April 5, 2022 • 40 mins
Every superhero has an origin story. David travels to Seattle to come face to face with Phoenix for the first time, but their meeting raises more questions than it answers.
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Novel. In August, I flew into Seattle to finally meet
the infamous Phoenix Jones. We've been texting back and forth
and he'd agreed to meet, so I booked a hotel
for a few days. On August one, he texted me
saying he was free later that day, so I asked
(00:28):
when was good for him, but he didn't respond. In fact,
he didn't respond to any of my text that day,
or the next or the next. While I was hanging
around waiting for Phoenix to get back to me, I
interviewed a few other Seattle superheroes and former members of
his crime fighting team, the rain City Superheroes, including one
(00:48):
guy who had known Phoenix since high school, and they
all told me variations of pretty much the same story.
You can't trust anything that comes out of the guy's mouth.
He was charging people money per month for medical insurance
that the team's never saw. He's got a drug rob,
the gambling prob. He's been disgraced from me else he's
ever been all the team. He's a narcissist, sociopath. He's
(01:11):
just not a He's not a good dude. If just
one of Phoenix's former teammates had been disgruntled. I think
I would have been reluctant to judge him based on
their falling out, but everyone I talked to had a
similar story, which made it hard to dismiss their assessment
of his character. But I wanted to hear Phoenix's side
of the story before I drew my own conclusions about him. Eventually,
(01:34):
I had to go back home. I didn't hear back
from Phoenix until a full month later, when he did surface.
He texted to say that a good friend of his
had just died of COVID. He had started a new
job as a line cook, and his life was really crazy.
He said, I'm really sorry for being more flaky than
(01:54):
I usually am. Phoenix said we could meet up, so
in October I boarded another flight to Seattle for a
second attempt to hang out with him. When I landed
the day before I was due to interview him, I
was amped up, nervous and excited. I also had a cold,
so I decided to take some night quill and crash
(02:15):
early at my hotel. I took twice the recommended dosage,
because you know, why not, and then I got into
bed and started to drift off to sleep. A little
after ten PM, my phone rang. It was Phoenix. I answered.
(02:38):
It was the first time we'd ever spoken. He told
me that he had some friends over at his place
and he wanted me to come over and hang out
so we could build some rapport before our interview the
next day. I said, of course, I could head straight there.
He told me he would text me his address, and
he hung up. I got out of bed and started
getting dressed, but all my movements felt sluggish. This was
(03:00):
not how I had hoped to meet Phoenix high on
night Quill. But when the bat signal goes up, you
put on your super suit and you rise to the occasion.
As I was getting dressed, he called me again. He
said he didn't feel safe texting me his address, so
he would come pick me up at my hotel. I
said that was fine and hung up, But it didn't
(03:22):
make any sense unless he was going to blindfold me
when I got in the car, I was going to
know where he lived. It all felt very strange and dreamy.
He told me to meet him out in front of
the hotel at PM. It was cold and drizzly, so
I bundled up and stood out on the street corner waiting,
(03:45):
and then at PM I got a text from Phoenix
that said, Hey, I hate to be super clicky here,
I'm having an issue over at my place and need
to rain check. One of my friends needs to write
home has been drinking, so I'll um at ten forty
tomorrow so we can talk. If that's okay, I replied,
sounds good. What I wanted to say was are you
(04:08):
fucking with me? Was this some kind of trap? I
looked around to see if maybe he was sitting in
a car like a detective on a steak out, trying
to size me up or something. I really felt like
he was playing some sort of mind game with me.
Had his old Superhero crew. I've been right about Phoenix.
(04:31):
I'm David Weinberg and from the team's at Novel and
I heart Radio. This is the Superhero Complex, episode two
of Phoenix Rises. I was really happy to be back
(05:06):
in Seattle. I used to live here in two thousand
and seven at the Panama Hotel in the International District.
I rented a room by the week and worked at
two restaurants as a dishwasher and Capitol Hill and a
bus boy in Belltown. I left years ago, but walking
the streets. Everything felt familiar. My favorite restaurant, ton V
was still there. I went back to get my go
(05:27):
to favorite, a plate of grilled meats and vegetables and herbs,
served with rice, paper sheets, and a bowl of hot
water to soften the paper and make your own rolls.
The name of the dish had changed, but it was
even better than I remembered. I walked the same route
I used to take to work from the I d
through Pioneer Square with its old saloons and red brick walkways,
(05:48):
and then up First Avenue. They mostly felt the same.
There were a few new restaurants I didn't recognize. The
Lusty Lady, a peep show venue where you sat in
a booth and put quarters into a slot to look
through a pane of glass, and new dancers had closed down.
From there, I walked along the avenue past the iconic
Pipe Place market, where the fishmongers were packing up for
(06:08):
the day. I made my way into Belltown to Black Bottle,
a wine and topas restaurant where I worked as a
bus boy. The walk took me through the same neighborhoods
or Phoenix and his crew did almost all of their
patrols I stopped at Black Bottle and had a drink
for old time's sake. Back when I worked there, I
was friends with a few of the homeless people who
hung out in the neighborhood. I took guitar lessons from
(06:30):
one of them, a crack addict named Hans, who was
really smart. Occasionally he would flip out at me and
yell a bunch of crazy stuff, but I was never
scared of him, or of any of the other unhoused
people who hung around Belltown. But today things feel a
lot different. The number of people living on the streets
feel substantially higher than when I lived there in two
(06:51):
thousand and seven. It seemed like there were a few
homeless people here and there, But today there are several
tent cities with dozens of tents all over downtown. After
I finished my walk down Memory Lane, I wanted to
see what my former neighbors in downtown Seattle had to
say about Phoenix Jones a question for a radio story.
(07:11):
It wasn't hard to find people who had interactions with him,
People like these kids I met outside of a rave. Yeah,
I've seen him like a lot, a lot like bothering
drunk kids on the sidewalks and stuff like that. What
do you think about him? I thought it was cool
at first, um and then I just thought he was
annoying because he wasn't actually really helping anybody. He was
(07:33):
just being annoying. Like he would literally find kids that
were too drunk and passed out, or claim that people
who are about to leave were drinking and driving, even
if they weren't. He would just find anything he thought
you were breaking the law about and harass you. He
was just a jerk, they told me. He ended up
being the real life equivalent of a quote from the
Batman movie. You either die a hero or live long
(07:55):
enough to see yourself become the Villainy might ask you
a question for a radio story. Another guy I met
worked at a restaurant downtown. I had a few encounters
with Phoenix. One time I saw him, Uh, what was
it on the waterfront and he was talking mad and
he was talking match it to me and my friends,
and it was funny because like, we work down there,
(08:17):
what are you doing? They made him. The guy told
me that he used to hang out with some friends
in a parking lot in Belltown when they got off work,
smoking weed, kicking it, you know all I've done. Ship
One day, he was there smoking with his friends and
Phoenix showed up. Him and his crew were like just
staring at us like they're gonna, like he's gonna do something,
(08:38):
and we're smoking weed and we're in fucking bell you know,
we're sucking downtown in Belltown. It was hilarious. Like, dude,
and I read comic books. I'm not going to nerd
out right now, but it's just funny how there's plenty
of superhero work, plenty of people to save, plenty of
(08:58):
criminals to catch, and this motherfucker's looking at me smoking
weed right now. All of these stories made me wary
of Phoenix, and I was upset because the only reason
Phoenix had agreed to do an interview with me was
because we were paying him several thousand dollars. I've been
(09:20):
a journalist for fifteen years and I've never paid a
source for an interview. It's generally considered unethical, and I
understand all the arguments against it, but I'm also aware
that as a journalist, I have the power to shape
how the world sees Phoenix, and he will have to
live at the rest of his life with the consequences
of how I portray him. Meanwhile, I not only get
(09:43):
to walk away from the story when I'm done, I
get paid. Lots of people get paid to make this story.
That imbalance of power doesn't always feel fair to me,
and I see a valid argument for paying people for
their time. The issue I had with Phoenix would that
after sharing all these stories from his former teammates and
from people around Seattle, I felt uneasy about rewarding him.
