5: The Rogue Era

After a run-in with the law, Phoenix’s superhero antics start to have consequences for his civilian life. When tragedy strikes in downtown Seattle, things begin to unravel for Phoenix Jones. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
Novel Phoenix Jones was arrested by saddle p d on
suspicion of poor people got pepper school. The pepper spray

(00:29):
turned the scene into total chaos. M When we last
left our hero Phoenix Jones, he'd just been arrested for

(00:49):
pepper spraying a bunch of people outside of bar that
night on October nine, two thousand and eleven. He was
booked into the county jail and then bailed out. He
says that when he showed up to court a few
days later, his old nemesis, Seattle attorney Pete Holmes, was
there waiting for him. He's trying to convince me not
to fight crime, Like, if you don't stop fin and crime,

(01:10):
I'm gonna tell your identity. I'm like, you can't threaten
me with something like I will not be threatened. You
have nothing to threaten me with, Like it's ridiculous for
you to think you're gonna threaten me, ridiculous. The concepts
offensive you threatening me ridiculous, Like, oh, you're gonna tell
everybody in my identity you already did. Jerk off. I'm
in court. Do you think we can keep all these
court documents sealed? I'm aware of the clocks ticking. That's

(01:32):
why you did it. You did it to expose me
and to make fun of me, because you thought that
people would think of was a clown. It was at
this moment that Phoenix decided he would turn the tables
on his nemesis. That was one of those moments where
I was like, everything sucks, but if it's gonna suck,
it's gonna suck my way. He looked to Iron Man
for inspiration, specifically the scene where the inventor Tony Stark

(01:53):
reveals his identity at a press conference and now Mr
Stark has prepared a statement. Phoenix watched that lip over
and over again, like five or six times in a row. Truthish,
I am, I right man, And it was like, I'm
gonna do my version of that. Phoenix set up a

(02:13):
press conference outside the courthouse on October two thousand and eleven,
wearing his black and gold superhero costume, flanked by people
in business suits. He turns to the reporters and speaks,
I'm Phoenix Jones, I'm also Ben Voter. I'm just like
everyone else. The only difference is that I decided to

(02:35):
make a difference and stop crime. In my neighborhood, in
my area. The reveal didn't quite have that Hollywood polish,
but it was an impressive thing to witness. Phoenix had
made it clear to Pete Holmes and the rest of
the Seattle Police Department, the whole world really that he
would not back down from his mission to fight crime.

(02:56):
As Phoenix saw, he called their bluff and they folded.
Life only is a certain amount of moments, right, and
I think sometimes people are conflicted by how they feel
their emotions, right were as I'm not so so it
really have a chance to look at them as how
can I add to my legacy? At this moment, Phoenix

(03:17):
concluded his press conference with an announcement the city Attorney
could take his request that Phoenix stopped fighting crime and
shove it. I'm paraphrasing. What he actually said was that
he was heading back out on patrol that weekend, but
the point still stands Phoenix Jones would not be deterred.
I'm David Weinberg and from the team's at Novel and

(03:40):
I Heart Radio. This is the Superhero Complex episode five
the Rogue Era. When Phoenix Jones revealed his identity outside

(04:06):
the Seattle Courthouse it was a moment of triumph. Shortly
after Pete Holmes's office announced that they were dropping the
charges for the pepper spray incident. I think they just
went perfectly. Other than having my identity, it really went
perfectly because I think that legitimized me as a superhero
in a weird way. How well, because when I revealed
my secret identity, every news article said, hey, superhero revealed

(04:28):
secret identity. You have to be a superhero to have
a secret identity. And I revealed it because the cops
were coming after me for stopping crime. Phoenix said that
in a way, revealing his identity actually helped him because
before now nobody had been able to check whether he
had bona fide superhero credentials. People thought it was a
guy running around in spandex trying to fight crime. It

(04:49):
was kind of a clown. But when you expose y
and behind it, you find out that I'm a four
time regional champion martial artist, a black belt in taekwondo.
Have over crimestops now they can look up because they
know my school name, and then they see all these
legal police stocks where my name is mentioned in crime reports,
including an attempted murder stop right, and all of a
sudden you're like, oh, that guy is not a clown.

