Black Manta
last updated 01 Mar 2005

That's all anybody can see.  The color of their eyes.  I've got brown eyes.  Dark, brown eyes.  I use them to stare out my window.  I watch for rainstorms.  I love the rain.  I can feel the rain on the back of my hands through the black mesh and pane of glass.  I can feel it on my bones.  I look down and feel the cold chill of an Autumn rainstorm and all anybody can see is brown.  It makes my bones move.

When the lights go out they wrap me in these sheets.  Cotton.  One-hundred percent.  It scratches me.  It rubs against me like cardboard.  Torture.   I try to scream out, I try to yell like I'm clawing my way out of Hell itself but the Mamas and the Papas here just think I'm a baby.  They think I need to grow up.   But I am a baby.  I'm not a man.  I'm not yet walking that road.  I scream again.  This time from deep down below.  And they switch off the lights.  

Something in my brain won't let me tell them what I need to say.  I can hear it in here, but I can't make it come out.  It comes out jumbled.  Like the matted grass after this rainstorm.  So all I can do is lay here and listen, and let the sound of the drops smashing the Earth flood my mind.  I let them wash away this cardboard on my skin.  I close my eyes and all I can see is black.  And brown.

They don't know what to do with me.  I think it's funny.  I'm something they can't understand.  I'm fantasy.  They say I'm obsessed with myself.  I say get these fucking sheets off of my fucking skin before I cut your throat.  They tie me down and stab me with needles.  The needles "make the pain go away" and "calm me down."  They just make it even harder for me to say.  Anything.  So I just stop trying, for now.  I keep these thoughts in my head and lay in the bed until they leave.

They

They they they

th

ey

I wonder about my name.  How do you say it?  How many letters?  One two five nine sixteen.

I sat on my bed reading today instead of staring out of the window.   The book was very enjoyable to read.  The Summer of the Swans by Betsy Cromer Byars.  It is about the longest day in the life of a 14-year-old girl--the summer day her loved, mentally retarded brother is lost, the day she discovers compassion is a friend.  A compelling story.  I only stopped a few times to listen to the rain.  I worked hard to focus on the words. 

The black print ran together.  There were parts of the book with no words.   Just scratched black ink scrawled across the white page.  The white paper page.  Sharp edges.  Crisp.  Cutting my fingertips.  My hands were on fire.  I skipped through to avoid these pages.  These pages of black and white and red all over.  What a fucking classic joke.  I wore my fingers down to the stubby bone reading.  I was turning pages with the bone.  Pressing it into the fibers of the page and scraping across the letters until it turned.  It was so hard.   The rain was falling.  I couldn't feel it.  All I could see was black.   Black and white and red and brown and white and black.

Sara Godfrey was lying on the bed tying a kerchief on the dog, Boysie.  She pulled tightly until the dog could not breathe, and dragged him across the yard.  The doctor said he thought I would enjoy this book.  I told him I hope his coward brother gets shot in his face trying to rape a yellow baby girl. 

Let me have the rain.  I swear to God I'll kill every single one of you.

His name is Arthur.  He is completely submerged in my beloved water.  The media has taken to calling him "Aquaman."  They tell me he has super powers that let him talk to fish, swim very fast, and ride big seahorses like they are actual horses and not just named after horses.  Somehow he found a saddle for one.  He is the most interesting man.

I have been studying Aquaman this entire afternoon.  He is one of the Superfriends, an animated collection of heroes who battle the forces of evil on a Saturday morning cartoon show.  Aquaman joins forces with Batman, Wonder Woman, Superman, and some teenagers and dog to form the Justice League of America.  So I can't figure out why they're calling themselves the "Superfriends" if they're already calling themselves the Justice League of America.  Look at their names.   "Super" man.  "Wonder" woman.  Do they need to have positive reinforcement so badly that they can't even hang out with each other without saying the hanging out is "super?"