(10:07):
But I also felt that Phoenix deserved to tell his
side of the story, and the only way that was
going to happen was for me to hand him an
envelope full of cash. Phoenix was late, but he did
show up to my hotel that morning. He was wearing
glasses and a blue plaid button down shirt and black pants,
(10:28):
with a tactical belt that had a larger than normal
canister of pepper spray, along with a few other gadgets.
This was deep into the COVID pandemic and he had
a mask with him, but it was made of hard plastic,
had an American flag and an eagle printed on it.
I remember thinking that he looked nerdier than I was expecting.
I greeted him outside the hotel and then walked him
(10:49):
to my room, a pretty standard chain hotel room with
a window looking out into the courtyard. I rearranged the
furniture and set up a makeshift recording studio with a
small table a couple of mikes. Phoenix actually kicked off
the interview by asking me a question. He wanted to
know what other superheroes I had talked to. Um, I've
(11:10):
talked to Red Ranger Service. Yeah, Um, Crystal Marks, she's
a clown ghost good night, Jack, Okay, you talked to
ghost of me Jack nice and Kay. Yeah. I was
gonna say that you probably only talked to clowns. But
(11:31):
the list you actually gave us pretty solid. I mean, um,
justin service like man, but Red Ranger, for example, right,
like he actually puts himself in the middle of scenarios
in situations. He's not trained, and he's not like a
skilled fighter in any way, shape or form. But but
just being there is effective. Ghosts. I've known him since
high school, one of the best crime fighters that excited
(11:53):
kicked you could have even if we don't like each other. Effectiveness, effectiveness,
I don't really care. Like he's fucking great at his job,
So whether he likes me or not, in go buck himself.
Having critiqued the rest of Seattle's caped crusaders, Phoenix wanted
me to know that he was the only true crime
fighter among them. Stops three What does that mean? Yeh
(12:14):
three and fifteen crime stops like where a cop has
showed up, arrested that person and taking them to jail
for the crime I have. I have three fifteen right,
no one else has even a hundred. And some of
those claimed three fifteen stops were pretty extraordinary. I stopped
a sex trafficking ring. I technically stopped a homeland active terror.
I've been in seventeen knife fights and I've been stabbed
(12:36):
twice and the guy got shot and I had end
stepping on his arm to stop the arterial bleed. Over
the course of the interview, Phoenix made a point to
explain that he is not a normal person. What might
cause you or I to run away in terror? He
handles like a train warrior, like this one time on
one of his early patrols where a guy pulled a
(12:57):
knife on him. The first guy who ever stabbed me
on street. I was like, hey, that was a good one.
You win today. I caught him next time and beat
the crap out of him, Like, you're not gonna hurt
me in any kind of physical way to cause me damage.
I find it comical and don't even think about pulling
a gun on him. This guy tried to kill me
and pulled a gun and try to chase me around
a card and I took him down obviously. I mean,
(13:18):
you have a gun at close range, I'll win every time.
And then there was the time he was scouted by
the federal government. The FBI basically wanted to like make
a list of all superheroes and kind of their activities
and what they do. And I agreed to some things
with the government. The government agree to some things with me,
and we went our sep away. Do you still have
a relationship with the federal government. Yeah, this was one
(13:41):
fact I was not able to verify. But in the moment,
as Phoenix rattle off story after story of his crime
fighting exploits, I started to believe him. I think part
of it is his charisma, which is undeniable. And when
he started talking about the intricacies of the law and
the justice system and law enforcement, I realized he's one
of the most intelligent people I've ever met, and I
(14:03):
kind of fell under a spell. At one point in
the interview, Phoenix even turned me into one of his
martial arts students. Check this move out. This is make
fight stance back right. So now you can touch me
and I can touch you right. That's called if I'm
here right and I take a half step this way.
Now your hands don't reach anymore. It's about the circumference
(14:24):
and radius of a circle. One thing that is undeniably
true about Phoenix is that he was a professional mixed
martial artist and a damn good one. In his fights,
he only lost five matches. But there were other parts
of the story had my doubts about. So after our interview,
I set out to verify some of his claims, starting
(14:45):
with his origin story, which perhaps unsurprisingly sounds like it's
been ripped straight from the pages of a comic book
that's coming up after the break. Hmm. Every superhero has
(15:12):
an origin story. Spider Man bitten by a radioactive Spider,
wonder Woman carved in clay and given superpowers by the
Greek gods. Captain America, a frail young artist infused with
a super soldier serum, and the story Phoenix Jones had
been telling to the media for years sounded like one
of those classic comic book storyline, though it could also
(15:34):
be the origin story of a super villain. I was
wondering if we could just start at the beginning of
your life and like you could just give me your background,
like where you were born and where you grew up
and that kind of stuff. And I also want to apologize.
I'm sure you've answered a lot of these questions a
million times. Actually no I haven't. Because I don't answer
those questions. We can start to getting my crime fighting career.
Phoenix said he wouldn't answer any questions about his life
(15:55):
before he became Phoenix Jones, which surprised me because he
had talked about his upbringing to other journalists in the past.
The one thing we know for sure is that Phoenix's
real name is Ben Fodor and he was born on
ma that's documented in court records. But after that we're
(16:16):
reliant on Phoenix's account. And according to him, he was
born in Texas and he had four siblings, but he
was the only one of them to be sent to
an orphanage. He says at five years old, he was
removed from the orphanage and given back to his parents.
According to that account, one day, he was riding in
the car with his dad when they stopped at a
convenient store. Ben stayed in the car and his father
(16:39):
went into the store and never came back. Apparently he
tried to rob the convenience store, but the store owner
had a gun and he shot Ben's dad and killed him.
Ben was around seven years old at the time, sitting
in the car alone until the police showed up and
found him. Later in his life, Ben says he learned
(17:03):
that the man who was killed was not his biological father,
and that his real father was a man who had
an affair with his mother, and that was the reason
he was the only one of his siblings who was
given up for adoption. Ben has told journalists in the
past that his mom was also a criminal, a drug
dealer who got busted trying to use her baby carriage
(17:24):
to conceal illegal drugs. In a previous interview for a
book about his life, Ben was asked about being the
child of criminals. This is what he said. You have
to make a choice. You can say I'm going to
be a product of my environment. And grow into a
criminal and just be like everyone else, or you can
(17:46):
say no, I'm not going to do that. After the
man he thought was his father was killed, Ben says
he was put back into the orphanage, where he lived
for the next three years. He says he had to
let sea in a speech impediment, and he was bullied
a lot by the staff and other children. One of
his only friends at the time was a kid who
(18:07):
liked to torture animals. But when he was nine years old,
he was saved from all the trauma and misery of
his Texas childhood. He was adopted by a woman in Seattle,
a wealthy widow who had several other adopted children. He
says that when he moved to Seattle and settled in
with his new family, it was the first time in
his life he felt truly cared for. Around that time,
(18:31):
young Ben Photo also discovered a new world that he
fell in love with, something that would change the course
of his life. Comic books. That was in Nightwing. A lot.
As a kid, I never really resonated with comics because
they didn't really do anything I understood, But Nightwing was
something that I understood. Night Wing is part of the
Batman's superhero family. Like Bruce Wayne, he doesn't have supernatural powers.
(18:56):
He defends the innocent with his strength and agility. Nightwing
wears a black supersuit with the blue chevron across the chest,
similar to the gold one on Phoenix's costume Batman and
Robin Right. Robin eventually grows up and be sends his
own superhero called Nightwing. He's like, I don't want to
be a sidekick in like little Shorts. I'd rather fight
some crime. He goes through and like really trains and
(19:17):
he doesn't win a lot at the beginning. It's a
grind for him, and it was one of those things
where I was like, I see that, I understand that,
you know what I mean. There are a lot of
different versions of night Wing that spanned several generations of
the d C Comics universe, but the one that resonated
with Ben was the series that was written by Devin Grayson.
Devin Grayson Man, she kills it and it's like really
(19:40):
realistically believable. In March of two thousand, Grayson became the
first woman to create, launch, and write a Batman comics series.
And it's almost as if fate had set her on
that path, given that she shares the same last name
as Dick Grayson. The guy who becomes Robin night Wing
is very interest because Dick Grayson starts as Robin. You know,
(20:04):
he's there as a kind of Watson figure, Sherlock Watson figure.