(05:11):
So in a weird way, it legitimizes me further than
I ever could. If Seattle's law enforcement were out to
get Phoenix by charging him for a crime, they had failed.
If anything, the arrest made Phoenix more confident and more defiant.
Shortly after he revealed his true identity, he made an
appearance on Fox News on Megan Kelly's show, Phoenix. Is

(05:34):
it true that at the end of the court hearing
yesterday you tore off your dress shirt to reveal your
signature black and green superhero costume? It was black and gold. Yeah,
I was wearing my super suit because this wasn't about
the guy under the mask. They were charging Phoenix Jones
because I'm Phoenix Jones. If I was a regular person
and I had just regularly pepper sprayed someone who was
in a fight, they would have shook my hand and
sent me away. So I wore the suit because that's
what this was about, and I took my mask off

(05:56):
because the person suffering for it is the person under
the mask. Phoenix may have one his first major battle
with the police, but it was really just the start
of the war. When Phoenix was arrested, the Seattle police
confiscated his beloved super suit and they refused to give
it back. Phoenix complained about it on the local Seattle

(06:16):
radio program The Bob Rivers Show. Why did they confiscate
your There's two answers. There's the politically correct answer and
then the truth. So Phoenix says that the police claimed
his suit was evidence and they needed it to identify him.
He says that doesn't make any sense because he'd already
identified himself publicly. He ends up complaining to the host

(06:36):
about the fact that he's having to use a substandard
replacement suite proof vest staff plating and doesn't have stay
and the police confiscated that suit. This one is not
so expensive. The other one that that police confiscated as
quotations evidence evidence was like seven thousand seven in what
are they doing with that? That makes me mad? They're
probably wearing it and taking photos. Call every day and

(06:57):
ask about the sup several times day. Phoenix assigned to
my suit, so there's not an officer I can call
it directly. In the moments right after Phoenix revealed his
identity and his dramatic press conference. It felt like he'd
won a massive victory over the system, but the reality

(07:18):
was that Phoenix had just opened up a huge can
of worms, and the repercussions of his decision to out
himself were about to hit with disastrous consequences. It was
hard for me is when my identity came out. I
was working with autistic children. So they yanked my state
license and much other stuff and said I was crazy.
When Ben Photor wasn't putting on a superhero costume and

(07:41):
chasing down criminals as Phoenix Jones, or training at the gym,
or competing as an m M A fighter, he was
at his day job caring for kids with autism. He
went to their homes or to state run facilities, and
he took them out shopping and help them learn other
life skills they would need to navigate the world as adults. Well.
My parents own foster home that works with autistic children

(08:03):
for a living. When I turned eighteen, the first job
I ever had was working with autistic children. I worked
with autistic children until I was twenty five, and I
got like a bunch of different awards for like, you know,
a Teacher of the Years and all kinds of different
stuff for working with autistic kids and helping them cope
with their general life skills. I found him incredibly easy
to like understand and like incredibly easy to help, So
being somewhat on that spectrum would make that easier. I guess. Obviously,

(08:27):
any person who becomes a real life superhero probably thinks
outside of societal norms. But there were also these small
moments I had with Phoenix that revealed something deeper about
how he sees the world, about his thought processes. For example,
one night I was driving with Phoenix when he got

(08:48):
a text from his girlfriend Dre. He pulled over to respond,
and then he explained this bizarre system he created for
talking to friends over text messages. I don't always understand
how to explain things to other people, are like, uh,
what you? How you As a way to show that
I like, he was not ever going to be something
that I value, So I came up with the system
with my friends where when I think about them, I'll

(09:09):
send a number, like if it's like so three one
three is like a sandwich. Any number has a sandwich,
or run like one to three, like one in morning
in the morning, like two numbers on the ends and
once number in the middle. Right. When I'm thinking of
my friends, I'll send him a random like the random
set of numbers, you know what I mean, because math
always makes sense three seven right, Three plus four equals seven,