Aquaman does not call himself "ENJOYABLE WATER MAN."  He is cold and desolate.  He cannot fly.  He must ride in Wonder Woman's jet.  He is a bitch.  And according to my research he has never changed his clothes.  His disgusts me and fascinates me.  He is all of the things I want to be.  Submerged in water.  Swimming.  Riding a dolphin.  What does it all mean?  Has the darkness of the ocean paled his skin?  He is not like me.  He is nothing like me.  He is nothing like me.  I want to kill him.  I want to tear open his chest at the navel and pull his ribcage out through the hole.  I want to empty his face from the inside.

This is certainly the most interesting man.  I haven't been this enthralled since last Saturday when I watched "Bailey's Comets" on CBS and became obsessed with killing everyone associated with roller derby.

The designs on my Black Manta costume are complete.  They are cold and metal.  They are dark.  All I can see is black.  I have manifested the rainstorms I loved so much into the second skin that will cover my body.   I will be protected from the pressures of the ocean.  I will be protected from whatever Aquaman can possibly do to me, as long as it's not much more involved than him telling a trout to swim into me as hard as it can.  I will be protected from everything!  From the feelings and the pain and the agony and the torture and the brown and the humiliation and

Okay, maybe not the humiliation.

To Do List for the week of 5/22:

1.  Develop mean, robot voice.
2.  Purchase submarine.
3.  Apply for membership in the Legion of Doom.

I'm not bitter at Aquaman.  I'm mad as Hell!

I hope the Legion of Doom isn't too exclusive. 

To Do List for the week of 5/22:

1.  Develop mean, robot voice.
2.  Purchase submarine.
3.  Apply for membership in the Legion of Doom.

Now if you'll excuse me I've got to call the Admiral.  I hear he disposes of pre-atomic submarines to people who don't even leave their full addresses.  Good day.

- Using an electronic device to send a whale into uncontrollable rage
- Stealing a device that causes plankton to grow to gigantic sizes
- Teaming up with The Brain and Queen Vassa to destroy Atlantis
- Defeated Vassa in a game of College Basketball
- Kidnapping a Naval Officer and stealing his ship
- Stealing a silver sphere for my own diabolical designs
- Holding a laser gun
- Not remembering to shoot the laser gun while the Superfriend are talking to each other

It's driving me insane.  I can't feel the water around me because of this goddamned suit.  I can't express what I want to tell Aquaman.  I want to scream at him when he hops out of that Invisible Plane which for all intents and purposes may as well be a flying invisible asshole.  I want to scream "I HATE YOU FUCKER," and "YOU'VE TAKEN EVERYTHING FROM ME THAT I NEVER HAD."  I want to take off my helmet and throw it at his smug, barely animated face.  I want to rip off his costume which he I guess made from the skin of an orange fish and pierce his heart with my trident.  I want to rip these stupid looking tubes out of the back of my head and drown to death at his feet.

But I can't do any of it.  Something in my brain won't let me.  I can't even get my body to be the correct color half of the time. 

I don't even know my name.  I'm an orphan.  A prince of Maine, a king of New England.  I cry at King Kong and I wear a belt to keep up my black spandex bodysuit.   I swear to you that this is my last pathetic entry in this diary.  More hurts me now than a cotton sheet and a pane of glass.  You can tie me down and inject me with your pissant hate and prejudices.  You can make me "normal" but still the skin I wear is black.  Charred black.  I disappear when you flip the lights off at night, just like when I was a child.  Now all I can do is sit at the window of my submarine and stare out into the infinite ocean surrounding me.

I hoped one day to be like Aquaman.  To be here, submerged.  And now I feel I might drown in it.  In this ocean.  I wonder what's at the bottom.  I wonder what would be there to take my breath.

I am proclaiming to be the mouth of life, and all I get is the ass.  All I see is brown.

This is the last time.  Watch out, cruel bastard world.  You're about to face the wrath of the Black Manta!

Fuck, beaten.

Aqualad, Aquaman's teen friend Garth who is more "no way" than "excellent," happened to swim by my town.  I captured him.  This, of course, brought Aquaman himself.  I ambushed him with a hammerhead shark with a frickin' laser-beam that he is holding but for some reason not shooting on his head, and knocked him out cold.

