shirt, medium
Speaker 1: T shirt when he had the big frame, the super
Speaker 1: small shirts. If you're the flat top, this is Marty Cocking.
Speaker 1: He still works at the bowling alley. He loved watching Ben.
Speaker 1: Then again, he wasn't bowling against him. Ben's opponents didn't
Speaker 1: love being taunted by a cocky kid. He would beat
Speaker 1: people at bowling, so they always wanted to, you know,
Speaker 1: beat him, but it wasn't happening. And then when the
Speaker 1: dudes doing the worm with the flat top across the
Speaker 1: approach on you, it's pretty frustrating. Even in Phoenix's version,
Speaker 1: of events. He's not exactly a team player. I even
Speaker 1: got so good at bowling left handed and right handed
Speaker 1: that I didn't have to have a double's partner. I
Speaker 1: could bowl with myself. I had an average with the
Speaker 1: left and right hand, so I was able to bowl
Speaker 1: doubles with myself, which was cool because I got two
Speaker 1: trophies every time on one. As Ben got older, he
Speaker 1: got more into martial arts and started training to become
Speaker 1: an m M A fighter, and he started spending more
Speaker 1: time at the gym and less time at the bowling alley.
Speaker 1: And then one day, Marty saw a news segment about
Speaker 1: a certain masked vigilante who was roaming the streets of Seattle.
Speaker 1: When he heard the voice of the man behind the mask,
Speaker 1: he thought, that sounds like Ben before he unveiled himself.
Speaker 1: I could tell the voice because I know him pretty
Speaker 1: well as a kid. When you realized that Phoenix Jones
Speaker 1: was in fact the break dancing bowler Ben Fodor, Marty
Speaker 1: thought Ben had lost his mind. I thought he was crazy. Why,
Speaker 1: because I mean, it's just crazy stuff. Who goes on
Speaker 1: in Seattle is not something you really want to deal
Speaker 1: with as a person. I'm a pretty big dude, but
Speaker 1: I'm not going to go out there and the rest
Speaker 1: of my life when I have a young family, and
Speaker 1: I just didn't understand what he was doing. Do you
Speaker 1: remember the last time you talked to him or h
Speaker 1: I saw him at the store. He's actually buying diapers
Speaker 1: for somebody. It's a random person. It wasn't even his
Speaker 1: family member, but it was somebody that needed help. I
Speaker 1: talked to him a little bit. I was just like,
Speaker 1: do you have another kid? But he's like, no, I'm
Speaker 1: just helping out this family and needed some diapers. But
Speaker 1: he literally had a cart full of diapers. It was
Speaker 1: pretty cool, as crazy as it seems to find out
Speaker 1: that a guy you knew for taunting rival bowlers decided
Speaker 1: to put on a costume an attempt to fight crime.
Speaker 1: To Joanne, the owner of the bowling Alley, it all
Speaker 1: made sense. I wasn't surprised. First of all, it kind
Speaker 1: of fits his personality in my opinion, and uh, Secondly,
Speaker 1: he always seemed like a kid with a pretty strong
Speaker 1: sense of I guess, a good moral compass. The ken
Speaker 1: Moore Lane staff watched Ben Photor grow up. They've already
Speaker 1: seen him reinvent himself from a vulnerable little kid to
Speaker 1: the break dancing show boat. But every superhero origin story
Speaker 1: needs a moment of transformation, that key incident that inspires
Speaker 1: the hero to put on a mask and turn from
Speaker 1: man to myth. That's coming up next. There comes a
Speaker 1: time in the life of every superhero when they transform
Speaker 1: from civilian to say of her. For some, it's the
Speaker 1: story of how they got their superpower, like the scientist
Speaker 1: Bruce Banner, who gets exposed to gamma rays and becomes
Speaker 1: the Incredible Hulk. And then there are heroes like the
Speaker 1: X Men mutants who are born with superpowers. You also
Speaker 1: have your Batman and Nightwing types who are not blessed
Speaker 1: with supernatural abilities but achieve a kind of superhuman status
Speaker 1: through training and an arsenal of fancy gadgets and weapons.