(09:29):
so I'll send him like three plus four and then
an equal sign and seven right. So we all send
each other numbers back and forth. It's kind of like
saying I'm thinking about you at a specific time, or
I waited till that time because you're an important person
to me and math makes sense to me. I didn't
quite understand Ben's system. It just sounds a little like
autistic to me. Yeah, well, like on the spectrum people

(09:51):
have said that about me before you know, I started explaining,
I don't know. I feel like autism is a negative thing,
Like people are always saying something negative about being autistic.
In my mind, and if I am autistic, then I
guess I'm one of the most successful autistic people that
there is, Like I win at every game I play.
So whatever label people want to put on that they can,
I don't care what the the funk I guess. After Phoenix

(10:14):
was arrested, the Department of Social and Health Services notified
his employer who barred him from working with any of
the children in their care. Phoenix was told to leave immediately.
He says he had to walk out of his job
in the middle of the day. The department spokesperson said
they were just trying to air on the side of
caution and that he could have his job back if

(10:35):
he wasn't convicted. But after the charges were dropped, Phoenix
says he still had to prove that he wasn't mentally
ill before they'd consider letting him go back to work.
One test he says he was given was supposed to
determine whether or not he was autistic. At the end
of the test, Phoenix got a score, a number that

(10:57):
determined where on the autism spectrum someone is. Phoenix says
he scored a fifty seven out of a hundred. Anything
above fifty could be autistic, anything above sixty is autistic.
So what then does that mean? The part of the
test that really tripped Phoenix up was the facial recognition questions.

(11:18):
There's a part where they play like a video of
these faces and people make weird faces, right, and they're
supposed to say what emotion the person's feeling. Had no
fucking clue. Like it was just like random faces. It
didn't make any sense, no one could have done it.
It was crazy. So afterwards I was like, this is insane.
So I told my doctor about it. He's like, oh, yeah, yeah,
the facial recognition recognizant tester or whatever. Right, So they
were like, well, we'll give it to you again. So

(11:40):
I did again. I scored the exact same thing. Right
then he was like, what's your son do it? Because
my son was with me. Right then, my son did
it and he just straight up was like sad, happy, confused, angry,
and nailed all of them. So I was like with
this weird moment where I'm like, Okay, there's something happening
here that I'm not seeing clearly. Phoenix told me that

(12:01):
the autism assessment was just one of several psychological tests
he was given. So it took me like three years
of like proving I'm not a crazy person. What was
that three year process of trying to prove that you
weren't crazy? What did that look like? Well, like, first
I had to go to stupid hearing. Then after the hearing,
I had some many piece of paper and then they
wanted me to do a mental evaluation, and then they

(12:21):
did a I e. P. Meetings, which are like between
like the kids that you work within the parents, and
the final process was something called a judgment review, which
is like where they just ask you a bunch of
questions basically. But I mean, it wasn't it wasn't hard,
because I'm not crazy. Eventually, Phoenix says he did everything
he needed to pass the psychological tests, but in the meantime,

(12:41):
he was still out of a job and a super suit.
But Phoenix was determined to continue protecting the citizens of Seattle,
so he put on his budget backup suit and hit
the streets looking for action. For Phoenix, the only thing
that mattered was the work protecting those in danger and
helping those in need, even if everything else in his
life was a total mess. I'm deficient in these areas

(13:04):
over here, but none of them have to do with
crime fighting. That is the one place I am sucking flawless.
Now Here is one issue that Phoenix and I will
never agree on. I wholly reject the idea that Phoenix
is perfect at crime fighting. I mean, this is a
guy who almost drowned in a puddle because he got
caught in his own net and then got robbed by

(13:24):
the criminal he was chasing. Also, every time I hung
out with Phoenix, we had to use my rental car
to get around because his car had either been towed
or broken into by thieves who he was never able
to apprehend. So yeah, I think we have different ideas
about what crime fighting perfection looks like. But Phoenix was
adamant that he had achieved it. There's no crime he

(13:44):
can't stop, nobody he can't save. But there was one
tragic incident in two thousand and twelve that Phoenix admittedly
failed to prevent. It was a night that changed everything
that's coming up. On April two thousand and twelve, a