He's there so Batman can talk to him. Robin was
put in to give kids somebody to identify with. This
is Peter Coogan, a man with a very specific superpower
writing and editing. I could join the X Men, but
I'd be running the writing center at the Xavier Academy.
(20:26):
And much like the X Men, he uses his superpower
to help other people, to enable them to better pursue
their ontological vocation of humanization. In other words, he's an academic.
I do have a PhD in superheroes. Coogan teaches superheroes
and comics at Washington University in St. Louis. He's also
the director of the Institute for Comic Studies, and he
(20:48):
spent a lot of time thinking about Nightwing. Night Wing
works as a really interesting figure. He lost his parents,
just like Bruce Wayne did, but because he had a
parent figure Bruce Wayne and another parent figure, Alfred, he
was able to become a more integrated adult. Dick Grayson
(21:11):
is healthier than Bruce Wayne, and so I think that's
one of the things that night Wing represents, that represents
a more healthy version of the superhero. He has chosen
to become a superhero in a way that Bruce Wayne couldn't.
When Robin becomes Nightwing, he moves to the suburbs of
(21:33):
Gotham City, to a rough neighborhood called blood Haven and
becomes a cop. He does that because he wants to
be part of society in a way that Batman both
doesn't and can't. Dick Grayson is available to be identified
(21:53):
with as a healthier response to trauma and Batman, and
I think that's what draws people to him as a character.
As a young kid, his parents died in a circus accident, right,
(22:13):
but he could have done whatever he wanted. Batman's is different, though,
because when his parents die, he trains, but he has
this financial backing, right is I guess trauma allowed him
to be Batman, right? Night Wings make it a choice.
He goes to college, has a girlfriend, he lives a life,
tries to keep it all together, but he's no way
(22:34):
traumatized children personalized trauma. They always find a way to
blame themselves, like I could have done more right, and
that drives Batman, But that does not drive Nightwing. Night
Wing was I was helpless and I won't be helpless anymore,
and that resonates him with me more. Why do you
think it resonated with you. I think as a kid,
everybody has a little sense of being helpless. I certainly did.
(22:57):
And training for a mission or a goal something like
that is just it's like empowering, Like you just feel
this like like energy that nobody knows. Ben Photo knows
that energy. Well. Whatever helplessness he felt after being given
away by his parents, he compensated for by throwing himself
(23:20):
into all kinds of activities. I did double dus for
a while, won the bunch of scape competitions. I was
a national bowling champion as well as martial arts. There
was also debate, club horseshoe throwing, and even competitive dance.
He seems to have taken on every challenge he could
in an effort to prove his worth to his adopted mother.
(23:42):
In fact, he said in the past to journalists that
he was driven to be the best that everything he
could because he was trying to show her she made
the right decision by picking him over all the other
children at the orphanage. Everything I ever touched. If it
was a competition for it, I wanted to try it.
Although Ben has the story of his childhood with journalists
over the years, he's left out some key details, like
(24:05):
the names of his birth parents and the man who
he thought was his father, which makes it nearly impossible
to fact check his version of what happened. But I
was determined to verify at least some of his claims.
If you go into the National Bowling Museum in Hall
of Fame, I'm in hometown Aroics for three games under sixteen.
The International Bowling Museum and Hall of Fame refused to
(24:26):
release any info about Ben without his member number, which
I didn't have, but we were able to find his
old high school by process of elimination and called up
the old coach on the bowling team. She said she'd
never heard of a Ben Fodor and then said to
leave her alone. But just before hanging up, she said
that hypothetically, if she were us, she'd call up the
(24:47):
United States Bowling Congress and asked for member details and
They immediately dave us Ben's records and they verified that
Ben in fact did achieve two perfect scores of three
hundred and bowling under the age of sixteen. That's twelve
strikes in a row. We started calling around to bowling
alleys that were near where Phoenix lived and eventually found
(25:08):
a place called ken Moore Lanes. When the owner of
Joanne answered the phone, she said with a sigh, ah, yeah,
benor I know him. Ken Moore Lanes is just northeast
of Seattle, not far from the shores of Lake Washington.
You don't realize just how massive it is until you
(25:29):
step inside. Ken Moore Lanes was the largest bowling alley
in Washington, fifty lanes. This is Wesley used to work
at ken Moore Lanes. When you walked in, it had
like the old style of bowling alley, you know, beer
on the tables, kind of dark, but it was like
an enjoyable place where you can bring your family and
had the league nights. When I first got there, you know,
(25:50):
smoking was still allowed, so it still was all smoky
in there. Once smoking was banned, it got a little cleaner,
a little nicer. Some knights that get a little rowdy,
little rough, but most nice were just calm. It was
a really enjoyable place. Wesley worked at ken Moore up
until two thousand and seven when something happened. I'm actually
not allowed in ken Moore Lanes. Um band self inflicted stupidity.
(26:17):
That's Joanne, the owner of ken Moore Lanes. The story
of why Wesley is banned from the bowling alley is
for another time in the place. We're here to talk
about young Ben Fodor and more specifically to find out
if the origin story Phoenix is telling is true. Yeah,
I kind of do remember the first time I did
meet him. Um, we always had people come in there,
(26:39):
and I always like to give people help him out,
like him discounts on bowling. Uh. This lady came in
once and she had foster kids, and UH gave her
some discount of some bowling, and I remember one of
them was this like little skinny guy kid or glasses,
look a little nerdy, and he always enjoyed bowling, and
UH kept coming back and he just kept hanging around
there learning from people how to bowl. What was your
(27:01):
first impression of him, Oh, like he was a nerdy
little kid that got picked on at school, a little insecure,
didn't really know himself, you know, a little preteen. I
knew he was adopted. He had struggled with, you know,
being picked on and bullied as a kid and not
feeling accepted, and so I think the bowling alley like
(27:22):
he felt accepted there and like people wanted him. Wesley
says that Ben wasn't a natural bowler, but he was focused.
He was there all the time, learning from people that worked.
They're just watching people bowl, hanging around, just picking it up.
But yeah, he worked at it. A few years went by,
and by the time Ben was in high school, he
was one of the top bowlers in his age group.
(27:43):
According to Wesley, he went from being the shy, insecure
kid too well the opposite around high school. All of
a sudden, this skinny little kid turns into this young
man like with muscles. All of a sudden, you know,
he starts like filling out and he starts bowling better,
starts again. Some someone to his ball. The way he
bowled is very exuberant. The way he would all of
(28:05):
a sudden just throw the ball, be all cocky, run
down the lane, start showboating. You know, this is like
a fifteen year old kid, jumping around the lanes, yelling
at his other competitors. Very enthusiastic in his bowling. Ben
wasn't just running up and down the lanes. When he
hit a strike, you would run onto the lane itself
and taking full advantage of the slick wood surface. He
(28:27):
would break dance at the time. He had a flat
top haircut Allah kid and play and Ben would taunt
his opponents after a strike by strutting around and showing off.
If you're the flat top baby, he always had the
flat top. He had that before fighting. He always had
(28:47):
the big hair. Yeah, he had a T shirt, medium
T shirt when he had the big frame, the super
small shirts. If you're the flat top, this is Marty Cocking.
He still works at the bowling alley. He loved watching Ben.
Then again, he wasn't bowling against him. Ben's opponents didn't
love being taunted by a cocky kid. He would beat
people at bowling, so they always wanted to, you know,
(29:08):
beat him, but it wasn't happening. And then when the
dudes doing the worm with the flat top across the
approach on you, it's pretty frustrating. Even in Phoenix's version,
of events. He's not exactly a team player. I even
got so good at bowling left handed and right handed
that I didn't have to have a double's partner. I
could bowl with myself. I had an average with the
left and right hand, so I was able to bowl
doubles with myself, which was cool because I got two
(29:30):
trophies every time on one. As Ben got older, he
got more into martial arts and started training to become
an m M A fighter, and he started spending more
time at the gym and less time at the bowling alley.
And then one day, Marty saw a news segment about
a certain masked vigilante who was roaming the streets of Seattle.
When he heard the voice of the man behind the mask,
(29:52):
he thought, that sounds like Ben before he unveiled himself.
