People always pester me with the same questions: “Are you chicken or are you man?” “Do you fight the crimes of men or the crimes of, um, chickens?” “You are the stupidest superhero ever.” My answer, regardless of the question, is always the same: “You’re the stupidest superhero ever!” This works well enough most of the time, but it tends to fall flat whenever people try to have normal conversation with me. Thankfully, this almost never happens, since apparently people don’t like talking with overweight, sweaty middle-aged men who dress like chickens. Yes, this leaves me with crippling loneliness and depression, but I have learned to channel these feelings of despondency into unparalleled chicken powers.

For instance, did you know that my adamantine beak can peck through the marrow of 1000 black holes? Well, I hope you didn’t know that, because it’s blatantly false. In fact, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t even make sense. But here’s what I can do. I can, like, totally scratch you, and stuff—trust me, it’s uber impressive. I’m pretty much the most powerful chicken-man I know.

Excepting, of course, The Night Chicken—my deadly arch nemesis/brother-father (don’t question the logic, just know that my relationship with him is full of sweet plot-twists).

I remember my first encounter with The Night Chicken like yesterday—which is weird, since it happened earlier today. My noble, chiseled silhouette was streaking through the alleyways of my evil-infested neighborhood. The glowing half-moon prevented me from lurking in invisibility, but I lurked nonetheless. A fellow citizen of Meadow Shine Lane eyed me with distrusting eyes, and then sprayed me with distrusting mace. Mace, my one weakness. It seemed Fate did not favor me this night. Fate, my one weakness. (Oh, I have many one-weaknesses. One-weaknesses, my one real weakness.)

Blinded by the injustice of this nefarious attack (also, by the mace), I fell into a mighty chicken-rage. Surging pecks of my beak seasoned the black night like pepper upon a lush, tasty rotisserie chicken. Did nature deserve such unparalleled avian wrath? I asked myself this as I added more pepper to my lush, tasty rotisserie chicken. It was then that I heard the voice. His voice.

“Isn’t that a bit weird? You know—eating a chicken while pretending to be a chicken?” Weird? What’s so weird about eating your required protein for the day? No, weird would be if I captured farm chickens in my spare time, dressed them up as people, gave them names like “Captain Cock,” and then played hide-and-seek with them for hours. That, my friends, is weird. (Incidentally, I do this.)

My mocking chicken face shot towards this questioning intruder. I recognized immediately the wicked, chaotic power that this man wielded. True, he donned the earthly form of a quiet, frail boy of about thirteen years of age; but I would not be tricked by his deadly childish illusion. He was no child! He was pure man . . . and pure chicken! A dramatic reverb echoed in my head as I reached this ridiculous conclusion. My human mind chastised me for “ignoring basic reasoning altogether.” But my chicken-logic was tingling—the ridiculousness of my conclusion only verified its truthfulness

“Sir,” The Night Chicken continued, “do you even have a job? Have you ever even kissed a girl?” My word . . . How did this dark chicken know so much about my personal life? Unless he was . . . my father!!! I tried to deny this, but everything pointed to this conclusion.

What could I do, but run? So run I did. Away from my chicken father, as far away as my emotionally wounded wings would carry me, until I reached the heart of downtown. I turned my gaze towards the heavens and passionately cried out, “Night Chicken! You have not seen the last of me!”

Naturally, I was quickly arrested for drunken disorderly conduct and indecent exposure. I asked the police if they had ever seen a chicken wearing pants, but they didn’t seem to get the point. Oh well. The Night Chicken had won this round.

But, rest assured, that 13-year-old punk is going down.

The adventures of Chickenman have only begun.