The rain was falling in thick, lazy sheets across the city of Cleveland, Ohio — a city that, let's be honest, was used to being rained on both literally and metaphorically — when thirty-one-year-old Marcus Elijah Webb made the single most consequential decision of his entire life.
He pressed play.
Now, to be fair to Marcus, this was not an unusual decision. Marcus pressed play on things approximately four hundred and seventy-two times a day. He was a musician, after all — and not just any musician, but the kind of musician who had opinions. The kind of musician who could talk for forty-five minutes about the tonal difference between a 1973 Fender Rhodes and a 1975 Fender Rhodes. The kind of musician who had once gotten into a fistfight at a jazz bar in Brooklyn because someone — some absolute philistine — had called smooth jazz "real jazz." The kind of musician who had a YouTube channel with exactly 2,847 subscribers, a Patreon with exactly nineteen patrons (three of whom were his mother using different email addresses), and a SoundCloud that had, on one glorious occasion, been retweeted by Questlove.
Questlove had then immediately deleted the retweet, but Marcus counted it anyway.
Marcus was, in the grand tapestry of the music industry, a thread. Not even a particularly colorful thread. More of a beige thread. A thread that held things together in ways nobody noticed, and that could be removed without anyone really caring. He did session work. He played keyboards at weddings. He had once played bass for a Christian rock band called "Psalms and Recreation" for exactly three months before quitting because the lead singer kept trying to convert him during rehearsal and also because they were, objectively and without exaggeration, the worst band that had ever existed in the recorded history of human civilization.
But Marcus loved music. He loved it the way other people loved their children, or their partners, or breathing. He loved it in a bone-deep, cellular, almost pathological way. He loved the way a chord progression could make you feel like you were flying. He loved the way a melody could reach into your chest and grab your heart and squeeze it until tears came out of your eyes. He loved the way a really, truly, perfectly crafted piece of music could make you feel like you were six years old again, sitting cross-legged on the carpet in your pajamas, watching cartoons on a Saturday morning while the smell of your grandmother's pancakes drifted in from the kitchen, and the whole world was small and safe and made entirely of primary colors.
That was the thing about Marcus. For all his opinions, for all his pretensions, for all his ability to lecture a room full of disinterested strangers about the harmonic complexity of Steely Dan's "Aja" — the music that hit him hardest, the music that reached deepest, the music that made him feel things so big that his body could barely contain them — was cartoon theme songs.
Not all cartoon theme songs, mind you. Marcus was not an animal. He had standards. He was talking about the good ones. The ones from the golden age. The ones that slapped so hard they left a permanent imprint on your neural pathways. The ones that were so perfectly, impossibly, unreasonably catchy that they constituted a form of auditory sorcery. The theme from DuckTales. The theme from Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers. The theme from Darkwing Duck. The theme from Gargoyles — oh god, Gargoyles, that orchestral masterpiece that had no business being as cinematic as it was for a show about stone creatures who lived on top of a skyscraper. The theme from X-Men: The Animated Series, which was basically just a guitar having a religious experience. The theme from Batman: The Animated Series, which was basically just Danny Elfman descending from the heavens to personally punch you in the feelings. The theme from Animaniacs, which was basically just pure, distilled chaos energy converted into musical form.
But there was one. One theme song. One singular, transcendent, absolute masterpiece of animated television music that Marcus Webb held above all others. One theme song that he had listened to so many times that it was no longer a song to him but rather a part of his actual identity, woven into the fabric of his being like a strand of DNA, inseparable from the person he was, the person he had been, and the person he would ever be.
The theme from The Spectacular Spider-Man.
If you know, you know. And if you don't know, then Marcus would have happily — eagerly — spent the next three to seven hours of your life explaining it to you, whether you wanted him to or not.
Because The Spectacular Spider-Man was perfect.
Not good. Not great. Not excellent. Perfect.
It was the Platonic ideal of a Spider-Man cartoon. It was the show that understood Peter Parker better than most of the actual comics did. It was the show that gave you a Peter Parker who was awkward and brilliant and broke and desperate and funny and tragic and sixteen, actually sixteen, not "Hollywood sixteen" where the actor is twenty-seven and has visible abs, but actually sixteen, with all the crushing insecurity and hormonal confusion and social catastrophe that entailed. It was the show that understood that Spider-Man wasn't really about punching guys — although there was plenty of punching, and the punching was spectacular, pun intended — but about a kid trying to hold his life together while the universe kept throwing increasingly absurd obstacles at him.
It was the show that had been cancelled after two seasons because of some corporate rights dispute between Sony and Disney/Marvel, and Marcus had never — never — forgiven anyone involved. He had, on more than one occasion, lying awake at three in the morning, staring at his ceiling, drafted angry letters to Sony executives that he never sent. He had, on more than one occasion, gotten moderately drunk and delivered impassioned monologues to his cat, Professor Thelonious Monk — named after the jazz pianist, obviously — about how the cancellation of The Spectacular Spider-Man was the single greatest crime against art since the burning of the Library of Alexandria.
Professor Thelonious Monk did not care. Professor Thelonious Monk was a cat.
But the theme song. Oh, the theme song.
"Living on the edge, fighting crime, spinning webs..."