(14:19):
young businessman named Dennis was in Seattle for a work trip.
I had brought my wife and one of my kids
up there to spend the weekend. They did some shopping
and cruising around while I did all my work. After
he wrapped up the day's business, you went to see
the Supercross at the Football Stadium with a friend. They
were grabbing some food and heading back to the hotel
where Dennis's wife was waiting for him. It was two

(14:42):
o'clock in the morning on Saturday, night, so bars were
closing and it was busy down there, so there was
a ton of people. They walked from the stadium to
Pioneer Square, where the streets were filled with tourists and
folks from the surrounding suburbs who came into the area
for the bars and clubs. There was also a large
community of homeless people and drug dealers who catered to

(15:03):
them alright, which was why Phoenix was a few streets
away on patrol with Ghost, Midnight Jack, Captain Karma, and
a few other members of the Rain City Superheroes. How
so far, it had been just like any other night
on patrol. They looked for bar fights or drunk people
in need of assistance, and as usual, Phoenix had snapped

(15:26):
some photos with late night revelers. Yeah, we definitely Yeah,
Well you gotta hurrying great there, We have a good night.
By the time Dennis was setting off back to his hotel,
the Rain City Superheroes had stopped a couple of blocks
away outside a night club called Trinity. A lot of

(15:47):
people out here, right, bot right. Phoenix was preoccupied with
some communication problems. Then again, we're losing contact. Brother, radios
were trash. We had literally good radios that we had
painted Garma, what's your code? I tried to hail Captain
Karma on the radio and he didn't answer, Karma report,
make him give me good radio contact? All right, who's

(16:08):
running your radio? Phoenix was getting frustrated. Can you hear
what I call you? Yeah? I called you three times?
You didn't respond? Really? Yes? Really? What are your pocket?
At this point locked in a petty argument about communication,
they had no idea that their night was about to
be turned inside out. And I couldn't hear what code
you wor so I freaked out because bang bang bang

(16:30):
gun shot gun shot gun shot. Three gunshots go off,
and I'm like, yo, follow me, well me. Phoenix immediately
started sprinting towards the sound. Within seconds, it arrived at
a street called Yesler Way. People were screaming and fleeing
in all directions. There's a person standing on their cell phone.

(16:51):
There's a guy who's kind of crouching, you know, and
then over here there's like a car that's driving by,
and then I see it, the guy crouching. He's got
a gun. M H. Dennis said he and his friend
were there too. In the midst of the chaos. They've
been crossing the road when the shots were fired. You
could hear the panic. It was chaos, like scary. Over

(17:12):
on his side of Yesler Way, phoenix froze out of
the corner of my eye. The person on the cell
phone just like drops, and it's a weird kind of
drop because it's like like everything just stopped working versus
like someone laying down or being her was like it
just was like, oh. The person who dropped to the

(17:36):
ground was te year old Nicole Westbrook. Nicole had been
shot in the face and the bullet had gone through
her cheeks and shattered her spine. Dennis said he ran
towards her. Everything's slowed down, it went into like slow motion.
I was just trying to keep her alert and awakened
talking to me. So I had my hand kind of

(17:56):
underneath her neck to kind of have her like look
at me and talked me. And I felt blood underneath
her neck. I could tell that's where she had been shocked,
and uh yeah, I just sat there kind of screaming
and yelling for police to come. By this point, Dennis
said the square had emptied. It was scary quiet after

(18:16):
the shooting because everybody was gone. There wasn't a soul
around me. Phoenix was gone too. He had taken off
in pursuit of the person he had seen crouching, who
he thought was the gunman. He tore down the street
past the confused onlookers, and he says he ran into
the cops who were arriving on the scene, and I'm like, yeah,

(18:39):
the shooting with this way, and the cops like hold
up Phoenix. Phoenix says the police wanted to wait for backup.
I'm like, that's ridiculous. I didn't come into this game
to play these rules and like do this ship like
but it was too late. It's mathematically not intelligent to
run around a blind corner into the dark with the
doodoo as a weapon. But it could have done it

