She was an environmentalist on a research mission around Fukushima. Her superhero story is one of over-reach; she tipped over and fell into the waters. An irradiated killer whale tried to take a chunk off her but made a hash of it. A quick rescue that has since had the world debating the wisdom of it. Watch out for the flippers. And that destructive retractable dorsal fin. And the 4 tons of crushing mass.

Whale Woman.

If you think this is one is outlandish, read on. You’ll be spaced out by the end of it. And it doesn’t matter whether it’s happening inside someone’s head or not; it’s all real. It’s on Wikipedia.

*****

Lost, half-blind and fully-famished. He grabbed something and made a meal of it. That Spangled Tipsy Salamander was the only one of its kind.

The Slinking Salamander.

Beware his spasmodic shimmy – it’ll turn you blind and give you a headache to last a lifetime.

*****

She was born near a sewage dump. She was swallowed by a reticulated python when she was but a baby. Not your cuddly-cute baby, she. More like blood-curdling, toxic ugly. The snake spat her out in disgust and proceeded to end its life in the throes of a myocardial infarct. Unlike other superheroes, she wears her mask most of the time. She only peels it off to wield her numbing superpower. Even the blind go catatonic when she does that.

The Reticulated Pythoness.

*****

It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s…Frogman. Technically he should be called Toadman but some idiot journo in the nation’s biggest selling sell-out daily known for getting its facts twisted in knots gave him his name and it stuck. No, he was not licked by an irradiated toad. Baby, he was just born this way.

*****

The ornithologist was watching. What the fuck do you think ornithologists watch? Unbeknownst to him, a Pied Kingfisher quite near him swallowed a strange berry shaped like nothing on this earth – a seven pointed snowflake. The bird flew up and dropped its intestinal load right as it was flying over our birdman. Maybe it hit a raw, exposed nerve but his transformation to an Ex-Man was complete in seconds. Yeah, shit happens and how!

The Kingfisherman. Stages a magnificent dive (not even a football fan though), the world’s foremost catcher of fish, free frequent flyer. All in all, the true emperor of good times.

*****

He’s the only man to have survived a bite from a Komodo dragon. Actually he was not a man and not quite a woman. Maybe that’s why; who knows? His power? He just turns a beady eye on you and you slink away like a lizard. Has no effect on The Slinking Salamander though.

The leader of this band of freaks, these Ex-Men (and Women) – The Komodo Dragon (the uppercase D to distinguish from the lizard of the same name).

Wait. What band? KD got this idea to to put together a bunch to clean up the festering filth of this world. He calls them The Scavengers.

P.S.: The reptile that sank its teeth into the man who became The Komodo Dragon? It choked on the toe it bit off. Good riddance too.

P.P.S.: The original irradiated-killer-whale-bite-survivor was a man from Tamil Nadu in South India. Religious fanatics would not have a Whale Murugan. That and representative politics engendered a reboot – as is the norm now – and thus was born that whale of a woman.

P.P.P.S.: I wrote this entire post just so I could use the word “unbeknownst”. Achievement unlocked. The feebleness of which reason also defines the quality of writing.