When he woke up he found out that I was no longer just okay with hanging out with a Cajun zombie and a chick in a cheetah costume.  I'm not some fictional animated goon.   I'm a human being.  I'm a human being who has not had one moment of peace inside my frustrating fucking mind since the day I was born.  I'd done the unthinkable.  I'd skipped the seahorse theatrics and gone straight for the gill:   I had his son, Artie Jr., AKA the "Aquababy" trapped in an air bubble.   And if he hoped to save the boy he'd have to kill Aqualad first.

So easy.  Such a comic book plot.  Fight to save your family!  Ho ho, it will end with me getting comeuppance.  I will swim headfirst into a manatee and fall into a net, where undersea police officers will escort me away.  I will shake my fist from between the well-spaced iron bars and scream YOU'LL PAY FOR THIS, SEA KING!   Aquaman will hop into Wonder Woman's invisible dick rocket and fly away toward his laughing freeze-frame.

Not today.

I wanted the golden-haired bastard to know who I really am.  Even though I don't know my own name.  I didn't just want the ocean because I wanted money, or jewels, or a hidden lair.  I wanted it for "my people."

I'm a black man.

Do you know what that means?

The cry of "racism" has been driven into the ground.  People associate civil rights with the same retread, blabbered-on arguments they associate with women's rights or vegetarianism.  If we do not mildly understand it or are forced to hear about it more than once you are an obnoxious fool for supporting it.  By supporting it you hope to exclude "us."  Whoever "we" may be.  If you don't eat meat, there must be something wrong with you.  And the first thought that crosses their mind is WELL I EAT MEAT, AND HERE'S WHY.  God put the animals here for me to eat.  Don't you understand the food chain?  When I grow up I'm going to bovine university. 

Have you ever met a Native American?  I hope not.  Because if they mention that they are Native American your first thought is, "oh, I'm this much Native American as well.  My whatever relative was this much Native American."   Like it's a fucking club.

Women should be barefoot and pregnant.  They are lesser human beings.  Oh wait, I'm just joking!  I'm making jokes.  I don't mean those things I said.   But you won't ever hear me say they SHOULDN'T have to be those things.   Because why would that be funny?  I like making jokes!

Nobody takes this seriously.  Nobody takes anything seriously.  They wear green tights and talk to the fish.  They don't want stress.  They don't want strife.  They want everything to be fine the way it is.  I don't think things are fine the way they are.  And if I bring it up, no matter how nice and kind I am about it, I'm "taking things too seriously" and cramping your style.  I'm not making jokes, so I must be crazy.  I must be egotistical.  I feel something.   I must be a jerk.

I came into the ocean because I don't feel welcome on the land.  I don't feel like I have to explain that to you.  And I don't know why I felt the need to explain every detail of it to Aquaman, who's only interest in me so far has been knowing my name and shouting it derisively when the Superfriends show up to fuck up my Christmas.

So I made them fight.  And I held that baby in an air bubble.  Aquaman fought as hard as he could and could not save him.  I took his son's breath.  I am the thing at the bottom of the tub.

And I don't know what to do anymore.

I'm just still pissed off about Atom writing about me on his website.

Or maybe I can get my own comic in the Vertigo line, where I try to fit 500 Olde-English fonted words into each word bubble and everything looks like it was drawn with colored chalk.

You're dead, Aquaman.  What are you going to do?  I killed your son!

holy shit he's got a spear for a hand run

Oh, hey look, a surgeon fish!  Your razor sharp claws shouldn't be a problem since I'm wearing a paper-thin swimsuit that keeps me from dying underwater!

ROOOOOOAAAAAR

I AM MORE MANTA THAN MAN

I HAVE COME TO REIGN HELL ON YOUR PATHETIC LIVES

ROOOOOOAOAAAAR

THE POWER

THE POWEEEEERR

It's going on all around me.  People are born naturally and forced to change the way they look, the way they feel, the way they act.  I was a black man.  I have problems expressing myself because something in my brain won't let me say the words I want to say.   Sometimes I want to stab people.  But beneath it all I'm a man.  A strong, black man.

It's changing all around me. 

Batman had his back broken.  He came back as an obsessive religious killer who shoots knives at people.