It was a pop-punk anthem that had no right to exist in a children's cartoon. It was the kind of song that grabbed you by the collar and shook you and said "HEY. HEY YOU. ARE YOU READY TO WATCH A TEENAGER FIGHT A RHINO? BECAUSE YOU'RE ABOUT TO WATCH A TEENAGER FIGHT A RHINO AND IT'S GOING TO BE AMAZING." It was energetic. It was catchy. It was driving. It was the musical equivalent of doing a backflip off a building while shooting webs at a helicopter. It was, in Marcus's professional musical opinion, the single greatest television theme song ever composed, and he would die on that hill.
He would, as it turned out, die on that hill much sooner and much more literally than he had anticipated.
It was a Tuesday. This is important for no reason whatsoever, but Marcus would later reflect that of course it was a Tuesday. Tuesdays were the most nothing day of the week. Mondays had the distinction of being terrible. Wednesdays were the middle. Thursdays were almost-Fridays. Fridays were Fridays. Saturdays and Sundays were the weekend. But Tuesdays? Tuesdays were just there, squatting in the calendar like a narrative void, contributing nothing, asking for nothing, existing purely out of calendrical obligation. If any day of the week was going to kill him, it would be a Tuesday.
Marcus was driving home from a session gig at a recording studio in the Flats, where he had spent the last six hours laying down keyboard tracks for a local rapper named Lil' Dumpster Fire — that was his actual, legal, chosen-on-purpose stage name — who was working on an album called "Raccoon Season." Marcus had not asked what "Raccoon Season" meant. Marcus had not wanted to know what "Raccoon Season" meant. Marcus had simply played the chords he was asked to play, collected his three hundred dollars, and left.
It was 11:47 PM. The rain was coming down hard enough that his windshield wipers — which were old and streaky and had needed replacing for approximately eight months — were essentially useless, smearing the water around in wide, unhelpful arcs that turned the road ahead into an impressionist painting. His 2009 Honda Civic, which he had affectionately named "Dolores" after Dolores O'Riordan of The Cranberries because it made a lot of concerning noises, was doing that thing again where the heat only worked on the passenger side, so Marcus was simultaneously cold on his left side and warm on his right side, like a human rotisserie chicken that had been removed from the oven too early.
He was tired. He was hungry. He had a headache from six hours of listening to Lil' Dumpster Fire rap about, among other things: raccoons (obviously), the Cleveland Browns (tragically), a woman named Shanice who had apparently wronged him in some unspecified but devastating way, and, for reasons that were never explained, the 1997 film Titanic.
He wanted to go home. He wanted to eat the leftover lo mein that was waiting for him in his refrigerator. He wanted to sit on his couch and pet Professor Thelonious Monk and watch something — anything — that was not Lil' Dumpster Fire.
And he wanted to listen to music. His music. Not Lil' Dumpster Fire's music. Not Psalms and Recreation's music. Not the music of the wedding band he sometimes played with on weekends. His music. The music that was his. The music that belonged to Marcus Elijah Webb, age thirty-one, resident of Cleveland, Ohio, owner of one cat and approximately $47,000 in student loan debt.
So he reached over to his phone — which was mounted on the dashboard with one of those suction-cup holders that was slowly losing its suction and tilting forward at an increasingly alarming angle, like the Leaning Tower of Pisa if the Leaning Tower of Pisa were a piece of cheap plastic from Amazon — and he opened Spotify.
He should have kept his eyes on the road.
He knew he should have kept his eyes on the road.
Everyone knows they should keep their eyes on the road.
But the road was just... road. It was dark and wet and boring, just gray asphalt and white lines and rain, and his phone was right there, and his playlist was right there, and the song he wanted was right there, and it would only take a second, just one second, just one tiny little second to—
He pressed play.
The opening notes of The Spectacular Spider-Man theme song exploded out of Dolores's speakers — which were, like everything else about Dolores, of questionable quality and reliability, but which Marcus had augmented with an aftermarket subwoofer that he had installed himself using a YouTube tutorial and a prayer — and Marcus felt it. That feeling. That feeling that was better than coffee, better than whiskey, better than sex — okay, maybe not better than sex, but at least competitive with sex — that feeling of a perfect song hitting his eardrums and traveling down his spine and settling into his bones like liquid sunshine.
"LIVING ON THE EDGE—"
Marcus was singing along. Of course he was singing along. He always sang along. He sang along with the ferocity and passion of a man who was not, technically, a good singer. Marcus was an instrumentalist. His voice was, charitably, "enthusiastic." Less charitably, it sounded like a goat that had been given a microphone and a dream.
"FIGHTING CRIME, SPINNING WEBS—"
He was doing the hand motions. Not the steering-wheel-holding hand motions. The Spider-Man web-shooting hand motions. Both hands. Off the wheel. In a car. In the rain. At nearly midnight. On a road that was currently experiencing what meteorologists would later describe as "significant precipitation."
"SWINGING FROM THE HIGHEST LEDGE—"
The thing about The Spectacular Spider-Man theme song is that it has this quality — this indescribable, irresistible, almost gravitational quality — that makes it physically impossible to listen to at anything less than maximum volume and maximum commitment. You cannot listen to this song passively. You cannot have this song on in the background while you do dishes. This song demands your full, undivided, complete attention. This song is not a passenger. This song is the driver. And Marcus Webb, on this rainy Tuesday night in Cleveland, Ohio, was letting it drive.
"HE CAN LEAP ABOVE OUR HEADS—"
His eyes were closed. His eyes were literally closed. He was driving a car on a wet road in the dark with his eyes closed and his hands off the wheel and he was singing about Spider-Man.
This was, by any objective standard, an incredibly stupid thing to do.
