You Can Make It Up: White Hancock
Gabe loves fan fiction. You Can Make It Up features his own personal alternate adventures starring some of our favorite characters.
White Hancock passed by a homeless man sleeping on a park bench and super-pitied him. How these people managed to survive without shelter as an uncaring world passed them by, that was a strength he couldn't fathom. A ragged paper cup sat at the foot of the bench, near the bum's smelly head. White Hancock dropped a fifty dollar bill into the cup and flew up into the sky. He was going to be late for his photo shoot.
It wasn't easy being the only superhero on the planet, feeling the crushing weight of that responsibility, but there were so many people who had it way worse. Hancock thought of the starving children around the world without access to clean drinking water, the innocent families being slaughtered in the Sudan, Kathy Griffin, and he realized he didn't have it so bad. True, his powers could feel like a curse at times, but they were also a blessing, like his whiteness. That might have been his greatest power of all.
For one, it meant that he was able to leverage himself as a spokesperson for a ton of companies, which meant serious cash. There was the Nike endorsement, the Hancock videogame, the Burger King Gold Club card. If you ran a business in the United States, having a white superhero endorse your product was like printing money.
Today it was cat food. What did cat food have to do with superpowers? Who cared. White Hancock was pulling in 50,000 dollars just for showing up. He was going to put turbo jets into his hot tub at his awesome mansion so that he could actually feel the water on his back, because regular hot tubs were for humans. He would have all his friends over for a great party. People loved White Hancock. Sure, there was a certain loneliness to being the only one of his kind, but he blended in with the majority of the upper middle-class so well that he rarely felt it.
Did White Hancock make mistakes in his line of work? Sure. There was always some collateral damage when you had to stop a freight train, or return a beached whale to the ocean. But he was easily forgiven. People just appreciated him so much that any minor disturbance was overlooked as just the cost of doing superbusiness. And if he sometimes smelled of alcohol, well, who didn't like to unwind a little bit after a rough day? Everyone knew that white superheroes had a strong work ethic so who are we to question how he spends his free time.
White Hancock sipped an iced latte as he waited for the cat wrangler to get everything into position. He watched himself in the mirror as a stylist put the finishing touches on his makeup. He looked great, very white. Maybe, when he was done with this, he would go help some people out of trouble, and maybe he'd go play a round of golf. Either way, people would respect his decision and not question his motives. Why would they? What did he look like? A black superhero?
Oh, also White Hancock was Super Racist.
Posted by Gabe at 1:47 PM in You Can Make It Up
Tags: Hancock | Racism
This reminds me of my own short-lived fan fiction series about mutants who took their powers to the Valley to become porn stars. I called it (Se)X-Men. One character was called Ejacto. It really sucked.
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Please don't discount your potential. That sounds amazing.
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The Return of Captain Invincible (1984) is another good Hancock-esque endeavor. Someone find a trailer of it please.
Tags: Alan Arkin, Christopher Lee, musical
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