Speaker 1: But what they all have in common is that there
Speaker 1: comes a point in their life when they look out
Speaker 1: at the injustice of the world and say to themselves,
Speaker 1: this has to end, and I am the one who's
Speaker 1: going to take on this fight for ben Photor. That
Speaker 1: moment happened in two thousand and nine at Wild Waves,
Speaker 1: an amusement park in the suburbs of Tacoma, Washington with
Speaker 1: roller coasters and carnival games, kids with wrinkled fingers shivering
Speaker 1: in line for water slides. Phoenix had taken his son
Speaker 1: and they just finished a day of fun. We parked
Speaker 1: our car outside the fence and we were walking. It
Speaker 1: was me and my son, and we were racing back
Speaker 1: to the car. Me and my son are running and
Speaker 1: uh al sudd he falls and I'm like, oh, that sucks,
Speaker 1: so I want to pick him up, and just starts
Speaker 1: gushing blood like everywhere right, and I'm like, what's going on.
Speaker 1: I look and he's got this big cut in his
Speaker 1: knee from like here to like there, and his knees
Speaker 1: open and you can see the bone. He's just gushing blood.
Speaker 1: And if someone had smashed my window and the glass
Speaker 1: was on the ground and he had slipped on that,
Speaker 1: so I called nine one. Immediately he got an ambulance.
Speaker 1: It was like an yard trip, like he had to go.
Speaker 1: And I called the cops and the cops said, oh,
Speaker 1: but there's really nothing you know, we can do. I'm like,
Speaker 1: what are you talking about, Like the windows smashed, there's
Speaker 1: cameras everywhere, like what, like, well, we don't really you know,
Speaker 1: investigate that kind of thing. It's less than damage, and
Speaker 1: it's a Your son wasn't hurt by an actual criminal.
Speaker 1: Your son was hurt by falling on the shop. Ridiculous.
Speaker 1: Ben was furious. Not only was he convinced that the
Speaker 1: assailant had been captured on one of the many security
Speaker 1: cameras nearby, he also had a key piece of evidence.
Speaker 1: When that guy broke my window, he had taken a
Speaker 1: rock in a ski mask and slammed it into my window,
Speaker 1: And I thought, I keep the master, turning to the
Speaker 1: cops for evidence, But the cops didn't want it, and
Speaker 1: they weren't interested in any kind of evidence. It was
Speaker 1: ridiculous how unhelpful they were. Ridiculous. Ben stowed the mask
Speaker 1: in his glove compartment and decided that he would not
Speaker 1: rest until justice had been served. I spent the next
Speaker 1: four months searching through publicly accessible traffic cams until I
Speaker 1: was able to figure out which car did it. Then
Speaker 1: I got a private investigator to track that guy's number down,
Speaker 1: and then I went to his house and actually had
Speaker 1: a conversation with that guy and drug him to where
Speaker 1: my son was at and made him apologize. It was
Speaker 1: that moment when my friends were with me, which was
Speaker 1: Ghost and another guy. They were like, man, this is
Speaker 1: like Batman stuff, bro, you just did Batman style stuff.
Speaker 1: And I was like, you know, we got like some
Speaker 1: free time. Let's just go and Batman up our neighborhood
Speaker 1: because it sucks where we live. A few weeks later,
Speaker 1: Ben was outside a club in Seattle where he and
Speaker 1: his breakdancing crew, the rain City Movement. We're taking part
Speaker 1: in a competition. My friend comes stumbling up and he's
Speaker 1: got this big gash his face and I'm like, what
Speaker 1: happens that guy hit me with a stick. And I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: no one's doing anything. It's crazy, Like you guys are stupid.
Speaker 1: What we gotta do something right? And it just hit me.
Speaker 1: I've got that mask. At this time, I'm not sure
Speaker 1: if what I'm about to do is legal or illegal.
Speaker 1: I just know I'm about to do something. So I
Speaker 1: ran to my car and I throw this mask on,
Speaker 1: ditched the shirt and the jeans, no shirt in his mask,
Speaker 1: and I take off after this dude. I chased him
Speaker 1: all the way down the street and I catch him.