Marcus would be the first to admit this. If you had asked him, in that moment, "Marcus, is this an incredibly stupid thing to do?" he would have said, "Yes, absolutely, one hundred percent, this is catastrophically stupid, but have you heard this song? HAVE YOU HEARD THIS SONG?"
"AHHH AHHH AHHH AH AHHH—"
The ah-ah-ah part. The bridge. The part where the song transcended mere music and became a spiritual experience. The part where Marcus always — always — threw his head back and belted it out like he was performing at Madison Square Garden instead of sitting in a Honda Civic that smelled faintly of Chinese food and cat hair.
He didn't see the truck.
He didn't hear the truck — not over the song, not over his own voice, not over the rain hammering on the roof and the wipers squeaking uselessly and the subwoofer rattling the trunk like a caged animal trying to escape.
He didn't feel the truck. Not yet.
What he felt, in the last 0.7 seconds of his life, was this:
The song. The music. The cascading wave of pure, uncut, pharmaceutical-grade nostalgia that came with it. He was thirty-one years old but he was also ten years old. He was in his car but he was also on the couch in his grandmother's living room, wearing his Spider-Man pajamas — the ones with the feet in them, the ones that were too small but that he refused to throw away because they were Spider-Man pajamas — and he was watching the greatest cartoon ever made, and the world was small and safe and made entirely of primary colors, and somewhere in the kitchen his grandmother was making pancakes, and Professor Thelonious Monk wasn't born yet, and Lil' Dumpster Fire wasn't born yet, and student loans didn't exist yet, and the music was everything, and everything was the music, and—
The truck hit Dolores at approximately fifty-five miles per hour.
It was a FedEx truck. Marcus had always liked FedEx. They had delivered his aftermarket subwoofer. They had delivered his MIDI keyboard. They had, just last week, delivered the new cat bed he'd ordered for Professor Thelonious Monk, which Professor Thelonious Monk had completely ignored in favor of sleeping in the cardboard box it came in, because Professor Thelonious Monk was, as previously established, a cat.
The impact was instantaneous and absolute. Dolores crumpled like a beer can being stepped on by God. The windshield shattered into a million crystalline fragments that caught the truck's headlights and, for one impossibly brief moment, looked like stars. The subwoofer in the trunk made a sound like a dying whale. The suction-cup phone mount finally gave up its eternal struggle against gravity and the phone flew forward and hit the dashboard and cracked in exactly the same place it had been cracked since Marcus dropped it in a Wendy's parking lot two years ago.
And through all of it — through the crunching of metal and the shattering of glass and the screaming of physics being violated in ways that physics was not designed to be violated — the song played on.
"SPECTACULAR, SPECTACULAR, SPIDER-MAN—"
The last thing Marcus Elijah Webb heard, as his consciousness flickered and dimmed and began its long slide into whatever came next, was the theme song from The Spectacular Spider-Man. Which, all things considered, was probably the most on-brand way he could have possibly died.
His last thought, remarkably and somewhat pathetically, was not about his family, or his friends, or his cat, or his life, or the things he'd done or left undone, or the lo mein in his refrigerator, or the three hundred dollars he'd just earned from Lil' Dumpster Fire, or the meaning of existence, or the nature of mortality, or any of the other things that people are supposed to think about in their final moments.
His last thought was:
That show was perfect. It was absolutely perfect. And they cancelled it. They cancelled it and the world is worse for it and I will never, ever, EVER forgive—
And then there was nothing.
And then there was... not nothing.
This was surprising.
Marcus had not been an especially religious person. He had been raised Baptist by his grandmother, had attended church every Sunday until he was fourteen, had sung in the choir (badly, as previously noted), and had gradually drifted away from organized religion in his late teens, not out of any dramatic crisis of faith but simply because he had discovered jazz, and jazz rehearsal was on Sunday mornings, and also because the choir director, a woman named Mrs. Dorothy Patterson, had once told him — in front of everyone, in front of the entire congregation, in front of God — that his voice sounded like "a cat being run through a washing machine," which was both devastatingly accurate and devastatingly hurtful.
So Marcus had not expected an afterlife. He had expected nothing. He had expected the eternal, dreamless sleep that atheists and agnostics and people who've been insulted by choir directors quietly hope for — the simple, clean cessation of consciousness, like a television being turned off, no static, no residual glow, just off.
But this was not nothing. This was... something.
It was dark, but not the dark of unconsciousness. It was the dark of a room. A room with no visible walls or floor or ceiling, but a room nonetheless — a space that felt enclosed, that felt contained, that felt like it had edges, even if Marcus couldn't see them. It was the kind of dark that you could stand in. The kind of dark that had texture. It felt warm, like the inside of a blanket fort. It smelled like... was that... was that pancakes?
Marcus was standing. This was also surprising, given that the last time he had been aware of his body, his body had been experiencing what insurance companies euphemistically call "a total loss event." But here he was, standing, on what felt like a solid surface, in his body — which felt intact, which felt whole, which felt fine, actually, better than fine, the headache was gone and his left knee wasn't doing that thing it always did and his back didn't hurt from hunching over a keyboard for six hours — and looking around at a darkness that was not quite dark enough to be completely dark.
"What," said Marcus, to no one, into the void, "the fuck."
His voice sounded strange. Not echoey, exactly. More like it was being absorbed by the darkness around him, drunk up like water by a sponge. It sounded close. It sounded small. It sounded like the voice of a man who was very confused and also possibly dead.
"Hello?" he tried.
Nothing.
"Is anyone there?"
Nothing.
