Tales of the Parodyverse

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CrazySugarFreakBoy!
Tue Jan 04, 2005 at 08:30:13 am EST
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April Alice Apple Presents … The Secret Origin of the Groovy Gecko-Gal (Tie-In to Untold Tales of the Lair Legion #201)
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April Alice Apple Presents … The Secret Origin of the Groovy Gecko-Gal (Tie-In to Untold Tales of the Lair Legion #201)

Isabel “Izzy” Shapiro: Okay, I don’t know much about you, and I’m guessing my boy hasn’t told you that much about me yet, so let’s just both of us lay everything out on the line. Dream and I are not together, and we haven’t been together for a while now. Our breakup was not his fault, and I am not some psycho stalker ex-girlfriend who wants to sabotage his romantic relationships with other women. He is still my friend, and I still love him to death, which is why I want him to be happy, with someone who will love him at least as much as I do. So, that’s my deal. Now, it’s your turn.

April Alice Apple: Well, after all of that, I’m not exactly sure what to say. We met at a sci-fi and comic book fan convention, we hooked up not too long afterwards, and we’ve been going out ever since he came back from the Transworlds Challenge. He’s sweet and smart and sexy and strange, even stranger than I’m used to, and I guess I’m still just kind of waiting for him to get bored with me and move on, because especially compared to him, I’m not really all that interesting, because there’s not really that much to say about me. I lived in Seattle until I turned 14, when I moved to New York City, and now I’m moving back. All I’ve been doing since I moved to New York seven years ago is my stupid little superhero comic book, but I don’t even know if I want to keep doing that anymore.

Izzy: Why not? I mean, I think I remember reading some issues from Dream’s collection. The Groovy Gecko-Gal, right? I liked it. It was really heartfelt.

April: Yeah, well, aside from you, Dream and maybe a few thousand other people on the planet, almost nobody knows about it, and even fewer people care enough about it to bother reading the damn thing. I’ve been shouting in a vacuum for the better part of a decade, and I can’t help but wonder if the reason that nobody’s been paying any attention is because I haven’t been saying anything worth listening to, or even doing anything worth telling any stories about.

Izzy: What do you wish you’d been able to do?

April: I don’t know; helping people, I guess. Fighting crime, saving lives, having adventures, finding my true love, even just wearing a cool costume … all the fun stuff that’s supposed to happen to superheroes.

Izzy: Which is why you created the Groovy Gecko-Gal?

April: Except that hardly any of that stuff seemed to happen for her, either. I mean, sure, she beat some minor-league bad guys and successfully protected a handful of innocent bystanders, but the masterminds behind the evil schemes always got away and just as many people got hurt or killed as got rescued, because she wasn’t able to move or think fast enough, or hold on long enough. As for finding her true love, once she finally got lucky enough to meet a nice guy who was willing to look past the fact that she was a fat-assed, four-eyed, brace-faced nerd girl, it turned out that his dad was her greatest arch-enemy, the Great Red Dragon. She didn’t even have a decent disguise most of the time, because she was always trashing her outfits in knock-down, drag-out punch-outs with her rotating rogues’ gallery of villains-of-the-week.

Izzy: If the work was so upsetting to you … why didn’t you just tell happier stories about the characters?

April: Maybe because they weren’t just stories?

Izzy: Oh. Oh! Huh. Well, I’ll be damned.

April: Hiding in plain sight, and I didn’t even mean to. I create a superhero comic book to chronicle the adventures of the costumed crimefighting alter-ego I’ve already created, and the same boys who stare at my fat ass and fantasize about fucking me when I’m showing it all off in my skintight spandex suit can barely even be bothered to call me a “moo-cow cunt” when I’m wearing more clothes to cover it up. I used to think it was so silly, how Clark Kent could fool everyone he knew, just by putting on a pair of glasses and combing the spit-curl out of his hair, but I didn’t even need that much to conceal my own secret identity.

Izzy: Why not come out of the phone booth, so to speak?

April: Well, for starters, the number of outstanding warrants for my arrest was a bit of a deterrent, since the police and the press somehow got it stuck in their heads that I was on the same side as all of the bad guys I traded blows with, every time I went out on patrol. Besides, I didn’t want to risk putting any of the people I knew or cared about in some sort of danger zone, just because they happened to be hanging out around me. It’s so surreal; I mean, Dream and I are the same age, but when it comes to costumed crimefighting, I’ve had close to seven years’ worth of on-the-job training and experience more than he’s had, and unlike him, I didn’t have the luxury of a team like the Lair Legion around when I started out, to serve as a surrogate extended family while I learned how to play superhero. No, the Groovy Gecko-Gal never encountered any ghosts or aliens, never investigated any haunted mansions or explored outer space, and never benefited from sales-boosting crossovers with more popular characters.

Izzy: Didn’t you have any sort of support system as a kid?