(19:01):
if I kept going when I started it, if I
hadn't stopped. I wanted to do something, you know, we
all got just up to do something. In the body
cam footage available online, Phoenix talks to the police a
few times, but I couldn't hear the cops telling him
to turn back either way. Phoenix says he'd lost sight

(19:23):
of the man he was chasing, and he blames himself
for giving up the chase back at the intersection on
Yesler Way. Dennis says he sat with Nicole and her
boyfriend until the ambulance arrived. The couple had just moved
to Seattle three weeks earlier. Nicole had just started class

(19:45):
as in a culinary program at the Art Institute, and
her boyfriend had recently been hired at a screen printing shop.
They were out that night to celebrate their good fortune
and landing a job and starting a new life together
in the city. When the ambulance arrived, Nicole was alive
but in critical condition. Dennis watched the medics pull away

(20:06):
and walked back to his hotel with his shirt covered
in blood. I remember seeing like a he's dressed up
like a superhero ocape. You know you're in downtown Seattle.
It's another crazy guy dressed up in a costume. I
I really didn't think anything of it. It's all gonna
stay with me, probably forever. Um. It just changes you

(20:28):
when something like that happens. Phoenix says that after he
gave up his pursuit of the gunman, he returned to
the scene of the shooting. The cops wouldn't let me
leave because I was the key witness of the thing,
and I'm sitting there on the curb right there, like
on the corner. And then after a little bit of time,
like the crime tape, they just take the crime tape down,

(20:54):
and then I'm sitting there and I'm just just me
and I'm just like sitting next to this pile of
blood on the street in my suit. And it's like
the morning, and like people are coming to work and
like living their lives and doing their thing. And then

(21:16):
like maybe like seven, a firetruck comes by and just
sprays all the blood into the drain. And that was it,
you know what I mean. Like nothing got fixed, nothing

(21:38):
got solved, None of us helped in any way. The
shooter never got captured. We all just didn't do our job.

(22:00):
Nicole never regained consciousness. She died in the hospital three
days after she was shot. It's still an unsolved case.
Her family keeps a Facebook page running, hoping for new
information that might lead to an arrest. There are just
moments in your life that you are never going to forget. Um.

(22:27):
I took a long portion of my life and dedicated
it stopping bad people from doing bad things. And I
don't care if people don't like me. I don't care
if people don't agree with what I did, but I
live with the repercussions what I did every day. You know. Yeah,
I'm just realistically, there's nothing Phoenix could have done to

(22:59):
save no Hole. He was blocked away when the shots
were fired, but maybe that's why he was so affected
by it. When Phoenix told me about how he'd been
inspired by the Night Wind comics as a kid, he'd
vowed that he would never be helpless again, but when
it came to the senseless act of violence that ended
in Nicole Westbrook's life, he was just as powerless as

(23:22):
everyone else. Several of Phoenix's former teammates told me that
he was never the same after that night. Ghost, who
was with Phoenix during the shooting and has known him
since they were in high school, put it bluntly, that
was when my friend, in my mind died, and what
we have now is not who I used to know.

(23:45):
But he he did used to mean a lot to
me as a person. I followed him into gunfire multiple times.
He did too. You know, we all did against our
better judgment often, but in my opinion, he took that
the fact that we couldn't save that one person that night,
way too personally. And I don't know, it sounds terrible

(24:09):
coming out like that, but like there's a nature to
this and we're not gonna win everything, you know, But
he somehow took that upon himself in a way that
I think changed him. Phoenix returned from that devastating patrol

(24:31):
a different man, and the transformation would have consequences for
everyone around him. That's coming up in the days after

(24:57):
Nicole Westbrook's murder, Phoenix is in bad shape. Didn't come
inside a house, take a shower, and take my supersuit,
including my mask off. For four days, I was like
patrolling at night and then just like just sleeping outside
wherever I wanted. I mean, I lost my mind. I

(25:19):
just like stop living for like four days. Phoenix was
fixated on the man he'd seen crouching at the scene
of the crime, and he was determined to find him.
How would you able to find him? Because because knew
what he looked like. I knew what he looked like.
I knew most likely from his clothes. He didn't have
a car. And there's this place called the Jungle. It's
like a lot of homeless encampments just stretched next to

