Axiom-man™ : In the Beginning (Axiom-man™ Origin Story Pt. 1 of 3)

It has been fourteen or so years since Axiom-man was first conceived, and I consider it an accomplishment for him to have stayed with me for so long. There are not too many other characters out there that I’m aware of that had manifested themselves in their creators’ minds while they were kids, only to be fully realized sometime later in adulthood. The only two that come readily to mind as I write this are Erik Larsen’s Savage Dragon, who he created during his youth, and Marv Wolfman’s the Monitor, who he dreamed up while a child and who later became widely known during 1985’s Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Looking back over Axiom-man’s history, it amazes me at just how an evolved—and bizarre—history it is and how it is also a kind of dual history, where both finally converged in the release of my superhero novel of the same name, September 29, 2006.

Here’s how it all began:

It was grade seven (1992-1993), and though I had been a superhero fan since as far back as I could remember, it was only during that year that I really began to dream up my own creations and play superheroic fantasies over and over in my mind, with me playing the lead. Sure, there had been costumes and make-believe growing up, but it was in either the fall of 1992 or the first part of 1993 when I really stepped forward and took hold of the idea of the superhero and looked at the fantasy for what it was.

A little background.

As mentioned, I’ve adored superheroes since I was old enough to know what they were. My childhood consisted of Super Friends and the old Spider-man cartoons, and a lunch pail filled with action figures. Every time the Christopher Reeve Superman movies aired on TV, I’d be sure to ask my dad to tape them so I could watch them a hundred times over the following months. In kindergarten, my folks made me a Superman costume, something I would wear day in and day out. When my younger brother and sister were old enough, they joined me in pretending the world was in peril and only I as Superman and my brother as Superboy (with my sister always playing the damsel in distress) could save the day.

The years melted away, an endless sea of superheroic feats and changes of clothes into red capes, black capes, blue capes, masks, sweat suits with red logos—ah, it was everything. Even during the latter years of elementary school when my friends stopped running around their parents’ homes in costumes and they’d come to my door to invite me outside to play hockey, I’d answer the doorbell wearing my Superman costume and decline their invite. After all, the world needed saving and I was the only one who could do it.

There came a time right around then when my folks got fed up with my refusal to live in the real world and ended my life as a superhero. One day, my brother and I went to pull out our action figures and get on with the latest adventure. So we went to the middle drawer beneath his bed (the mattress sat on a kind of “bed-dresser”), eager to save the day through our toys once again. When we opened the drawer—our toys were gone. I don’t remember the specifics of that day, but I think when I asked one of my folks where my toys were, I was told something like, “Oh, you probably put them somewhere. Why don’t you go look for them?”

The toys were never found and a dark cloud fell over the Fuchs household.

The dream of being a hero was dead.

The very mention of superheroes was met with flat words and straight faces.

Life as I knew it...began to fade.

But my love for superheroes never died and in 1992 or 1993, I became a closet superhero fan in our home, never opening my mouth to talk about Superman or Spider-man, dreading yet another lecture about how I spent too much time in “Fantasyland.”

One night while I was in grade seven, as I lay in bed unable to sleep, I mentally put on a new pair of tights and became a hero the world had never before seen. Though it was under a different name and costume, this brand new fantasy would lay the groundwork for what was to come.

At this point I had been a carrier for the Winnipeg Free Press for about 2 or 3 years (I started in 1990), and it was a career I’d keep up for nine altogether. It was my first job and to this day it is one I’d proudly take up again if I had to. There was such freedom in delivering the news door-to-door early in the morning when no one was awake and the only company I had was myself. Though I always hated getting up so early, once I was dressed and out the door, there wasn’t anywhere I’d rather be. And it was during these mornings of walking around with an enormous canvas bag slung over my shoulder that I’d lose myself to an ever-evolving fantasy featuring the hero I knew in my heart of hearts I wanted to become.

The daydreams began as a Superman knockoff, with me playing a Clark Kent type character on one side, my alter ego as powerful—and sometimes more so—than the Man of Steel on the other. And for years I’d lose myself each night while lying in bed to this exciting fantasy, and each morning as I braved the Canadian cold I’d don the tights anew, while in reality I made sure folks got their news on time. The daydreams were sometimes just short adventures consisting of me doing something as simple as helping an old lady across the street or breaking up a fight at the school’s playground. Other times, the stories were multifaceted, some of them so large and detailed it took months for that story arc to come to an end. The daydreams grew so real while I delivered the paper that many mornings, when I plopped the paper in the last house on my list, I’d stop on that customer’s driveway with a puzzled look on my face, wondering if I had really delivered to all the houses. Many times I had run back over my entire route, checking each and every mailbox to be sure I had been there. Each time I was surprised to discover I had been there, my mind so lost in my daydream that I didn’t even recall being there in the first place.

This was a fantasy and dream that continued all throughout my high school years and beyond, but it wasn’t until grade eleven, when I was sixteen, that everything would change and the word “axiom” would surface for the first time.

To be continued...