The Internet is Super

Yeah, this nutcase is totally going to save you.

The quantity of really strange people in our world is pretty staggering. For those who consider themselves at least semi-normal, these people are pretty hard to ignore. They’re everywhere: you can find them in the form of the roommate who sleeps on a university mattress without sheets. Or the 40-year-old next door neighbor who carries vodka-seltzer water to her car, only to return with a package of Depends. Or maybe the thug who gets beat up outside of your house and leaves torn-out dreadlocks behind—all over your car—as his only calling card.

Not that any of this comes from personal experience, of course.

The Internet, as you may have noticed, does not weed these oddballs out. Quite the contrary, they’re around every corner, behind every link, waiting to invade your browser and make your brain a little mushier. But as PR firms love to remind us, it’s not quantity, but rather quality, that matters. Take, for example, superheroes: these few fellas who consistently use their above-average repertoire of skills to save mankind from… well, whatever. Superman, Spiderman, Captain Planet—these are the guys who save us from some serious shit (well, maybe we’re still waiting for that last guy to pull through).

Well, used to save us. Until these guys put them out of business:

The World Superhero Registry.

That’s right. Your eyes deceive you not. Although I’m sure you already know about it. …You are registered, aren’t you?

Too much snow between your doorstep and your car? Call your dear friend from the North (read: Canada), Polar Man, who “ shovels elders’ steps and walkways, entertains children and prowls the streets some nights keeping an eye out for vandals”). Oh Polar Man, how I’ve longed for you to shovel my walkway. If you catch my drift.

And next time you’re “clamped” inside your car, you might give Angle Grinder Man (pictured above) a call, whose “obsession with wheel-clamping is actually a rebellion against a much deeper malaise, [n]amely, the arrogant contempt that politicians hold for the people who put them into power, and whom they claim to represent.” Yeah, totally.

I could go on, but you get the idea. Leave it to the Internet to come up with the definitive solution for the pressing issue of superhero registration. I wonder if they get laminated cards.