It's dusk in the Valley. A shadow moves among the downtown Phoenix buildings. Though this masked man doesn't seem to want his real identity fully known, his mission is made clear: stop social injustice and bring peace to the streets.
How do I know this? It's right there on his MySpace page.
The masked man, known as
'Citizen Prime', is part of a growing ring of citizen superheroes. You may see him around town since his region of concentration is listed as Arizona.
But he's not the only one -- another superhero,
'Green Scorpion', can also be found in Arizona and New Mexico.
This handful of gold-hearted, masked men and women have their own MySpace pages. Collectively, they even have their own websites:
worldsuperheroregistry.com and
citizenheroes.com.
They may look wacky, but according to an article in the
Times Online, the superhero community was, in part, born in the embers of the 9/11 terrorist attacks when ordinary people wanted to do something short of enlisting.
To even be considered for the Registry, a real-life superhero must meet certain criteria, according to the website.
Three of the primary requirements are wearing a costume, doing heroic deeds, and operating solely by personal motivation, rather than financial gain.
According to Citizen Prime's MySpace page, he's married and a proud father. Last year, he was part of an operation to drop off toys to Banner Children's Hospital.
A blurb on Prime's MySpace page tells a little more about his mission: "I strive to be a inspirational symbol of hope. We need to stop social injustice - by approaching the heart of the matter - and finding the hero inside every man, woman and child and
priming their true greatness. You can be as much hero as I am. Heroes are needed in this life and no cape is required to help change the world."