I could tell the voice because I know him pretty
well as a kid. When you realized that Phoenix Jones
was in fact the break dancing bowler Ben Fodor, Marty
thought Ben had lost his mind. I thought he was crazy. Why,
because I mean, it's just crazy stuff. Who goes on
(30:15):
in Seattle is not something you really want to deal
with as a person. I'm a pretty big dude, but
I'm not going to go out there and the rest
of my life when I have a young family, and
I just didn't understand what he was doing. Do you
remember the last time you talked to him or h
I saw him at the store. He's actually buying diapers
for somebody. It's a random person. It wasn't even his
family member, but it was somebody that needed help. I
(30:36):
talked to him a little bit. I was just like,
do you have another kid? But he's like, no, I'm
just helping out this family and needed some diapers. But
he literally had a cart full of diapers. It was
pretty cool, as crazy as it seems to find out
that a guy you knew for taunting rival bowlers decided
to put on a costume an attempt to fight crime.
To Joanne, the owner of the bowling Alley, it all
(30:59):
made sense. I wasn't surprised. First of all, it kind
of fits his personality in my opinion, and uh, Secondly,
he always seemed like a kid with a pretty strong
sense of I guess, a good moral compass. The ken
(31:20):
Moore Lane staff watched Ben Photor grow up. They've already
seen him reinvent himself from a vulnerable little kid to
the break dancing show boat. But every superhero origin story
needs a moment of transformation, that key incident that inspires
the hero to put on a mask and turn from
man to myth. That's coming up next. There comes a
(31:55):
time in the life of every superhero when they transform
from civilian to say of her. For some, it's the
story of how they got their superpower, like the scientist
Bruce Banner, who gets exposed to gamma rays and becomes
the Incredible Hulk. And then there are heroes like the
X Men mutants who are born with superpowers. You also
have your Batman and Nightwing types who are not blessed
(32:17):
with supernatural abilities but achieve a kind of superhuman status
through training and an arsenal of fancy gadgets and weapons.
But what they all have in common is that there
comes a point in their life when they look out
at the injustice of the world and say to themselves,
this has to end, and I am the one who's
going to take on this fight for ben Photor. That
(32:41):
moment happened in two thousand and nine at Wild Waves,
an amusement park in the suburbs of Tacoma, Washington with
roller coasters and carnival games, kids with wrinkled fingers shivering
in line for water slides. Phoenix had taken his son
and they just finished a day of fun. We parked
our car outside the fence and we were walking. It
was me and my son, and we were racing back
(33:01):
to the car. Me and my son are running and
uh al sudd he falls and I'm like, oh, that sucks,
so I want to pick him up, and just starts
gushing blood like everywhere right, and I'm like, what's going on.
I look and he's got this big cut in his
knee from like here to like there, and his knees
open and you can see the bone. He's just gushing blood.
And if someone had smashed my window and the glass
(33:21):
was on the ground and he had slipped on that,
so I called nine one. Immediately he got an ambulance.
It was like an yard trip, like he had to go.
And I called the cops and the cops said, oh,
but there's really nothing you know, we can do. I'm like,
what are you talking about, Like the windows smashed, there's
cameras everywhere, like what, like, well, we don't really you know,
investigate that kind of thing. It's less than damage, and
it's a Your son wasn't hurt by an actual criminal.
Your son was hurt by falling on the shop. Ridiculous.
(33:45):
Ben was furious. Not only was he convinced that the
assailant had been captured on one of the many security
cameras nearby, he also had a key piece of evidence.
When that guy broke my window, he had taken a
rock in a ski mask and slammed it into my window,
And I thought, I keep the master, turning to the
cops for evidence, But the cops didn't want it, and
they weren't interested in any kind of evidence. It was
ridiculous how unhelpful they were. Ridiculous. Ben stowed the mask
(34:09):
in his glove compartment and decided that he would not
rest until justice had been served. I spent the next
four months searching through publicly accessible traffic cams until I
was able to figure out which car did it. Then
I got a private investigator to track that guy's number down,
and then I went to his house and actually had
a conversation with that guy and drug him to where
my son was at and made him apologize. It was
(34:29):
that moment when my friends were with me, which was
Ghost and another guy. They were like, man, this is
like Batman stuff, bro, you just did Batman style stuff.
And I was like, you know, we got like some
free time. Let's just go and Batman up our neighborhood
because it sucks where we live. A few weeks later,
(34:49):
Ben was outside a club in Seattle where he and
his breakdancing crew, the rain City Movement. We're taking part
in a competition. My friend comes stumbling up and he's
got this big gash his face and I'm like, what
happens that guy hit me with a stick. And I'm like, well,
no one's doing anything. It's crazy, Like you guys are stupid.
What we gotta do something right? And it just hit me.
I've got that mask. At this time, I'm not sure
(35:11):
if what I'm about to do is legal or illegal.
I just know I'm about to do something. So I
ran to my car and I throw this mask on,
ditched the shirt and the jeans, no shirt in his mask,
and I take off after this dude. I chased him
all the way down the street and I catch him.
Ben trapped the guy until the police showed up and
arrested him, but before the cops left, they asked Ben
if they could take a photo with him. The cop
and I snapped a photo, and the next day it
(35:33):
said costume nerds attack crime in Seattle on the small
right side corner of the Seattle Times. It was me,
my arms folding everything, and I were looking at and
I was like, yeah, that's gonna stick. Now. There is,
of course, the question of whether or not this origin
(35:53):
story is even true, And I have to admit that
the first time I heard Phoenix tell it in an interview,
long before I met him, I thought the story was preposterous.
But when I heard it directly from him in person,
it all sounded a lot more plausible. But whether or
not it's true, I think there is something very telling
about the way that Phoenix told me his origin story.
(36:18):
In his telling, the moment he decides to become a
real life superhero is not when he takes down his
first criminal. It's not even when he takes down his
second criminal. It's the moment he sees a photo of
himself in the newspaper. It just like hit me and
I was like, costume superhero, costume nerd Ataxiattle like that,
So that's me I'm gonna do this. Maybe it was
(36:44):
simply that the validation of the outside world gave him
the confidence to pursue the life of a real life superhero.
Or maybe he got a taste of fame and he
liked it, or maybe it was a combination of the two.
Either way, he was hooked. But now he needed a name.
Costume Nerd isn't exactly the kind of moniker that strikes
(37:04):
fear into the hearts of criminals. No, he needed something
a little snapp here, something like Phoenix Jones. Phoenix always
claimed that his early years have been rough, much like
those of his hero, the comic book character Nightwing, and
like night Wing, Phoenix refused to let the trauma of
(37:26):
his childhood define him. Maybe that's why he was so
unwilling to discuss it with me. As origin stories go,
it may well seem a little too perfect, But whether
or not it's true, one thing is for certain. Phoenix
did undergo radical transformation from concerned citizen to kick ass
costume warrior, and you can't take that away from him,
(37:49):
even if he's not the most reliable narrator. Back in
the parking lot at Wild Waves, Phoenix discovered that he
had the power to fight crime by chance. When he
be came a victim and could not get the help
he needed from the people who were supposed to serve
and protect him. In the future, things would be different.
(38:12):
He would no longer wait for crime to find him.
From now on, he would place himself in harm's way,
heading out into the night looking for trouble, hunting criminals
and stopping them in their tracks. Phoenix started out as
one man with a mission, standing alone against the odds.
But what he didn't know was that all around him
in Seattle, there were people who shared his dream of
(38:34):
defending the streets, and when they heard about Phoenix Jones,
they would rise up to join forces with him. So
look out, bad guys, because Phoenix Jones is coming for you,
and soon he won't be the only superhero in town.
(39:03):
The Superhero Complex is hosted and written by Me David
Weinberg and reported by Me, Amalia Sortland and Caroline Thornham.
Production from Amalia Shortland and Caroline Thornham. Sean Glenn, Max
O'Brien and David Waters are executive producers. Fact checking by
Andrew Schwartz. Production management from Sharie Houston, Frankie Taylor and
(39:23):
Charlotte Wolf. Sound design, mixing and scoring by Nicholas Alexander
and Daniel Kempson. Music supervision by Nicholas Alexander and David Waters.
