NOTE: The following is the unredacted first chapter of Against Superheroes, reported here for completeness of the historical record. Footnotes as per the original.

Z3 begins with a fragment from Sinister’s earliest recollections of the initial transformation:

The fear began with the realization that my right arm was becoming unusually heavy. The weight of the bracelet had not changed dramatically, but it seemed that my arm was thickening and I feared I would lower my arm and the combined artifact would slip off, risking possible damage on the tile floor, and so I reflexively swung my left arm to stabilize my wrist. The blank, formless face of the figure was less tarnished than the rest and the dim bathroom light dancing across the visage gave it a strangely animated swirling quality. Soon the weight in my arm moved through my shoulders and into my neck. I staggered and dropped to my knees.

All Z collectives know this passage, but we disagree with Z2’s reading in Peregrinations of Mythic Specialness¹ that the inclusion of the specific details concerning the type of light amongst the picturesque imagery in the passage is a deliberate effort on the part of later redactors to try to concretize a mythic passage. It is equally possible to simply conclude that the author was not concerned with the overall flow of the writing but instead intended to convey facts while capturing aspects of his internal state.

Thus, Z3 opens with the strongest hypothesis to date concerning the historicity of Sinister: we believe the evidence supports the conclusion that such a being did in fact exist and that his narrative connections to certain technologies similar to those present among the Collectives were an accurate portrayal of events that transpired, or at least rose to the greatest level of accuracy he could achieve.… Read the rest