(25:42):
the side of the city freeway, and I was like,
I bet you he's in that place. The jungle stretches
for three miles in a green belt directly underneath Interstate five.
It's a sea of tents with a constant drone of
traffic from the cars fifty ft overhead. According to some reports,
unhoused people have lived in the jungle since as far

(26:05):
back as the nineteen thirties. Phoenix made his way to
the jungle in the hopes of finding the suspect, and
I went through every single ten a ripping part and
gotten fights and destroyed things. This is one of the

(26:32):
few times Phoenix has ever admitted to losing his cool
and going against his own strict moral code. Despite his
objections in the past about homeless outreach not being a
central part of his mission as a superhero, he's always
claimed to offer assistance to those in need when he
comes across them. But rampaging through a homeless encountment and

(26:53):
destroying people's only belongings, Phoenix was out of control. Eventually,
some was like, yo, stop it, this is where that
dude's had And this took me there, and then me
and him. At a conversation, Phoenix told me that when
he finally found the man he'd been hunting for days,
it turned out that he'd been after the wrong person.

(27:14):
Phoenix said the man talked to him and convinced him
that he wasn't the shooter. The police investigating believe it
was a drive by and that the shots had been
fired from a white sedan. When he heard this, Phoenix
felt totally deflated. I went back to like under the
bridge on James Street, there's like a parking lot. I

(27:35):
was sitting up against a pole and ask guy's got
to sleep under the parking lot? And then Ghost found
me because of my cell phone tracker that we had on.
He's like, yo, you gotta stop patrolling. Ghost had been
there the night of the shooting as well, but he
told me he had a different perspective on it than Phoenix.
It does get to me in that way. I have

(27:57):
severe PTSD and I managed it every day in my life.
You know, there'd be something wrong with you if it
didn't get to you. But you can't let one loss
define you, you know, And I think that's what he did.
In the aftermath of the shooting, some team members were
skeptical about how sincere Phoenix's reaction was. Fellow real life

(28:18):
superhero Crystal Marks told me that she always felt that
Phoenix used Nicole Westbrook's murder to his advantage. I think
it definitely left an impact. You can't be a human
and know that that happened and not be changed in
some way. But he keeps coming back, like I can't
rest until her killer is found and and it's again
he uses it for media attention, Like I don't know

(28:39):
if he really was all that impacted Phoenix that interviews
with the media about the murder. Nicole's family thanked him
on their Facebook page for raising awareness, But Phoenix also
had a comic book made which featured the shooting, starring him.
It included graphic images Nicole laying in a pool of

(29:01):
her own blood. Phoenix said on a radio show that
it was intended to shine a light on the unsolved case.
But there's something about making a comic book about a
tragedy like that and making yourself the star that just
feels a little gross to me. Whenever Nichol's murder came
up when I talked to him, Phoenix was still very

(29:23):
emotional about it, even all these years later, I just
I cannot explain why this event it hurts me so
much inside this person I don't know, getting shot by
someone I don't know, in a scenario when the guns
were already done before we could do anything. You know,

(29:46):
there's nothing we could have done. There's no amount of training,
there's no amount of superhero suits or movies or ideas
or beliefs that they are changing. That nothing changes that.
Phoenix told me that after the shooting his approach to
crime fighting totally changed. A start patrol, right about an

(30:12):
hour into patrol, I'd be like, all right, guys, if
I need you, I'll give you a call, and then
I would go tear up the jungle and getting fist
fights with like crazy like just crazy ship, you know,
or like me and Jack would break into an abandoned
house that was full of like homeless people who were
selling drugs in there, and like we would just do
reckless things. I was on a reckless mission. I was
just on one. Phoenix was acting increasingly wild and impulsive.