Original music is composed by Paul Housden. Special thanks to
Peter Tangan, Willard Foxton, Matt O'Mara, Katrina Norvelle Beth and Macaluso,
(39:44):
Rin Rosenbaum, Shelby Shankman, and all the team at U
t A. For more from Novel, visit novel dot Audio
Novel. In August, I flew into Seattle to finally meet
the infamous Phoenix Jones. We've been texting back and forth
and he'd agreed to meet, so I booked a hotel
for a few days. On August one, he texted me
saying he was free later that day, so I asked
(00:28):
when was good for him, but he didn't respond. In fact,
he didn't respond to any of my text that day,
or the next or the next. While I was hanging
around waiting for Phoenix to get back to me, I
interviewed a few other Seattle superheroes and former members of
his crime fighting team, the rain City Superheroes, including one
(00:48):
guy who had known Phoenix since high school, and they
all told me variations of pretty much the same story.
You can't trust anything that comes out of the guy's mouth.
He was charging people money per month for medical insurance
that the team's never saw. He's got a drug rob,
the gambling prob. He's been disgraced from me else he's
ever been all the team. He's a narcissist, sociopath. He's
(01:11):
just not a He's not a good dude. If just
one of Phoenix's former teammates had been disgruntled. I think
I would have been reluctant to judge him based on
their falling out, but everyone I talked to had a
similar story, which made it hard to dismiss their assessment
of his character. But I wanted to hear Phoenix's side
of the story before I drew my own conclusions about him. Eventually,
(01:34):
I had to go back home. I didn't hear back
from Phoenix until a full month later, when he did surface.
He texted to say that a good friend of his
had just died of COVID. He had started a new
job as a line cook, and his life was really crazy.
He said, I'm really sorry for being more flaky than
(01:54):
I usually am. Phoenix said we could meet up, so
in October I boarded another flight to Seattle for a
second attempt to hang out with him. When I landed
the day before I was due to interview him, I
was amped up, nervous and excited. I also had a cold,
so I decided to take some night quill and crash
(02:15):
early at my hotel. I took twice the recommended dosage,
because you know, why not, and then I got into
bed and started to drift off to sleep. A little
after ten PM, my phone rang. It was Phoenix. I answered.
(02:38):
It was the first time we'd ever spoken. He told
me that he had some friends over at his place
and he wanted me to come over and hang out
so we could build some rapport before our interview the
next day. I said, of course, I could head straight there.
He told me he would text me his address, and
he hung up. I got out of bed and started
getting dressed, but all my movements felt sluggish. This was
(03:00):
not how I had hoped to meet Phoenix high on
night Quill. But when the bat signal goes up, you
put on your super suit and you rise to the occasion.
As I was getting dressed, he called me again. He
said he didn't feel safe texting me his address, so
he would come pick me up at my hotel. I
said that was fine and hung up, But it didn't
(03:22):
make any sense unless he was going to blindfold me
when I got in the car, I was going to
know where he lived. It all felt very strange and dreamy.
He told me to meet him out in front of
the hotel at PM. It was cold and drizzly, so
I bundled up and stood out on the street corner waiting,
(03:45):
and then at PM I got a text from Phoenix
that said, Hey, I hate to be super clicky here,
I'm having an issue over at my place and need
to rain check. One of my friends needs to write
home has been drinking, so I'll um at ten forty
tomorrow so we can talk. If that's okay, I replied,
sounds good. What I wanted to say was are you
(04:08):
fucking with me? Was this some kind of trap? I
looked around to see if maybe he was sitting in
a car like a detective on a steak out, trying
to size me up or something. I really felt like
he was playing some sort of mind game with me.
Had his old Superhero crew. I've been right about Phoenix.
(04:31):
I'm David Weinberg and from the team's at Novel and
I heart Radio. This is the Superhero Complex, episode two
of Phoenix Rises. I was really happy to be back
(05:06):
in Seattle. I used to live here in two thousand
and seven at the Panama Hotel in the International District.
I rented a room by the week and worked at
two restaurants as a dishwasher and Capitol Hill and a
bus boy in Belltown. I left years ago, but walking
the streets. Everything felt familiar. My favorite restaurant, ton V
was still there. I went back to get my go
(05:27):
to favorite, a plate of grilled meats and vegetables and herbs,
served with rice, paper sheets, and a bowl of hot
water to soften the paper and make your own rolls.
The name of the dish had changed, but it was
even better than I remembered. I walked the same route
I used to take to work from the I d
through Pioneer Square with its old saloons and red brick walkways,
(05:48):
and then up First Avenue. They mostly felt the same.
There were a few new restaurants I didn't recognize. The
Lusty Lady, a peep show venue where you sat in
a booth and put quarters into a slot to look
through a pane of glass, and new dancers had closed down.
From there, I walked along the avenue past the iconic
Pipe Place market, where the fishmongers were packing up for
(06:08):
the day. I made my way into Belltown to Black Bottle,
a wine and topas restaurant where I worked as a
bus boy. The walk took me through the same neighborhoods
or Phoenix and his crew did almost all of their
patrols I stopped at Black Bottle and had a drink
for old time's sake. Back when I worked there, I
was friends with a few of the homeless people who
hung out in the neighborhood. I took guitar lessons from
(06:30):
one of them, a crack addict named Hans, who was
really smart. Occasionally he would flip out at me and
yell a bunch of crazy stuff, but I was never
scared of him, or of any of the other unhoused
people who hung around Belltown. But today things feel a
lot different. The number of people living on the streets
feel substantially higher than when I lived there in two
(06:51):
thousand and seven. It seemed like there were a few
homeless people here and there, But today there are several
tent cities with dozens of tents all over downtown. After
I finished my walk down Memory Lane, I wanted to
see what my former neighbors in downtown Seattle had to
say about Phoenix Jones a question for a radio story.
(07:11):
It wasn't hard to find people who had interactions with him,
People like these kids I met outside of a rave. Yeah,
I've seen him like a lot, a lot like bothering
drunk kids on the sidewalks and stuff like that. What
do you think about him? I thought it was cool
at first, um and then I just thought he was
annoying because he wasn't actually really helping anybody. He was
(07:33):
just being annoying. Like he would literally find kids that
were too drunk and passed out, or claim that people
who are about to leave were drinking and driving, even
if they weren't. He would just find anything he thought
you were breaking the law about and harass you. He
was just a jerk, they told me. He ended up
being the real life equivalent of a quote from the
Batman movie. You either die a hero or live long
(07:55):
enough to see yourself become the Villainy might ask you
a question for a radio story. Another guy I met
worked at a restaurant downtown. I had a few encounters
with Phoenix. One time I saw him, Uh, what was
it on the waterfront and he was talking mad and
he was talking match it to me and my friends,
and it was funny because like, we work down there,
(08:17):
what are you doing? They made him. The guy told
me that he used to hang out with some friends
in a parking lot in Belltown when they got off work,
smoking weed, kicking it, you know all I've done. Ship
One day, he was there smoking with his friends and
Phoenix showed up. Him and his crew were like just
staring at us like they're gonna, like he's gonna do something,
(08:38):
and we're smoking weed and we're in fucking bell you know,
we're sucking downtown in Belltown. It was hilarious. Like, dude,
and I read comic books. I'm not going to nerd
out right now, but it's just funny how there's plenty
of superhero work, plenty of people to save, plenty of
(08:58):
criminals to catch, and this motherfucker's looking at me smoking
weed right now. All of these stories made me wary
of Phoenix, and I was upset because the only reason
Phoenix had agreed to do an interview with me was
because we were paying him several thousand dollars. I've been
(09:20):
a journalist for fifteen years and I've never paid a
source for an interview. It's generally considered unethical, and I
understand all the arguments against it, but I'm also aware
that as a journalist, I have the power to shape
how the world sees Phoenix, and he will have to
live at the rest of his life with the consequences
of how I portray him. Meanwhile, I not only get
(09:43):
to walk away from the story when I'm done, I
get paid. Lots of people get paid to make this story.
That imbalance of power doesn't always feel fair to me,
and I see a valid argument for paying people for
their time. The issue I had with Phoenix would that
after sharing all these stories from his former teammates and
from people around Seattle, I felt uneasy about rewarding him.
(10:07):
But I also felt that Phoenix deserved to tell his
side of the story, and the only way that was
going to happen was for me to hand him an
envelope full of cash. Phoenix was late, but he did
show up to my hotel that morning. He was wearing
glasses and a blue plaid button down shirt and black pants,
(10:28):
with a tactical belt that had a larger than normal
canister of pepper spray, along with a few other gadgets.
