The Adventures of SuperAndy and SuperBruno

Year: 1990
Place: Raymond, AB
My age: 12

I say this took place in Raymond in 1990 when I was 12 years old, but that's really just the starting point of something that is still going on today.

In the spring of 1990, I was a 12-year-old boy nearing the end of grade 6. My teacher, Mr. Maxwell, gave the class an assignment: write a story in which children are heroes. Superman: The Movie was released the year I was born, and I grew up watching it and its various sequels. It bordered on obsession. So, when Mr. Maxwell presented us with this task, I took my childhood friend, David Jones, and myself and gave us Superman-like powers. The story was a labour of love, and Mr. Maxwell loved it. "What suspense! You could have a great future as an author!" was scrawled on the last page next to the perfect 10/10 he gave me as a mark. It was a simple enough story: two boys stumble onto an underground lab and are experimented on by the evil scientist, Dr. Zooge (eh? Is that an awesome evil name, or what?). They receive super-strength, super-speed, super-hearing, x-ray vision, blue laser vision, and the ability to fly. Adventure ensues.

Before I go on, let me go back a little way and delve into the questionable decade of the '80s. One day, I was walking to school with my friends. They wanted to play Transformers and started laying claim to which Transformer they wanted to be. I didn't want to be a lowly robot. I wanted to be human. So I was myself, a full-grown adult in the futuristic world of the year 2000, wearing what I called a "power suit", which is basically highly advanced body armor. Over the years, I developed this idea with my friend Adam until I had an entire world in which Admiral Mike MacKenzie was the leader of Earth's military, Earth, in turn, belonging to the Mars Federation of Planets. (I watched a lot of Star Trek growing up, too). When SuperBruno (that was me) came along, I merged his world with Admiral MacKenzie's world. The logistics are complicated, and I could go on for pages explaining everything, so just accept that, in my fantasy sci-fi world, there were two of me.

By the time I was 15, I had written four SuperAndy and SuperBruno short stories in addition to the original one I wrote in 1990. I decided at that point to write a novel based on the ideas that I was constantly developing in my head. The novel rewrote the original short stories (I had matured and developed my writing style considerably since I had been 12) and incorporated them as chapters in the novel. I finished the novel when I was 16. It was ambitious, spanning from 1990 to, if I remember correctly, 2028. It had the early superhero career of SuperAndy and SuperBruno, the dubious side effect of receiving the powers that split the fictional me into two separate people (one with superpowers, one without), aliens contacting Earth, and a long war between Earth and Saturn. The structure of the novel was shaky, and was really a collection of short stories that had a common thread.

I attempted to write two sequels to the novel, and actually got quite a bit of the second sequel written. But something happened: adulthood. When I was 18, I decided a couple of things. First of all, a fictional novel in which I was a superhero was a little too egotistical for my liking, so I replaced myself with Stormy Logan, and I replaced David Jones with Peter Nesmith. Second, I dropped the Super off of Bruno and Andy, and eventually dropped those names, too. Third, I tweaked their powers so they weren't such obvious Superman rip-offs. I got rid of the laser vision, x-ray vision, and super hearing. I also made them a little weaker and a little slower than Superman. The fourth change was the most drastic. I scrapped the original novel in an effort to clean up the story and make it more realistic. This included completely trashing the second Stormy Logan who grew up to be a military leader in an interplanetary war. Also, Stormy and Peter were 18 when they received their powers instead of 11 and 8 respectively.

SuperAndy and SuperBruno were a huge and mostly private part of the entire decade of the '90s. The fantasy of it enthralled me. Whenever I was alone and not occupied with something such as reading or video games, I was mentally in a world in which I was a superhero. There are so many stories those characters have gone through that will never be put to paper. There are just too many of them. Even today, I'm coming up with new ideas for Stormy. In his current incarnation (consisting of a novel that is complete in my head but not on paper), Stormy works through legal means (he's a special officer for the RCMP) rather than vigilantism, his secret identity proved impossible to maintain, and the experiment went horribly wrong with Peter, physically deforming him, shattering his sanity, and making him Stormy's greatest enemy. Oh, and the evil Dr. Zooge is now the misguided Dr. Trevor Sinclair.