(30:36):
Evo called him out on it. Eva was the street shooter.
Like every time I tell him about a plan, he
would be like, no, you want to go break into
an abandoned house. No like no right. But the crew
of guys wanted to patrol, and Eva was the secondary
guy that they would follow. Eva grew more and more
frustrated with Phoenix's erratic behavior. You wouldn't answer anything. Do

(30:58):
you want to answer calls? You want to answer text, voicemails, emails,
messages on Facebook or Twitter or anything like that, Like
he was unreachable in the meantime, Like, okay, well the
show must go on. So almost out of necessity, I
would leap into this thing, like, hey, everybody, I just
heard from Phoenix that we're doing Kept Hill tonight. So

(31:20):
meat at our usual spot at eleven o'clock and we'll
figure out roles there and be safe. I asked Phoenix
about what Evo had told me. I think he got
frustrated because he said, oftentimes you would just disappear and
not be reachable, and you'd have to kind of like
step in, And I feel like he felt like that
hindered the patrols. I would agree to what was going
on with you at that time, like that I was

(31:41):
going rogue. So when he's talking about it's like the
rogue era, the rogue era, Phoenix made no apologies about
that chaotic period. Maybe you should go save its sex
trafficking occasionally, or maybe you should do something Evo, because
the thing that Evo has done was just what was
Ebo done? Devo, take any of his cool crimestops. Tell

(32:01):
me when the Evil's cram stops? Oh wait none? Yeah,
but I mean because he have any. I mean you
just interviewed him, right, What was one story he told
you about where he stopped a crime because he doesn't
have any, stopped the bagel Evil stopped zero crimes, full bagels.
I'm not being mean none, So what are you talking about? Bro? Oh?

(32:26):
Phoenix would leave all the time and go fight real
crimes while you walked around and gave food to homeless
people and smiled for photos and ship because you're like
a Captain America and that's great, dude, congratulations for you.
But like I'm in some real ship. We're out here,
people are dying. I want to do some real fucking shit.

(32:47):
As things started to unravel for Phoenix, there were other
troubling lapses in judgment that caused alarm among his teammates.
One incident in particular really rattled Evo. It was a
bottle eleven am and I showed up to his house
and he has passed out on the couch half naked,
and like, hey, dud, gotta get up, man, we gotta go.

(33:08):
As Phoenix was waking up, EVA went to use the bathroom.
That's when he noticed the bottle of pills right next
to the sink of this little medical bottle on its side,
half empty, looking at it's real hypnol, Like, what the
fuck is he doing with fucking date rape drug? What

(33:28):
the hell is that? So I come out and say, hey,
what's the little bottle of Ruffy's out there? And he
just started, like almost panic, speaking at a million miles
per hour, talking about how this friend of his had
roofied purple. So Phoenix got some Roofi's and he was
going to roofy this friend of his in revenge. It

(33:50):
clearly made sense to him, but I was so lost
on like this is something you call the police, Ford, bro,
this is what? How is this helping any or? Like
what does this fix? I asked Phoenix about this incident
and he didn't deny it. That's true, Yeah it happened.
Can you tell? Man? Shouldn't shared that? See when I

(34:12):
said there were things have actually done that are bad, right,
this is one of those things I've actually done. Phoenix
says he'd seen a guy put real hypnol and his
girlfriend's drink, so he threw out the drink, stole the hypno,
and decided to take the matter into his own hands.
I was like, yo, evil, you gotta help me, and uh,
I stole the bottle and he was like, I'm not
going to commit a crime with you. He's like, how

(34:33):
dare you want to hypno someone? I don't even know
if that's where you got it? And I got all
like ridiculous about it, which made sense. Phoenix went through
with this plan without Eva. So then I immediately got
on the phone and called someone else, super friend of
b who was like, down, that's terrible. So we went
to this party and I dropped in this dude's drink
and he just out right. So I rented a hotel,

(34:57):
put him in the hotel, took all of his clothes off,
wrote a note on the door as it thinks for
the good time, and dipped with the guy passed out.
Phoenix says they took his credit card and ordered shrimp
and thirty seven bottles of champagne. We threw the shrimp
all around the room and just put like put cooks bottles,
and then we put condomns over the tops of cooks bottles.
So he just woke up in this room with just

(35:18):
like shrimp and cook's bottles. So was that was that
a Phoenix Jones operation or was that a Ben Photo operation?
I wasn't in my uniform. I would in my regular clothes.
I would never do that as Phoenix Jones. There's no
reason to me this whole story just seems like an
example of Phoenix's immaturity. But it was also an example