This was deep into the COVID pandemic and he had
a mask with him, but it was made of hard plastic,
had an American flag and an eagle printed on it.
I remember thinking that he looked nerdier than I was expecting.
I greeted him outside the hotel and then walked him
(10:49):
to my room, a pretty standard chain hotel room with
a window looking out into the courtyard. I rearranged the
furniture and set up a makeshift recording studio with a
small table a couple of mikes. Phoenix actually kicked off
the interview by asking me a question. He wanted to
know what other superheroes I had talked to. Um, I've
(11:10):
talked to Red Ranger Service. Yeah, Um, Crystal Marks, she's
a clown ghost good night, Jack, Okay, you talked to
ghost of me Jack nice and Kay. Yeah. I was
gonna say that you probably only talked to clowns. But
(11:31):
the list you actually gave us pretty solid. I mean, um,
justin service like man, but Red Ranger, for example, right,
like he actually puts himself in the middle of scenarios
in situations. He's not trained, and he's not like a
skilled fighter in any way, shape or form. But but
just being there is effective. Ghosts. I've known him since
high school, one of the best crime fighters that excited
(11:53):
kicked you could have even if we don't like each other. Effectiveness, effectiveness,
I don't really care. Like he's fucking great at his job,
So whether he likes me or not, in go buck himself.
Having critiqued the rest of Seattle's caped crusaders, Phoenix wanted
me to know that he was the only true crime
fighter among them. Stops three What does that mean? Yeh
(12:14):
three and fifteen crime stops like where a cop has
showed up, arrested that person and taking them to jail
for the crime I have. I have three fifteen right,
no one else has even a hundred. And some of
those claimed three fifteen stops were pretty extraordinary. I stopped
a sex trafficking ring. I technically stopped a homeland active terror.
I've been in seventeen knife fights and I've been stabbed
(12:36):
twice and the guy got shot and I had end
stepping on his arm to stop the arterial bleed. Over
the course of the interview, Phoenix made a point to
explain that he is not a normal person. What might
cause you or I to run away in terror? He
handles like a train warrior, like this one time on
one of his early patrols where a guy pulled a
(12:57):
knife on him. The first guy who ever stabbed me
on street. I was like, hey, that was a good one.
You win today. I caught him next time and beat
the crap out of him, Like, you're not gonna hurt
me in any kind of physical way to cause me damage.
I find it comical and don't even think about pulling
a gun on him. This guy tried to kill me
and pulled a gun and try to chase me around
a card and I took him down obviously. I mean,
(13:18):
you have a gun at close range, I'll win every time.
And then there was the time he was scouted by
the federal government. The FBI basically wanted to like make
a list of all superheroes and kind of their activities
and what they do. And I agreed to some things
with the government. The government agree to some things with me,
and we went our sep away. Do you still have
a relationship with the federal government. Yeah, this was one
(13:41):
fact I was not able to verify. But in the moment,
as Phoenix rattle off story after story of his crime
fighting exploits, I started to believe him. I think part
of it is his charisma, which is undeniable. And when
he started talking about the intricacies of the law and
the justice system and law enforcement, I realized he's one
of the most intelligent people I've ever met, and I
(14:03):
kind of fell under a spell. At one point in
the interview, Phoenix even turned me into one of his
martial arts students. Check this move out. This is make
fight stance back right. So now you can touch me
and I can touch you right. That's called if I'm
here right and I take a half step this way.
Now your hands don't reach anymore. It's about the circumference
(14:24):
and radius of a circle. One thing that is undeniably
true about Phoenix is that he was a professional mixed
martial artist and a damn good one. In his fights,
he only lost five matches. But there were other parts
of the story had my doubts about. So after our interview,
I set out to verify some of his claims, starting
(14:45):
with his origin story, which perhaps unsurprisingly sounds like it's
been ripped straight from the pages of a comic book
that's coming up after the break. Hmm. Every superhero has
(15:12):
an origin story. Spider Man bitten by a radioactive Spider,
wonder Woman carved in clay and given superpowers by the
Greek gods. Captain America, a frail young artist infused with
a super soldier serum, and the story Phoenix Jones had
been telling to the media for years sounded like one
of those classic comic book storyline, though it could also
(15:34):
be the origin story of a super villain. I was
wondering if we could just start at the beginning of
your life and like you could just give me your background,
like where you were born and where you grew up
and that kind of stuff. And I also want to apologize.
I'm sure you've answered a lot of these questions a
million times. Actually no I haven't. Because I don't answer
those questions. We can start to getting my crime fighting career.
Phoenix said he wouldn't answer any questions about his life
(15:55):
before he became Phoenix Jones, which surprised me because he
had talked about his upbringing to other journalists in the past.
The one thing we know for sure is that Phoenix's
real name is Ben Fodor and he was born on
ma that's documented in court records. But after that we're
(16:16):
reliant on Phoenix's account. And according to him, he was
born in Texas and he had four siblings, but he
was the only one of them to be sent to
an orphanage. He says at five years old, he was
removed from the orphanage and given back to his parents.
According to that account, one day, he was riding in
the car with his dad when they stopped at a
convenient store. Ben stayed in the car and his father
(16:39):
went into the store and never came back. Apparently he
tried to rob the convenience store, but the store owner
had a gun and he shot Ben's dad and killed him.
Ben was around seven years old at the time, sitting
in the car alone until the police showed up and
found him. Later in his life, Ben says he learned
(17:03):
that the man who was killed was not his biological father,
and that his real father was a man who had
an affair with his mother, and that was the reason
he was the only one of his siblings who was
given up for adoption. Ben has told journalists in the
past that his mom was also a criminal, a drug
dealer who got busted trying to use her baby carriage
(17:24):
to conceal illegal drugs. In a previous interview for a
book about his life, Ben was asked about being the
child of criminals. This is what he said. You have
to make a choice. You can say I'm going to
be a product of my environment. And grow into a
criminal and just be like everyone else, or you can
(17:46):
say no, I'm not going to do that. After the
man he thought was his father was killed, Ben says
he was put back into the orphanage, where he lived
for the next three years. He says he had to
let sea in a speech impediment, and he was bullied
a lot by the staff and other children. One of
his only friends at the time was a kid who
(18:07):
liked to torture animals. But when he was nine years old,
he was saved from all the trauma and misery of
his Texas childhood. He was adopted by a woman in Seattle,
a wealthy widow who had several other adopted children. He
says that when he moved to Seattle and settled in
with his new family, it was the first time in
his life he felt truly cared for. Around that time,
(18:31):
young Ben Photo also discovered a new world that he
fell in love with, something that would change the course
of his life. Comic books. That was in Nightwing. A lot.
As a kid, I never really resonated with comics because
they didn't really do anything I understood, But Nightwing was
something that I understood. Night Wing is part of the
Batman's superhero family. Like Bruce Wayne, he doesn't have supernatural powers.
(18:56):
He defends the innocent with his strength and agility. Nightwing
wears a black supersuit with the blue chevron across the chest,
similar to the gold one on Phoenix's costume Batman and
Robin Right. Robin eventually grows up and be sends his
own superhero called Nightwing. He's like, I don't want to
be a sidekick in like little Shorts. I'd rather fight
some crime. He goes through and like really trains and
(19:17):
he doesn't win a lot at the beginning. It's a
grind for him, and it was one of those things
where I was like, I see that, I understand that,
you know what I mean. There are a lot of
different versions of night Wing that spanned several generations of
the d C Comics universe, but the one that resonated
with Ben was the series that was written by Devin Grayson.
Devin Grayson Man, she kills it and it's like really
(19:40):
realistically believable. In March of two thousand, Grayson became the
first woman to create, launch, and write a Batman comics series.
And it's almost as if fate had set her on
that path, given that she shares the same last name
as Dick Grayson. The guy who becomes Robin night Wing
is very interest because Dick Grayson starts as Robin. You know,
(20:04):
he's there as a kind of Watson figure, Sherlock Watson figure.
He's there so Batman can talk to him. Robin was
put in to give kids somebody to identify with. This
is Peter Coogan, a man with a very specific superpower
writing and editing. I could join the X Men, but
I'd be running the writing center at the Xavier Academy.
