Unique Outlook

"It's almost Freudian. When you wear a mask, you're actually able to become who you really are. It becomes kind of like a drug."

DAVE MONTGOMERY

, also known as Nihilist, who patrols Salt Lake City in costume with other self-styled superheroes on their mission to fight crime.

Eat your heart out, Batman. In a niche of urban life that has evolved in recent years somewhere between comic-book fantasy and the Boy Scout oath, a cadre of self-cast crusaders — some with capes, some without, all with something to prove — are on the march.


They prowl the night in Boston, in San Francisco, in Milwaukee, in Minneapolis, even as far away as Australia. Whether they are making the world safer or just weirder remains an open question.


Some go out armed with gear like mace, pepper spray or police batons; others say they carry only cellphones, aiming to be eyes and ears for the police, who in most cities, including Salt Lake City, are keeping a wary distance.


“We’re not endorsing them, supporting them, condemning them or anything else — we’re staying neutral and out of it,” said Detective Joshua Ashdown, a spokesman for the Salt Lake City Police Department. “The ones we endorse are the ones we have trained.”


Red Voltage, who in mild-mannered daytime life is a 23-year-old residential leasing manager named Roman Daniels, casually waved a gloved hand to his female drive-by fan. Clad head to toe in a red-and-black leather suit, his face covered by spandex, he is, he said, a different man when the mask goes on — a better man.


“But there are times when I’m putting the suit on, and I’m just like, ‘How crazy am I to do this?’ I do feel odd and out of the box,” said Mr. Daniels, who took over leadership of the group here, called the Black Monday Society, about six months ago, after two years of patrols. “But it’s good,” he added. “It feels really good — for the most part.”


Mike Gailey, a burly former bouncer at a strip club whose crime-fighting persona is called Asylum, said that for him, joining the Black Monday Society was partly about making amends for things in his past, like the time he spent collecting debts for drug dealers.


“I was a thug,” said Mr. Gailey, 31. “There are a lot of guys like me that have pasts they’re trying to make up for.”


Another Black Monday patroller described himself as a former gang member. The group’s co-founder, Dave Montgomery, a tattoo artist known in the street as the black-leather-clad Nihilist, said he was a former alcoholic who put on the mask when he stopped drinking.


That crime fighters would have issues is, of course, a time-honored tradition, too. Superman was sent to Earth by his parents. The X-Men are ostracized mutants. And let’s not even get started on the wealthy Bruce Wayne — he of the Bat Cave and Boy Wonder sidekick.


Read more@ http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/26/us/crusaders-take-page-and-outfits-from-comics.html?