(35:38):
of yet another way in which Phoenix was not, as
he keeps insisting perfect. The first time we talked, you
kept insisting that you were perfect at crime fighting. But
then but then today I feel like you just keep
telling all these stories about when you weren't perfect. I'm
curious how you like square those two ideas in crime fighting?
Is just this not breaking the law, not harming other people,

(36:02):
and stopping the crime. Right, moved on it every time.
But what about Nicole. I mean, that's not a win,
not possible to win. But isn't that a little bit
like no, no, no, no, Well, I'm just saying the
person who did it never got caught, right, Well, that's
not a success. Then my job is not to catch
the people who do crimes, is to protect the people
who are getting hurt from the crime. You have a

(36:24):
misconception of what crime fighting is because you don't have
any experience on the streets. There's no tidy closed corners,
not even in police work. Never right. But there's not
one story where I showed up and it got worse,
where I showed up and no one got helped. Where
I showed up and they're like, you broke the law,
or like they see me twenty seven times trying to
say I broke the line. I fucking didn't. There's never

(36:45):
been any of that. It's been flawless. So I don't
care if you don't agree, you're just wrong. I hate
to beat a dead horse here, but I am fixated
on this claim of Phoenix is that he is perfect
at crime fighting, largely because I want to believe in
Phoenix strongs and I want to believe in what he
stands for. I see the need for real life superheroes

(37:08):
and the potential benefit to society that can provide. But
Phoenix's life is messy, and there are so many people
who say he's betrayed them that it's hard to know
if he is to be trusted. And Phoenix has claimed
that he is perfect is one of the instances where
I feel entirely confident. Pushing back against his version of
the story. We have had this debate where you say

(37:30):
you're perfect crime fighting. I disagree. What I'm more interested
in is like why because you are admittedly have this
disastrous life, Like you're always like late to things like
your cart, you have a lot of personal struggles. And
the reason I find the idea that you can be
perfect in crime fighting is like when you put on

(37:50):
the suit, you don't become a different person. So like,
how in your mind you justify this compartmentalization where you're
perfect at this thing, but everything else in your life
is a mess. And more importantly, like why do you
feel this need to be perfect? I don't. I'm single
minded to the point of recklessness, and that's why I'm
so good at crime fighting and why I'm so bad
at everything else. Like I've got to come to an

(38:10):
interview today, right, But my car got told because of something,
so now I'm focused on that car Tale and I'm
late for the interview. But when you walk up to
a crime scenario, it happens in front of you and
it involves all of your attention. It's not ideal. They
need to be per but it's just what I am.
Every time we get into this debate, we reach a stalemate.
But regardless of whether or not you believe Phoenix is logic,

(38:31):
I think it's safe to say that what he sees
as as great as failure as a superhero. Nicole Westbrook's
murder changed his life forever. I don't know it was weird,
but if we like makes chapters of people's lives were
like in like our time, we use before Christ like
B C N A D. My life would be like

(38:53):
before Nicole and after it just never got better. And
it's really like where the team started unraveling. That unraveling
would ultimately lead to a superhero breakup on a mass scale.
Next time the rain City Superheroes come crashing to an end.

(39:37):
The Superhero Complex is hosted and written by Me David
Weinberg and reported by Me, Amalia Sortland and Caroline THORNA
production from Amalia Shortland and Caroline thornha Sean Glenn, Max
O'Brien and David Waters are executive producers. Fact checking by
Andrew Schwartz. Production management from Sharie Houston, Frankie Taylor and

(39:59):
Charlie Wolf. Sound design, mixing and scoring by Nicholas Alexander
and Daniel Kempson. Music supervision by Nicholas Alexander and David Waters.
Original music is composed by Paul Housden. Special thanks to
Peter Tangan, Willard Foxton, Matt Olmera, Katrina Norvelle Beth and Macaluso,

(40:20):
Born Rosenbaum, Shelby Shnkman and all the team at U
t A. For more from Novel, visit novel dot Audio