(20:26):
And much like the X Men, he uses his superpower
to help other people, to enable them to better pursue
their ontological vocation of humanization. In other words, he's an academic.
I do have a PhD in superheroes. Coogan teaches superheroes
and comics at Washington University in St. Louis. He's also
the director of the Institute for Comic Studies, and he
(20:48):
spent a lot of time thinking about Nightwing. Night Wing
works as a really interesting figure. He lost his parents,
just like Bruce Wayne did, but because he had a
parent figure Bruce Wayne and another parent figure, Alfred, he
was able to become a more integrated adult. Dick Grayson
(21:11):
is healthier than Bruce Wayne, and so I think that's
one of the things that night Wing represents, that represents
a more healthy version of the superhero. He has chosen
to become a superhero in a way that Bruce Wayne couldn't.
When Robin becomes Nightwing, he moves to the suburbs of
(21:33):
Gotham City, to a rough neighborhood called blood Haven and
becomes a cop. He does that because he wants to
be part of society in a way that Batman both
doesn't and can't. Dick Grayson is available to be identified
(21:53):
with as a healthier response to trauma and Batman, and
I think that's what draws people to him as a character.
As a young kid, his parents died in a circus accident, right,
(22:13):
but he could have done whatever he wanted. Batman's is different, though,
because when his parents die, he trains, but he has
this financial backing, right is I guess trauma allowed him
to be Batman, right? Night Wings make it a choice.
He goes to college, has a girlfriend, he lives a life,
tries to keep it all together, but he's no way
(22:34):
traumatized children personalized trauma. They always find a way to
blame themselves, like I could have done more right, and
that drives Batman, But that does not drive Nightwing. Night
Wing was I was helpless and I won't be helpless anymore,
and that resonates him with me more. Why do you
think it resonated with you. I think as a kid,
everybody has a little sense of being helpless. I certainly did.
(22:57):
And training for a mission or a goal something like
that is just it's like empowering, Like you just feel
this like like energy that nobody knows. Ben Photo knows
that energy. Well. Whatever helplessness he felt after being given
away by his parents, he compensated for by throwing himself
(23:20):
into all kinds of activities. I did double dus for
a while, won the bunch of scape competitions. I was
a national bowling champion as well as martial arts. There
was also debate, club horseshoe throwing, and even competitive dance.
He seems to have taken on every challenge he could
in an effort to prove his worth to his adopted mother.
(23:42):
In fact, he said in the past to journalists that
he was driven to be the best that everything he
could because he was trying to show her she made
the right decision by picking him over all the other
children at the orphanage. Everything I ever touched. If it
was a competition for it, I wanted to try it.
Although Ben has the story of his childhood with journalists
over the years, he's left out some key details, like
(24:05):
the names of his birth parents and the man who
he thought was his father, which makes it nearly impossible
to fact check his version of what happened. But I
was determined to verify at least some of his claims.
If you go into the National Bowling Museum in Hall
of Fame, I'm in hometown Aroics for three games under sixteen.
The International Bowling Museum and Hall of Fame refused to
(24:26):
release any info about Ben without his member number, which
I didn't have, but we were able to find his
old high school by process of elimination and called up
the old coach on the bowling team. She said she'd
never heard of a Ben Fodor and then said to
leave her alone. But just before hanging up, she said
that hypothetically, if she were us, she'd call up the
(24:47):
United States Bowling Congress and asked for member details and
They immediately dave us Ben's records and they verified that
Ben in fact did achieve two perfect scores of three
hundred and bowling under the age of sixteen. That's twelve
strikes in a row. We started calling around to bowling
alleys that were near where Phoenix lived and eventually found
(25:08):
a place called ken Moore Lanes. When the owner of
Joanne answered the phone, she said with a sigh, ah, yeah,
benor I know him. Ken Moore Lanes is just northeast
of Seattle, not far from the shores of Lake Washington.
You don't realize just how massive it is until you
(25:29):
step inside. Ken Moore Lanes was the largest bowling alley
in Washington, fifty lanes. This is Wesley used to work
at ken Moore Lanes. When you walked in, it had
like the old style of bowling alley, you know, beer
on the tables, kind of dark, but it was like
an enjoyable place where you can bring your family and
had the league nights. When I first got there, you know,
(25:50):
smoking was still allowed, so it still was all smoky
in there. Once smoking was banned, it got a little cleaner,
a little nicer. Some knights that get a little rowdy,
little rough, but most nice were just calm. It was
a really enjoyable place. Wesley worked at ken Moore up
until two thousand and seven when something happened. I'm actually
not allowed in ken Moore Lanes. Um band self inflicted stupidity.
(26:17):
That's Joanne, the owner of ken Moore Lanes. The story
of why Wesley is banned from the bowling alley is
for another time in the place. We're here to talk
about young Ben Fodor and more specifically to find out
if the origin story Phoenix is telling is true. Yeah,
I kind of do remember the first time I did
meet him. Um, we always had people come in there,
(26:39):
and I always like to give people help him out,
like him discounts on bowling. Uh. This lady came in
once and she had foster kids, and UH gave her
some discount of some bowling, and I remember one of
them was this like little skinny guy kid or glasses,
look a little nerdy, and he always enjoyed bowling, and
UH kept coming back and he just kept hanging around
there learning from people how to bowl. What was your
(27:01):
first impression of him, Oh, like he was a nerdy
little kid that got picked on at school, a little insecure,
didn't really know himself, you know, a little preteen. I
knew he was adopted. He had struggled with, you know,
being picked on and bullied as a kid and not
feeling accepted, and so I think the bowling alley like
(27:22):
he felt accepted there and like people wanted him. Wesley
says that Ben wasn't a natural bowler, but he was focused.
He was there all the time, learning from people that worked.
They're just watching people bowl, hanging around, just picking it up.
But yeah, he worked at it. A few years went by,
and by the time Ben was in high school, he
was one of the top bowlers in his age group.
(27:43):
According to Wesley, he went from being the shy, insecure
kid too well the opposite around high school. All of
a sudden, this skinny little kid turns into this young
man like with muscles. All of a sudden, you know,
he starts like filling out and he starts bowling better,
starts again. Some someone to his ball. The way he
bowled is very exuberant. The way he would all of
(28:05):
a sudden just throw the ball, be all cocky, run
down the lane, start showboating. You know, this is like
a fifteen year old kid, jumping around the lanes, yelling
at his other competitors. Very enthusiastic in his bowling. Ben
wasn't just running up and down the lanes. When he
hit a strike, you would run onto the lane itself
and taking full advantage of the slick wood surface. He
(28:27):
would break dance at the time. He had a flat
top haircut Allah kid and play and Ben would taunt
his opponents after a strike by strutting around and showing off.
If you're the flat top baby, he always had the
flat top. He had that before fighting. He always had
(28:47):
the big hair. Yeah, he had a T shirt, medium
T shirt when he had the big frame, the super
small shirts. If you're the flat top, this is Marty Cocking.
He still works at the bowling alley. He loved watching Ben.
Then again, he wasn't bowling against him. Ben's opponents didn't
love being taunted by a cocky kid. He would beat
people at bowling, so they always wanted to, you know,
(29:08):
beat him, but it wasn't happening. And then when the
dudes doing the worm with the flat top across the
approach on you, it's pretty frustrating. Even in Phoenix's version,
of events. He's not exactly a team player. I even
got so good at bowling left handed and right handed
that I didn't have to have a double's partner. I
could bowl with myself. I had an average with the
left and right hand, so I was able to bowl
doubles with myself, which was cool because I got two
(29:30):
trophies every time on one. As Ben got older, he
got more into martial arts and started training to become
an m M A fighter, and he started spending more
time at the gym and less time at the bowling alley.
And then one day, Marty saw a news segment about
a certain masked vigilante who was roaming the streets of Seattle.
When he heard the voice of the man behind the mask,
(29:52):
he thought, that sounds like Ben before he unveiled himself.