"If this is hell, I'd like to speak to a manager."
Nothing. And then—
A sound.
Not a voice. Not a word. A sound. A single, crystalline, impossibly clear musical note that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. It hung in the darkness like a drop of liquid gold, vibrating at a frequency that Marcus's musician brain immediately and automatically identified as a perfect A440 — the tuning standard, the universal reference pitch, the note that every orchestra in the world tuned to before a performance.
Another note. A C#5. A third above the first. Then an E5. A major triad. A-C#-E. A major. The happiest of the major keys, bright and warm and golden, the key of sunshine and Saturday mornings.
And then, slowly, impossibly, like a sunrise made of sound, the notes began to multiply and layer and weave together, and Marcus heard — felt — a melody begin to take shape in the darkness around him. It was simple at first, just a handful of notes picking their way forward like footsteps on a path, but it grew, and it swelled, and it deepened, adding harmonies and counter-melodies and rhythmic textures, and Marcus realized with a jolt of recognition so powerful it was almost painful that he knew this melody.
He knew it because he had heard it a thousand times. Ten thousand times. He knew it because it was written on the inside of his skull. He knew it because it was the melody that played in his head when he thought about being small and safe and surrounded by primary colors.
It was the DuckTales theme song.
Not the 2017 reboot version. The original. The 1987 original. The one with the drums and the synths and the choir of children singing "WOO-OO" with such unbridled enthusiasm that it bordered on mania. The one that was, by any empirical measure, one of the most aggressively catchy pieces of music ever created by human beings. The one that, once lodged in your brain, could not be removed by any known force, including therapy.
It was perfect. Every note, every beat, every harmony, every texture — perfect. Not like a recording. Not like a performance. Like the idea of the song, the Platonic form of the song, the song as it existed in the mind of God or the universe or whoever was responsible for the existence of music.
And as the song played, the darkness began to change.
Color bled into the void like ink dropping into water. Not real color — not the color of the physical world, with its complicated wavelengths and reflections and refractions — but cartoon color. Bright, flat, saturated, outlined in black. The color of hand-painted animation cels. The color of Saturday morning. Blue appeared overhead, not a sky but the idea of a sky. Green appeared beneath his feet, not grass but the concept of grass. The world was assembling itself around him like a pop-up book being opened by cosmic hands.
And then, directly in front of Marcus, floating in the air at approximately eye level, a screen appeared.
It was not a television screen. It was not a computer monitor. It was not a phone screen or a tablet screen or a movie screen. It was more like a window — a rectangular portal into pure, white, empty space — and on this window, in letters that were bold and colorful and animated, letters that bounced and wiggled and sparkled with the irrepressible energy of a Saturday morning commercial break, words began to appear.
CONGRATULATIONS, MARCUS ELIJAH WEBB!
YOU HAVE DIED!
Marcus stared at the screen.
The screen stared back.
The DuckTales theme song continued to play.
"Woo-oo," said Marcus, flatly.
New words appeared on the screen.
WE KNOW, RIGHT? BUMMER!
BUT DON'T WORRY! BECAUSE YOU HAVE BEEN SELECTED FOR A VERY SPECIAL OPPORTUNITY!
The letters were doing a little dance now. They were literally dancing. The C in CONGRATULATIONS was doing the cha-cha. The exclamation point at the end of OPPORTUNITY was doing the robot. It was, Marcus thought, deeply and profoundly surreal, and also he was probably in a coma and this was a hallucination brought on by the FedEx truck that had restructured his Honda Civic and, by extension, his skeleton.
"Selected," Marcus repeated. "Selected by whom? For what? What is happening? Where am I? Am I dead? Am I in a coma? Am I having a fever dream? Did Lil' Dumpster Fire put something in the studio coffee? He seemed like the kind of person who would put something in the studio coffee."
The screen flickered. The dancing letters dissolved and were replaced by new ones.
PLEASE HOLD! YOUR SYSTEM IS LOADING!
"My what?"
YOUR SYSTEM!
"What system?"
THE NOSTALGIC CHILDHOOD SYSTEM!
PATENT PENDING!
PLEASE DO NOT ATTEMPT TO REPLICATE, REVERSE-ENGINEER, OR REDISTRIBUTE THE NOSTALGIC CHILDHOOD SYSTEM WITHOUT EXPLICIT WRITTEN PERMISSION FROM THE COSMIC NARRATIVE AUTHORITY, A SUBSIDIARY OF PLOT CONVENIENCE INCORPORATED, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED!
Marcus opened his mouth. Then he closed it. Then he opened it again. Then he closed it again. He did this several more times, looking very much like a fish that had been shown a tax return.
The DuckTales theme song reached its crescendo — "D-D-D-DANGER LURKS BEHIND YOU" — and then faded into silence. The silence lasted exactly three seconds. Then a new song started playing.
The Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers theme song.
"Okay," said Marcus. "Okay. Okay okay okay. Let me just... let me just process this for a second. I was driving home. I was listening to the Spectacular Spider-Man theme. I was — okay, I was being irresponsible, I was singing with my eyes closed, I accept that, that was on me — and then a truck hit me. And now I'm... here. In a cartoon void. With a floating screen. And the Rescue Rangers theme song is playing. And something called the Nostalgic Childhood System is loading."
CORRECT!
"Cool. Cool cool cool cool cool. I'm losing my mind. That's what's happening. I'm in a hospital bed somewhere and my brain is doing that thing where it generates elaborate hallucinations to protect me from the reality that my spine is now shaped like a question mark."
