Sliced Bread 2: The Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread

I won't say I was excited about getting to drive around with Thunderhead. But still. He's the world's first superhero. He's been missing for years. And he has quite the audacious plan. So definitely I was intrigued.

My photocopy of T.Z. Kane's book Mask Warshas some details on Thunderhead. He was already kind of old when he started off as a superhero in '86. He was like in his forties. Had shockwave-type powers that he used to basically overwhelm a bunch of supervillain street gangs that were terrorizing Empire City. A couple of months after he showed up, Incandesca started fighting crime in L.A. and the two of them worked together every now and then. Their big moment was probably in '89 when they fought off the

Then in '93, Incandesca got killed and Thunderhead disappeared. This was before Greyghost first showed up (at least as far as anybody could tell), and a year before SPIA was founded. I had thought nobody knew where he went after that, but from what Greyghost and Cruickshank were saying, he's been on this quest for the Giant On-Off Switch.

So I thought he'd be kind of an interesting guy. And I suppose he is.

Except he's been on the road alone too long. He's spent too much time hacking through jungles, sleeping in duckblinds and drinking spaghetti sauce straight out of the can.

Since we started driving upstate yesterday, Thunderhead has displayed the following personal habits:

• in defiance of open-bottle laws, drinks at will from his flask of Old Four-Eyed Monongahela
• issues extensive and soupy farts at least once every hour, and seems too bored by this to crack a window
• picks his teeth with a machete. A machete
• blows his nose in his hat
• insists on playing nothing but the most obscure and crappy '50s rock'n'roll on his clapped-out cassette deck. I mean, 'The Twistolettes, Live At 'I Like It Like That''? Over and over

And he's not answering any of my questions, either. He won't tell me where we're going, or how long it'll take to get there. I mentioned Mask Wars to him and he just said, "Kane. Now there was a shithat for you."

When we stopped for the night, I insisted on getting a separate motel room for myself. Wait, that's deceptively put. Thunderhead intended to just pull off to the side of the highway and sleep in the car. I had to fight for the motel. He may actually have slept in the car; I don't know and don't care.

He did once open up a bit. I asked about Incandesca. He just nodded for a while, and said, "Yeah..." I thought he had fallen asleep until he said, "What do you want to know about her?"

"I don't know... Did you know her really well?"

"Pretty well." He paused. "She was a better superhero than any of the assholes out there these days. A great girl, really something special. Lot of people still alive we could do without more than Candy. Hell, I miss her more than I miss my family."

He's got a family?