Spider-man is a clone.  Or maybe not.  Or maybe he's six clones.  In a sleeveless sweater.

Superman died.  Then he came back as a robot, a sassy teenager, a guy in crazy sunglasses, and Shaquille O'Neal after he grabbed one of those green exclamation point boxes in Mario 64.  What can they do to him now?  Make him two different colored guys?

Before the decade is over every major superhero in my universe and others will be changed by the darkness.  The bad ass images.  How surprised was I when Aquaman showed up with a harpoon growing out of his arm.  He spent the last thirty years making flounder swim into people using stink rays from his head.  Now he can rip my guts out with a punch to the back.  I can't deal.

Green Lantern will die.  The Flash will die.  They'll be replaced by teenagers in black costumes.  I know it.  G'nort will be burned to death and Captain Cold will have to fly around shooting his little guns at James Vanderbeek in an eyeless lightning bolt cowl.

I don't want to be a monster.  I don't want to be a monster.

I want to walk outside in the rainstorms.  I don't want to leap cities and crush cars.  I want to sleep in a bed with sheets that don't make me scream.  I want to be able to say "Doctor, these sheets are abrasive.  Do you have sheets of a different fabric?" without ripping out his tongue and beating him in the dick with it. 

Why do you want me to look like this?

Why can't we be what we've always been?

I don't want to live in your world.  But if I die you'll just bring me back.

I hate you.

I hate you.

One two five nine sixteen.

In addition, I'd like to personally thank whoever bought my collectors item color-changing vest on eBay this weekend. 

I decided to put my full costume back on.  The old one.  The one that makes me look like a waiter at the Olive Garden should be garnishing your salad with fresh ground pepper from my face.  The one I was always made fun of for.

Only to hide.

Because if I don't I think I might kill myself.

Maybe that's for the best.  Who loves the Black Manta?  Nobody.

I don't know how it happened.  These things seem to be rewritten so often that every moment you step away you miss something important.  The harpoon is gone.  Aquaman isn't trying to stab me with his prehensile grappling hook anymore.  There are fewer people watching around this reef, but the people that matter, wherever they are, said a little prayer for me.

I was born with autism.  Long before anybody knew what it was.  The doctors at the orphanage thought I was mentally disabled.  They were just trying to help me be normal.  Help me to express myself the way I've always wanted to.  Help me to say the right words when I need them.  They were misguided.  They didn't know.   Neither did I. 

I don't even know my name.

Aquaman has healed me.  I don't know how.  He has a hand made of water he got in the secret sea that gives him healing powers.  And control over water.  And whatever else he needs to get him out of a jam inexplicably.  But he healed me.   He rewired me and removed the autism.  He removed the mutation.  Gone are the flat belly and sharp wings.  Gone are the claws.

All I see is brown.  And I couldn't be happier.

Sometimes we take for granted the basic things we're born with.  Eye color.   Skin color.  The ability to walk and talk and sing.  The way food tastes.   The way food digests.  The way we sleep and awaken.  It's there for most of us.  Some of us miss out on it.  And we all don't know why. 

I've learned something really important in my life.  That no matter what kind of stupid bullshit the idiots in charge throw at you, you're still going to show up when they least expect it.  If they write you into a hole someone will be there to pull you out of it.  If they give you an ignorant costume, wear it.  You may be remembered for it.  And when you die, lay peacefully.  Because somebody somewhere is going to bring you back.

Aquaman healed me, and I will forever be thankful.  That's why I had to shoot him.   Because without him, who am I?  Without I, who is he?  The guy who talks to fish.  And I'm the guy in the stupid helmet.  Maybe we're only that WITH each other.  But there is one last thing I've learned.

Today I swam by a whale.  I threw a net on him and tried to drag him away.   Aquaman showed up and cut the rope, setting the animal free.  I don't care, I don't know why I wanted it in the first place.  Aquaman made a crab walk into me pretty hard and I swam away, shaking my fist and declaring that he'll pay for this next time.  And he will.  So will I.  We all pay, and we pay always.

My helmet sure does look stupid, doesn't it?

Go tell it to your fish. :)