INCORRECT!
YOU ARE, IN FACT, VERY DEAD!
LIKE, SUPER DEAD!
THE DEADEST!
"That's not a word."
IT IS NOW! THE NOSTALGIC CHILDHOOD SYSTEM HAS EXTENSIVE VOCABULARY PRIVILEGES!
Marcus ran his hands over his face. His hands felt real. His face felt real. The gesture felt real. The mounting existential crisis felt extremely real.
"Okay," he said. "Okay. Let's say, hypothetically, just for the sake of argument, that I am dead. Let's say that I, Marcus Elijah Webb, age thirty-one, musician, cat owner, session player for Lil' Dumpster Fire, am in fact no longer alive. What happens now? Pearly gates? Lake of fire? Mrs. Dorothy Patterson telling me my voice sounds like a cat in a washing machine for all eternity? What?"
The screen went blank for a moment. Then, slowly, with a theatrical gravity that was completely undermined by the fact that the Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers theme song was still playing in the background, new words appeared.
MARCUS ELIJAH WEBB.
AGE AT DEATH: 31.
CAUSE OF DEATH: VEHICULAR IMPACT WHILE PERFORMING AN UNAUTHORIZED VOCAL COVER OF "THE SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN" THEME SONG (2008, COMPOSED BY THE TENDER BOX, PERFORMED BY THE TENDER BOX, PRODUCED BY THE TENDER BOX FOR SONY PICTURES TELEVISION AND MARVEL ENTERTAINMENT).
"You didn't have to be that specific."
WE WANTED TO.
ANYWAY.
DUE TO YOUR EXTRAORDINARY AND FRANKLY UNPRECEDENTED LEVEL OF EMOTIONAL ATTACHMENT TO THE THEME SONGS OF ANIMATED TELEVISION PROGRAMS FROM THE LATE 20TH AND EARLY 21ST CENTURIES —
"I wouldn't say unprecedented—"
— WE WOULD —
— YOU HAVE BEEN SELECTED FOR REBIRTH IN AN ALTERNATE REALITY!
Marcus blinked.
SPECIFICALLY, YOU WILL BE REBORN IN THE MARVEL COMICS UNIVERSE!
Marcus blinked again.
THE 616 CONTINUITY!
Marcus blinked a third time, so hard that his eyes nearly turned inside out.
THE MAIN ONE!
THE ONE WITH ALL THE SUPERHEROES!
AND THE SUPERVILLAINS!
AND THE COSMIC ENTITIES!
AND THE INCREDIBLY CONVOLUTED PUBLICATION HISTORY THAT MAKES NO SENSE IF YOU THINK ABOUT IT FOR MORE THAN THIRTY SECONDS!
"I'm sorry," said Marcus, slowly, carefully, enunciating each word as if he were explaining something to a very small and very confused child, "did you just say the Marvel Comics Universe?"
YES!
"The one with the Avengers."
YES!
"The one with the X-Men."
YES!
"The one with Spider-Man. The actual, real, not-a-cartoon Spider-Man."
WELL, HE'S REAL IN THAT UNIVERSE, SO YES!
"The one where, on any given Tuesday — and it's always a Tuesday — a planet-eating space god might show up and try to devour the Earth, or a time-traveling despot might try to enslave all of mutantkind, or a mad titan might snap half the universe out of existence, or Doctor Doom might — oh, I don't know — build a machine that turns the sun inside out or whatever the hell Doctor Doom does on a Wednesday?"
YES! THAT ONE! ISN'T IT EXCITING?
"It is TERRIFYING! That is the single most dangerous fictional universe ever conceived by human imagination! People die in that universe like it's a sport! They come back, sure, but they die first! And it hurts! Why — why — would anyone choose to be reborn there?"
WELL, YOU DIDN'T CHOOSE! WE CHOSE FOR YOU! BECAUSE OF THE MUSIC THING!
"What music thing?!"
THE THEME SONG THING! KEEP UP, MARCUS!
The screen cleared itself with a cheerful little animation — the words literally walked off the edge of the screen, waving goodbye as they went — and was replaced by a new display. This one was different. More structured. More formal. It looked, Marcus realized with a growing sense of unease, like a character sheet.
╔══════════════════════════════════════════════╗
║ THE NOSTALGIC CHILDHOOD SYSTEM ║
║ Version 1.0 (Saturdays Are For Cartoons Edition) ║
╠══════════════════════════════════════════════╣
║ USER: Marcus Elijah Webb ║
║ STATUS: Dead (Pending Reincarnation) ║
║ NOSTALGIA POINTS: 0 ║
║ SONGS PERFORMED: 0 ║
║ ABILITIES UNLOCKED: None ║
║ THREAT LEVEL: 0 (Civilian) ║
║ REINCARNATION STATUS: Awaiting Confirmation ║
╚══════════════════════════════════════════════╝
Marcus stared at the character sheet. The character sheet stared back. The Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers theme song finally ended, and was replaced — because of course it was replaced — by the Darkwing Duck theme song.
"Let's get dangerous," Marcus muttered, and immediately hated himself for it.
THAT'S THE SPIRIT!
"That wasn't — I wasn't being enthusiastic, I was being sarcastic—"
SARCASM AND ENTHUSIASM ARE THE SAME THING WHEN YOU'RE DEAD! NOW, SHALL WE EXPLAIN HOW THE SYSTEM WORKS?
"Do I have a choice?"
NO!