April: Peggy Allen, my great-aunt on my mother’s side, who I went to stay with in New York after I couldn’t stand living with my dysfunctional folks in Seattle any longer. After she retired from the Super-Powers Police Squad in Classic City, she started up Heroine Addiction, the “Reading Room for Comix Chix,” in New York City. She got me hooked on comic books and superheroes when we went to visit her for my seventh birthday, and she helped me become the Groovy Gecko-Gal not long after I turned 14. During the Golden Age, she was the Woman in Red, the very first female superhero in history. Don’t ask me how she’s still alive and only in her mid-fifties now; it sounds like it was a time-travel thing. She taught me, and tried to safeguard me, as much as she could, but …

Izzy: But she couldn’t always be there to fight your battles for you while you were growing up, and especially at that age, you wouldn’t have wanted her to anyway.

April: She didn’t even want to train me, until I told her that I was going out there anyway, with or without her help. I was so convinced that this was something I needed to do, for myself and for everyone else. Everywhere I looked, especially at that age, I saw bullies in places of power, lording it over anyone who wasn’t as pretty or popular or financially fortunate as themselves, and I was so sure that if I just met them head-on, with a smart mouth, a thick skin and some clever tricks up my sleeves, I could maybe make things a bit better, for me and all the other misfit toys who got picked on.

Izzy: What did you say earlier, about not being all that interesting?

April: Um, yeah, about that; I know you’re his best friend or whatever, but I’d just as soon you not tell Dream about this specific aspect of how interesting you think I am.

Izzy: Why not? All the stuff you’ve told me you’ve done sounds like the exact opposite of anything wrong, and trust me, it won’t even occur to him to get upset at you for keeping this a secret from him, if that’s what’s worrying you. If anything, he’ll admire you that much more.

April: Aside from you and Aunt Peg, the only other person I’ve ever told about me being the Groovy Gecko-Gal was my ex-boyfriend, Billy Blake, and he wound up being so totally not able to handle it that he decided to take up his dad’s mantle as my sworn nemesis, until he got caught and convicted, for both his and his father’s crimes as the Great Red Dragon. And I don’t even know why I’m telling you any of this.

Izzy: Oh, don’t worry about me. I’ll keep all my secrets to the grave. However, if I have to explain to you that Dream is so totally not like some ex-boyfriend of yours, who was raised by a sociopathic supervillain –

April: I know, I know, I know! It’s stupid and unfair to be so gun-shy with Dream, based only on the behavior of my last boyfriend.

Izzy: No, actually, it’s not. It’s just irrational, is all. Look, I got burned pretty badly by more than my fair share of would-be boyfriends, before I met Dream, so, yeah, I know how hard it can be to open yourself up like that again, especially with a guy who seems so genuine and unrehearsed that you can’t possibly believe he’s not faking it, at least at first.

April: This might all be a moot point anyway, since I don’t think I even want to be the Groovy Gecko-Gal anymore. It’s like, I’m Clark Kent, and he’s Lois Lane, except instead of ignoring me and going straight for Superman, which is what all the most time-honored narrative conventions for the genre dictate should have happened, he barely even looked at Superman before he started chasing after boring old Clark Kent. I mean, do you have any idea, do you even have the first clue, how infuriating and gratifying it is, all at once, after spending a lifetime of desperately seeking to carve out some sort of niche for myself, as the bright girl, or the funny girl, or the responsible girl, or even just the girl with the nice personality, to suddenly have some guy, and not just some guy, but some superhero of a guy, quite literally, come in and start treating me like this turbo-charged masturbation fantasy of a sex goddess? Yes, he likes me for more than just the lips-tits-and-hips total package, but he’s the first guy who hasn’t acted like he had to see past my physical appearance to be attracted to me. How do you think Clark Kent would have felt about playing Superman, if Lois Lane had never even given the Man of Steel a second glance, because she was too busy creaming her panties over his mild-mannered civilian alter-ego?

Izzy: Let’s break this down to the basics. Do you love Dream?

April: Are you kidding? I’ve been falling in love with the neon nerd ever since he started hitting on me.

Izzy: Well, then, I’d say you already know what you need to do. He needs to know the truth, about who you were and maybe still are, and he needs to hear it from you. I’m not going to tell him what you’ve told me, because if you do love him, then you’re going to tell him yourself, not for me, but for him, and for you.

April: Hmmm. So, let me guess – you’re a psych major, right?

Izzy: I was, before I dropped out and started doing social work.

April: Either way, you have a knack for it. Especially the guilt-tripping.

Izzy: Heh. Listen to that; you even know how to be a bitch. Good for you.

April: Thanks. You’re quite the cool chick yourself. Look, I’ll be honest, I might need some time to steel myself up to do this thing, but I will reveal my secret superhero origin and identity to him eventually. In the meantime, I promise you, this bitch will be watching out for your boy.

Izzy: No, not just my boy; he’s our boy, now. And please don’t wait too long to let him know, April. After all, none of us ever have as much time together as we think we will …

April: Izzy? Brrr. I turn around, and spooky girl slips away like a ghost.


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