Speaker 1: Ben trapped the guy until the police showed up and
Speaker 1: arrested him, but before the cops left, they asked Ben
Speaker 1: if they could take a photo with him. The cop
Speaker 1: and I snapped a photo, and the next day it
Speaker 1: said costume nerds attack crime in Seattle on the small
Speaker 1: right side corner of the Seattle Times. It was me,
Speaker 1: my arms folding everything, and I were looking at and
Speaker 1: I was like, yeah, that's gonna stick. Now. There is,
Speaker 1: of course, the question of whether or not this origin
Speaker 1: story is even true, And I have to admit that
Speaker 1: the first time I heard Phoenix tell it in an interview,
Speaker 1: long before I met him, I thought the story was preposterous.
Speaker 1: But when I heard it directly from him in person,
Speaker 1: it all sounded a lot more plausible. But whether or
Speaker 1: not it's true, I think there is something very telling
Speaker 1: about the way that Phoenix told me his origin story.
Speaker 1: In his telling, the moment he decides to become a
Speaker 1: real life superhero is not when he takes down his
Speaker 1: first criminal. It's not even when he takes down his
Speaker 1: second criminal. It's the moment he sees a photo of
Speaker 1: himself in the newspaper. It just like hit me and
Speaker 1: I was like, costume superhero, costume nerd Ataxiattle like that,
Speaker 1: So that's me I'm gonna do this. Maybe it was
Speaker 1: simply that the validation of the outside world gave him
Speaker 1: the confidence to pursue the life of a real life superhero.
Speaker 1: Or maybe he got a taste of fame and he
Speaker 1: liked it, or maybe it was a combination of the two.
Speaker 1: Either way, he was hooked. But now he needed a name.
Speaker 1: Costume Nerd isn't exactly the kind of moniker that strikes
Speaker 1: fear into the hearts of criminals. No, he needed something
Speaker 1: a little snapp here, something like Phoenix Jones. Phoenix always
Speaker 1: claimed that his early years have been rough, much like
Speaker 1: those of his hero, the comic book character Nightwing, and
Speaker 1: like night Wing, Phoenix refused to let the trauma of
Speaker 1: his childhood define him. Maybe that's why he was so
Speaker 1: unwilling to discuss it with me. As origin stories go,
Speaker 1: it may well seem a little too perfect, But whether
Speaker 1: or not it's true, one thing is for certain. Phoenix
Speaker 1: did undergo radical transformation from concerned citizen to kick ass
Speaker 1: costume warrior, and you can't take that away from him,
Speaker 1: even if he's not the most reliable narrator. Back in
Speaker 1: the parking lot at Wild Waves, Phoenix discovered that he
Speaker 1: had the power to fight crime by chance. When he
Speaker 1: be came a victim and could not get the help
Speaker 1: he needed from the people who were supposed to serve
Speaker 1: and protect him. In the future, things would be different.
Speaker 1: He would no longer wait for crime to find him.
Speaker 1: From now on, he would place himself in harm's way,
Speaker 1: heading out into the night looking for trouble, hunting criminals
Speaker 1: and stopping them in their tracks. Phoenix started out as
Speaker 1: one man with a mission, standing alone against the odds.
Speaker 1: But what he didn't know was that all around him
Speaker 1: in Seattle, there were people who shared his dream of
Speaker 1: defending the streets, and when they heard about Phoenix Jones,
Speaker 1: they would rise up to join forces with him. So
Speaker 1: look out, bad guys, because Phoenix Jones is coming for you,
Speaker 1: and soon he won't be the only superhero in town.
Speaker 1: The Superhero Complex is hosted and written by Me David
Speaker 1: Weinberg and reported by Me, Amalia Sortland and Caroline Thornham.
Speaker 1: Production from Amalia Shortland and Caroline Thornham. Sean Glenn, Max
Speaker 1: O'Brien and David Waters are executive producers. Fact checking by
Speaker 1: Andrew Schwartz. Production management from Sharie Houston, Frankie Taylor and
Speaker 1: Charlotte Wolf. Sound design, mixing and scoring by Nicholas Alexander
Speaker 1: and Daniel Kempson. Music supervision by Nicholas Alexander and David Waters.
Speaker 1: Original music is composed by Paul Housden. Special thanks to
Speaker 1: Peter Tangan, Willard Foxton, Matt O'Mara, Katrina Norvelle Beth and Macaluso,
Speaker 1: Rin Rosenbaum, Shelby Shankman, and all the team at U
Speaker 1: t A. For more from Novel, visit novel dot Audio