"Then by all means. Explain away. Explain how the magical cartoon jukebox is going to send me to a universe where the Hulk exists and can benchpress a mountain."
The screen cleared again. A new display appeared, this time formatted like a instruction manual — but not a normal instruction manual. A fun instruction manual. The kind of instruction manual that would have been included in a cereal box in 1994, printed on thin cardboard, with cartoon illustrations and bright colors and that slightly chemical smell of mass-produced children's marketing materials.
═══════════════════════════════════════════
HOW THE NOSTALGIC CHILDHOOD SYSTEM WORKS!
A FUN AND EASY GUIDE!
═══════════════════════════════════════════
STEP 1: SING THE SONGS!
When you sing, hum, play, or otherwise perform a theme song from a cartoon that was part of your childhood (or, more broadly, a cartoon that evokes strong nostalgic feelings in a significant portion of the human population), you will generate NOSTALGIA POINTS (NP)!
The amount of NP generated depends on several factors:
- How iconic the theme song is (more iconic = more NP!)
- How well you perform it (quality matters, Marcus!)
- How many people hear you perform it (audience bonus!)
- How strongly the performance evokes genuine nostalgic emotion in the listeners (the feels bonus!)
STEP 2: SPEND THE POINTS!
NP can be spent in the NOSTALGIA SHOP to purchase ABILITIES, UPGRADES, and ITEMS inspired by the cartoons from which the theme songs originate!
For example:
- Singing the "DuckTales" theme might let you purchase Scrooge McDuck's ability to swim through gold coins! (Actual utility: minimal! But very fun!)
- Singing the "Darkwing Duck" theme might let you purchase enhanced agility and a grappling hook!
- Singing the "X-Men: The Animated Series" theme might let you purchase a minor mutant-adjacent ability!
NOTE: Abilities are scaled to your current power level! Early abilities will be modest! You are not going to be punching Galactus in the face on day one! Or day one hundred! Or possibly ever! Please manage your expectations!
STEP 3: LEVEL UP!
As you accumulate NP and purchase abilities, your THREAT LEVEL will increase! This is important because:
- Higher threat levels attract more attention from both heroes and villains!
- Higher threat levels unlock more powerful abilities in the shop!
- Higher threat levels make your life more interesting! (And by "interesting" we mean "dangerous"! And by "dangerous" we mean "you might die again"! But don't worry! If you die in the Marvel Universe, you'll just be regular dead! No third chances! So try not to die!)
═══════════════════════════════════════════
Marcus read the entire thing twice. Then he read it a third time. Then he read it a fourth time, very slowly, mouthing each word, the way you read a lease agreement when you suspect the landlord is trying to screw you.
"Okay," he said. "I have questions."
WE HAVE ANSWERS! MAYBE!
"Question one: Why me? Of all the people in the world — of all the billions of people who have ever watched cartoons and listened to theme songs — why was I specifically chosen for this?"
BECAUSE YOU DIED WHILE LISTENING TO A CARTOON THEME SONG! THAT'S NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE! YOU'RE SPECIAL!
"That can't possibly be true. Statistically, at least one other person in the history of the world must have died while a cartoon theme song was playing."
OKAY, FINE, OTHER PEOPLE HAVE DIED WHILE CARTOON THEME SONGS WERE PLAYING. BUT YOU'RE THE FIRST ONE WHO DIED BECAUSE OF IT! THE THEME SONG WAS THE DIRECT, PROXIMATE, BUT-FOR CAUSE OF YOUR DEATH! YOU CLOSED YOUR EYES AND TOOK YOUR HANDS OFF THE WHEEL BECAUSE THE SONG WAS TOO GOOD! THAT'S COMMITMENT! THAT'S PASSION! THAT'S THE KIND OF INSANE, RECKLESS, DEEPLY INADVISABLE DEVOTION TO ANIMATED TELEVISION MUSIC THAT WE LOOK FOR IN A SYSTEM HOST!
Marcus wanted to argue with this, but he couldn't, because it was entirely accurate.
"Question two: You said I'd be reborn in the Marvel Comics Universe. What does that mean, practically? Am I going to be a baby? Am I going to have to go through puberty again? Because I'm going to be honest with you, puberty was rough the first time, I had a voice like a broken clarinet for two years and my skin looked like the surface of the moon, and I am not doing that again."
NO BABY STUFF! YOU WILL BE REBORN AS AN ADULT! SAME AGE, SAME APPEARANCE, SAME MEMORIES! YOU WILL SIMPLY... APPEAR! IN NEW YORK CITY! IN THE MARVEL UNIVERSE! WITH NOTHING BUT THE CLOTHES ON YOUR BACK AND THE NOSTALGIC CHILDHOOD SYSTEM IN YOUR HEAD!
"New York City. Of course. Because everything in the Marvel Universe happens in New York City. Eighty percent of the superhero population lives within a twenty-mile radius of Manhattan. You can't throw a rock in that city without hitting a guy in spandex."
EXCITING, ISN'T IT?
"Question three: You mentioned a shop. A 'Nostalgia Shop.' Where I can buy abilities from cartoons. Can you give me a better idea of what kind of abilities we're talking about? Because there's a pretty wide range here. Like, on one end of the spectrum, you've got Inspector Gadget's extending arms, which are weird but not exactly going to help me survive in a world where the Juggernaut exists. And on the other end of the spectrum, you've got whatever the hell Goku is doing over in Dragon Ball Z, which is basically just 'be a god but louder.'"
EXCELLENT QUESTION!