I could tell the voice because I know him pretty
well as a kid. When you realized that Phoenix Jones
was in fact the break dancing bowler Ben Fodor, Marty
thought Ben had lost his mind. I thought he was crazy. Why,
because I mean, it's just crazy stuff. Who goes on
(30:15):
in Seattle is not something you really want to deal
with as a person. I'm a pretty big dude, but
I'm not going to go out there and the rest
of my life when I have a young family, and
I just didn't understand what he was doing. Do you
remember the last time you talked to him or h
I saw him at the store. He's actually buying diapers
for somebody. It's a random person. It wasn't even his
family member, but it was somebody that needed help. I
(30:36):
talked to him a little bit. I was just like,
do you have another kid? But he's like, no, I'm
just helping out this family and needed some diapers. But
he literally had a cart full of diapers. It was
pretty cool, as crazy as it seems to find out
that a guy you knew for taunting rival bowlers decided
to put on a costume an attempt to fight crime.
To Joanne, the owner of the bowling Alley, it all
(30:59):
made sense. I wasn't surprised. First of all, it kind
of fits his personality in my opinion, and uh, Secondly,
he always seemed like a kid with a pretty strong
sense of I guess, a good moral compass. The ken
(31:20):
Moore Lane staff watched Ben Photor grow up. They've already
seen him reinvent himself from a vulnerable little kid to
the break dancing show boat. But every superhero origin story
needs a moment of transformation, that key incident that inspires
the hero to put on a mask and turn from
man to myth. That's coming up next. There comes a
(31:55):
time in the life of every superhero when they transform
from civilian to say of her. For some, it's the
story of how they got their superpower, like the scientist
Bruce Banner, who gets exposed to gamma rays and becomes
the Incredible Hulk. And then there are heroes like the
X Men mutants who are born with superpowers. You also
have your Batman and Nightwing types who are not blessed
(32:17):
with supernatural abilities but achieve a kind of superhuman status
through training and an arsenal of fancy gadgets and weapons.
But what they all have in common is that there
comes a point in their life when they look out
at the injustice of the world and say to themselves,
this has to end, and I am the one who's
going to take on this fight for ben Photor. That
(32:41):
moment happened in two thousand and nine at Wild Waves,
an amusement park in the suburbs of Tacoma, Washington with
roller coasters and carnival games, kids with wrinkled fingers shivering
in line for water slides. Phoenix had taken his son
and they just finished a day of fun. We parked
our car outside the fence and we were walking. It
was me and my son, and we were racing back
(33:01):
to the car. Me and my son are running and
uh al sudd he falls and I'm like, oh, that sucks,
so I want to pick him up, and just starts
gushing blood like everywhere right, and I'm like, what's going on.
I look and he's got this big cut in his
knee from like here to like there, and his knees
open and you can see the bone. He's just gushing blood.
And if someone had smashed my window and the glass
(33:21):
was on the ground and he had slipped on that,
so I called nine one. Immediately he got an ambulance.
It was like an yard trip, like he had to go.
And I called the cops and the cops said, oh,
but there's really nothing you know, we can do. I'm like,
what are you talking about, Like the windows smashed, there's
cameras everywhere, like what, like, well, we don't really you know,
investigate that kind of thing. It's less than damage, and
it's a Your son wasn't hurt by an actual criminal.
Your son was hurt by falling on the shop. Ridiculous.
(33:45):
Ben was furious. Not only was he convinced that the
assailant had been captured on one of the many security
cameras nearby, he also had a key piece of evidence.
When that guy broke my window, he had taken a
rock in a ski mask and slammed it into my window,
And I thought, I keep the master, turning to the
cops for evidence, But the cops didn't want it, and
they weren't interested in any kind of evidence. It was
ridiculous how unhelpful they were. Ridiculous. Ben stowed the mask
(34:09):
in his glove compartment and decided that he would not
rest until justice had been served. I spent the next
four months searching through publicly accessible traffic cams until I
was able to figure out which car did it. Then
I got a private investigator to track that guy's number down,
and then I went to his house and actually had
a conversation with that guy and drug him to where
my son was at and made him apologize. It was
(34:29):
that moment when my friends were with me, which was
Ghost and another guy. They were like, man, this is
like Batman stuff, bro, you just did Batman style stuff.
And I was like, you know, we got like some
free time. Let's just go and Batman up our neighborhood
because it sucks where we live. A few weeks later,
(34:49):
Ben was outside a club in Seattle where he and
his breakdancing crew, the rain City Movement. We're taking part
in a competition. My friend comes stumbling up and he's
got this big gash his face and I'm like, what
happens that guy hit me with a stick. And I'm like, well,
no one's doing anything. It's crazy, Like you guys are stupid.
What we gotta do something right? And it just hit me.
I've got that mask. At this time, I'm not sure
(35:11):
if what I'm about to do is legal or illegal.
I just know I'm about to do something. So I
ran to my car and I throw this mask on,
ditched the shirt and the jeans, no shirt in his mask,
and I take off after this dude. I chased him
all the way down the street and I catch him.
Ben trapped the guy until the police showed up and
arrested him, but before the cops left, they asked Ben
if they could take a photo with him. The cop
and I snapped a photo, and the next day it
(35:33):
said costume nerds attack crime in Seattle on the small
right side corner of the Seattle Times. It was me,
my arms folding everything, and I were looking at and
I was like, yeah, that's gonna stick. Now. There is,
of course, the question of whether or not this origin
(35:53):
story is even true, And I have to admit that
the first time I heard Phoenix tell it in an interview,
long before I met him, I thought the story was preposterous.
But when I heard it directly from him in person,
it all sounded a lot more plausible. But whether or
not it's true, I think there is something very telling
about the way that Phoenix told me his origin story.
(36:18):
In his telling, the moment he decides to become a
real life superhero is not when he takes down his
first criminal. It's not even when he takes down his
second criminal. It's the moment he sees a photo of
himself in the newspaper. It just like hit me and
I was like, costume superhero, costume nerd Ataxiattle like that,
So that's me I'm gonna do this. Maybe it was
(36:44):
simply that the validation of the outside world gave him
the confidence to pursue the life of a real life superhero.
Or maybe he got a taste of fame and he
liked it, or maybe it was a combination of the two.
Either way, he was hooked. But now he needed a name.
Costume Nerd isn't exactly the kind of moniker that strikes
(37:04):
fear into the hearts of criminals. No, he needed something
a little snapp here, something like Phoenix Jones. Phoenix always
claimed that his early years have been rough, much like
those of his hero, the comic book character Nightwing, and
like night Wing, Phoenix refused to let the trauma of
(37:26):
his childhood define him. Maybe that's why he was so
unwilling to discuss it with me. As origin stories go,
it may well seem a little too perfect, But whether
or not it's true, one thing is for certain. Phoenix
did undergo radical transformation from concerned citizen to kick ass
costume warrior, and you can't take that away from him,
(37:49):
even if he's not the most reliable narrator. Back in
the parking lot at Wild Waves, Phoenix discovered that he
had the power to fight crime by chance. When he
be came a victim and could not get the help
he needed from the people who were supposed to serve
and protect him. In the future, things would be different.
(38:12):
He would no longer wait for crime to find him.
From now on, he would place himself in harm's way,
heading out into the night looking for trouble, hunting criminals
and stopping them in their tracks. Phoenix started out as
one man with a mission, standing alone against the odds.
But what he didn't know was that all around him
in Seattle, there were people who shared his dream of
(38:34):
defending the streets, and when they heard about Phoenix Jones,
they would rise up to join forces with him. So
look out, bad guys, because Phoenix Jones is coming for you,
and soon he won't be the only superhero in town.
(39:03):
The Superhero Complex is hosted and written by Me David
Weinberg and reported by Me, Amalia Sortland and Caroline Thornham.
Production from Amalia Shortland and Caroline Thornham. Sean Glenn, Max
O'Brien and David Waters are executive producers. Fact checking by
Andrew Schwartz. Production management from Sharie Houston, Frankie Taylor and
(39:23):
Charlotte Wolf. Sound design, mixing and scoring by Nicholas Alexander
and Daniel Kempson. Music supervision by Nicholas Alexander and David Waters.
Original music is composed by Paul Housden. Special thanks to
Peter Tangan, Willard Foxton, Matt O'Mara, Katrina Norvelle Beth and Macaluso,
(39:44):
Rin Rosenbaum, Shelby Shankman, and all the team at U
t A. For more from Novel, visit novel dot Audio
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