Gritty_Superhero

(It's recommended you read with a classical music playlist in the background)

(If You Like stories like Watchmen or the boys , or any form of superhero media, THIS IS FOR YOU!)



Marvelo-Man: Book One – The Golden Age Ends
In Depression-era New York, abused runaway Maxwell Marvelo rises from circus strongman to wartime superhero. Transformed by a secret government experiment, he becomes Marvelo-Man, America’s mythic savior. But war, monsters, and betrayal twist his journey. Haunted by guilt and hunted by his darker counterpart, Black Zero, Maxwell fights to stay human in a world that only sees him as a weapon. As the Cold War dawns and his story becomes sanitized fiction, the real Marvelo-Man disappears—watching, waiting, while the world forgets who he really was.

Marvelo-Man: Book One – The Golden Age

The snow blanketed Belgium like a false comfort. Burnt husks of homes jutted out of the landscape like broken teeth. Maxwell Marvelo trudged beside a convoy of Allied jeeps, his cape tucked beneath a borrowed army coat, boots scuffed, face lined with quiet exhaustion.

This wasn't a battlefield. Not today. Just a town trying to remember what peace felt like.

The convoy stopped outside what remained of a farmhouse. The roof was gone. Smoke still clung to the beams. Inside, a woman and her two children sat against the wall, eyes hollow. The youngest, no more than five, stared at Maxwell with suspicion.

"Parlez-vous français?" Maxwell asked gently.

The woman nodded but didn't answer. He knelt and removed his gloves, offering a dented tin of biscuits he'd carried from the last base. The child didn't take it.

One of the soldiers beside him muttered, "They think we'll leave like the others."

Down the road, he helped an overworked medic load supplies into a makeshift infirmary. Bodies lay beneath blankets. Not all of them were dead.

"You're Marvelo, right?" the medic asked, trying to hide how tired he was.

"I used to be," Maxwell said. "Today, I'm just another pair of hands."

They worked for hours without much talk. Maxwell lifted the heavy crates. The medic stitched flesh. They both sweated in the cold.

"I saw a man pull a tank apart once," the medic said suddenly. "But it's harder to hold someone's hand when they're dying."

Maxwell nodded. "That's why I never look away."

Later that evening, Maxwell found himself sitting on a brick wall beside a half-destroyed café, sharing a cigarette with a British private. Snow fell quietly around them.

"You ever think it'll end?" the private asked.

"I think it has to," Maxwell replied. "Otherwise we're not men. We're just engines."

The private squinted at him. "You don't talk like a god."

Maxwell took another drag. "Don't try to be me, son. Try to be the man who doesn't need someone like me around."

That night in the barracks, Maxwell sat with pen and paper, scrawling in the dim glow of a lantern.

I don't know if you'll ever read this. Or if I'll ever be allowed to send it. But I remember your brother's face. I remember how fast I had to pull him from that trench. I remember how scared he was.

And I wish I could tell you I wasn't just as scared. That I wasn't wondering whether saving one life made a dent in the thousands I couldn't reach. But I did save him. And I'd do it again.

If that's all I leave behind in this war, I'll take it.

He folded the paper. Didn't seal it. Just slipped it into the crack between the boards beneath his bunk.

Tomorrow, he'd head for the Ardennes. Another town. Another set of faces.

But tonight, he was just Maxwell again. A man trying to carry ghosts without letting them drag him down.

The Ghosts We Carry