THE NOSTALGIA SHOP IS ORGANIZED INTO TIERS!
TIER 1 (0-100 NP): BASIC ABILITIES! THINK: ENHANCED SENSES, MINOR PHYSICAL BOOSTS, BASIC GADGETS, UTILITY SKILLS! NOTHING THAT WOULD MAKE HEADLINES!
TIER 2 (100-500 NP): INTERMEDIATE ABILITIES! THINK: ENHANCED STRENGTH, SPEED, DURABILITY, SPECIALIZED EQUIPMENT, MINOR ENERGY MANIPULATION! ENOUGH TO SURVIVE A MUGGING BUT NOT A SUPERVILLAIN ATTACK!
TIER 3 (500-2000 NP): ADVANCED ABILITIES! THINK: SIGNIFICANT POWERS, ADVANCED EQUIPMENT, SPECIALIZED COMBAT ABILITIES! ENOUGH TO HOLD YOUR OWN AGAINST LOWER-TIER THREATS!
TIER 4 (2000-10000 NP): ELITE ABILITIES! THINK: MAJOR POWERS, REALITY-BENDING CAPABILITIES, COSMIC AWARENESS! WE'RE TALKING THE BIG LEAGUES NOW!
TIER 5 (10000+ NP): ???
"What does '???' mean?"
IT MEANS WE'RE NOT TELLING YOU YET! MYSTERY IS PART OF THE FUN!
"Question four — and this is the big one, so I need you to be really honest with me here — what's the catch?"
The screen went quiet. The Darkwing Duck theme song faded out. For a long, pregnant, uncomfortably silent moment, nothing happened. The cartoon void around Marcus seemed to hold its breath.
Then, in smaller text than before — text that was not dancing, not bouncing, not sparkling, text that was, for the first time, completely and utterly still — new words appeared.
THERE IS ONE RULE.
ONE ABSOLUTE, INVIOLABLE, NON-NEGOTIABLE RULE.
YOU CANNOT TELL ANYONE THAT YOU HAVE BEEN REINCARNATED.
Marcus felt something cold settle in his stomach. Not fear, exactly. More like the memory of fear. The anticipation of fear. The knowledge that fear was coming and that it was bringing friends.
YOU CANNOT TELL ANYONE ABOUT THE SYSTEM.
YOU CANNOT TELL ANYONE ABOUT YOUR PREVIOUS LIFE.
YOU CANNOT TELL ANYONE THAT YOU ARE FROM ANOTHER UNIVERSE.
YOU CANNOT HINT. YOU CANNOT IMPLY. YOU CANNOT LEAVE CLUES. YOU CANNOT WRITE IT DOWN. YOU CANNOT ENCODE IT IN MUSIC. YOU CANNOT COMMUNICATE IT IN ANY WAY, SHAPE, OR FORM, TO ANY BEING, ENTITY, ORGANISM, ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, COSMIC ABSTRACTION, OR EXTREMELY PERCEPTIVE HOUSEPLANT.
IF YOU DO —
The text paused. Marcus could feel it pausing. The pause had weight.
IF YOU DO, THE NOSTALGIC CHILDHOOD SYSTEM WILL IMMEDIATELY AND PERMANENTLY LEAVE YOU. ALL ABILITIES YOU HAVE PURCHASED WILL BE REVOKED. ALL NOSTALGIA POINTS WILL BE ERASED. YOU WILL BE RETURNED TO THE STATE OF A NORMAL, POWERLESS, EXTREMELY VULNERABLE HUMAN BEING.
AND YOUR THREAT LEVEL WILL BE SET TO 99,999.
Marcus felt his blood — or whatever passed for blood in this liminal cartoon purgatory — go cold.
"What does a threat level of ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine mean?"
The screen's response was three words long, rendered in a font that was no longer cheerful, no longer bouncy, no longer the font of Saturday mornings and cereal boxes. It was a font that meant business. A font that had seen things. A font that did not dance.
EVERYONE. HUNTS. YOU.
"Define 'everyone.'"
EVERYONE.
THE AVENGERS. THE X-MEN. THE FANTASTIC FOUR. S.H.I.E.L.D. S.W.O.R.D. A.I.M. HYDRA. THE HAND. THE KINGPIN. DOCTOR DOOM. MAGNETO. THANOS. THE CELESTIALS. THE LIVING TRIBUNAL. THE ONE-ABOVE-ALL. MEPHISTO. DORMAMMU. GALACTUS. DEADPOOL. ESPECIALLY DEADPOOL. SQUIRREL GIRL. HOWARD THE DUCK. THAT ONE GUY WHO JUST SELLS HOT DOGS ON THE CORNER OF 5TH AND 42ND BUT WHO IS, THROUGH A SERIES OF INCREASINGLY UNLIKELY NARRATIVE COINCIDENCES, ALSO A FORMER AGENT OF A.I.M.
EVERYONE.
A THREAT LEVEL OF 99,999 MARKS YOU AS THE SINGLE MOST DANGEROUS ENTITY IN THE KNOWN UNIVERSE. EVERY HERO, EVERY VILLAIN, EVERY ORGANIZATION, EVERY GOVERNMENT, EVERY COSMIC POWER, AND EVERY INTERDIMENSIONAL BUREAUCRACY WILL IMMEDIATELY AND SIMULTANEOUSLY ATTEMPT TO LOCATE, ENGAGE, AND NEUTRALIZE YOU.
AND YOU WILL HAVE NO POWERS.
AND YOU WILL BE ALONE.
AND IT WILL BE A TUESDAY.
"It's always a Tuesday," Marcus whispered.
He stood there in the cartoon void for a long time. The silence pressed in around him like a blanket — not a comforting blanket, but the kind of blanket that might be smothering you. He thought about Professor Thelonious Monk. He thought about his grandmother's pancakes. He thought about Dolores, his poor, crumpled, destroyed Honda Civic. He thought about the lo mein in his refrigerator, which would now sit there uneaten until someone cleaned out his apartment, which meant it would probably be there for weeks, getting increasingly sentient, developing its own culture and civilization, eventually electing a prime minister.
He thought about the Spectacular Spider-Man theme song. The last thing he'd ever heard. The song that had killed him and, apparently, brought him here.
He thought about the Marvel Universe. About New York City, where gods walked among mortals and the sky regularly cracked open to reveal alien armadas. About a world where a normal person — a person with no powers, no armor, no cosmic heritage, no radioactive spider bite — was as fragile and temporary as a soap bubble in a hurricane.
He thought about the System. About singing cartoon theme songs for power. About the Nostalgia Shop. About tiers and abilities and threat levels. About the one rule — the one terrible, iron-clad, catastrophically-consequenced rule — that he could never, ever, under any circumstances, break.
He thought about all of this, standing in a void that smelled like pancakes, surrounded by silence, alone in the space between death and whatever came next.
And then he said, quietly, to the screen, to the void, to the universe or the god or the cosmic narrative authority or whoever was listening:
"What songs count?"
The screen brightened. The font returned to its bouncy, cheerful, Saturday-morning self.
NOW WE'RE TALKING!
ANY ANIMATED TELEVISION THEME SONG THAT MEETS THE FOLLOWING CRITERIA:
1. FROM A SHOW THAT AIRED DURING YOUR LIFETIME OR DURING THE "NOSTALGIA ERA" (ROUGHLY 1980-2015).
2. THE SHOW MUST HAVE BEEN BROADCAST IN YOUR ORIGINAL UNIVERSE (I.E., THE "REAL" WORLD).
3. THE THEME SONG MUST EVOKE GENUINE NOSTALGIC EMOTIONAL RESONANCE IN EITHER YOU OR YOUR AUDIENCE.
AND HERE'S THE FUN PART!
Marcus braced himself.
SINCE THE MARVEL COMICS UNIVERSE IS A UNIVERSE WHERE DISNEY (AND, BY EXTENSION, MARVEL) EXISTS AS A CORPORATE ENTITY, AND SINCE MANY OF THE CARTOONS FROM YOUR CHILDHOOD WERE PRODUCED BY STUDIOS THAT DO NOT EXIST IN THE MARVEL UNIVERSE, YOUR PERFORMANCES OF THESE THEME SONGS WILL BE ENTIRELY ORIGINAL IN THAT UNIVERSE!
IN OTHER WORDS: IN THE MARVEL UNIVERSE, NOBODY HAS EVER HEARD THE "DUCKTALES" THEME SONG. NOBODY HAS EVER HEARD THE "GARGOYLES" THEME SONG. NOBODY HAS EVER HEARD THE "BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES" THEME SONG.
WAIT, BATMAN IS DC, NOT MARVEL.
HANG ON.
...
OKAY, WE'VE CHECKED AND BATMAN DOESN'T EXIST IN THE MARVEL UNIVERSE, SO THE THEME SONG STILL COUNTS! CROSS-COMPANY NOSTALGIA IS VALID!
THE POINT IS: THESE SONGS ARE NEW. THEY'RE FRESH. THEY'VE NEVER BEEN HEARD BY ANYONE IN THE MARVEL UNIVERSE. AND WHEN YOU PERFORM THEM — WHEN YOU BRING THEM INTO THE WORLD FOR THE FIRST TIME — THE NOSTALGIC RESONANCE WILL BE BASED ON THE UNIVERSAL EMOTIONAL QUALITIES OF THE MUSIC ITSELF, AMPLIFIED BY THE SYSTEM.
YOU'RE NOT JUST A SYSTEM HOST, MARCUS.
YOU'RE A BARD.
A NOSTALGIA BARD.
THE ONLY ONE IN THE UNIVERSE.
Marcus let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. His mind was racing. His musician's brain — the part of him that thought in chords and rhythms and key signatures, the part that could hear a song once and break it down into its component parts like a mechanic disassembling an engine — was already working. Already sorting through his mental catalogue. Already indexing, categorizing, prioritizing.
He knew hundreds of cartoon theme songs. Maybe thousands, if you counted the ones he only half-remembered, the ones that existed in the fuzzy margins of memory, the ones that came back to you at three in the morning for no reason, fully formed and perfectly intact, as if they'd been waiting there the whole time.
He knew the Disney afternoon block. DuckTales. Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers. TaleSpin. Darkwing Duck. Goof Troop. Bonkers. Gargoyles. He knew every note. Every lyric. Every harmony.
He knew the Saturday morning classics. X-Men: The Animated Series. Spider-Man: The Animated Series. Batman: The Animated Series. Superman: The Animated Series. Justice League. Teen Titans. He could sing them all in his sleep. He often did, according to his roommate in college, who had eventually requested a room transfer.
He knew the Nickelodeon shows. Doug. Rugrats. Hey Arnold. The Wild Thornberrys. Fairly OddParents. Danny Phantom. Avatar: The Last Airbender. He knew the Cartoon Network shows. Dexter's Laboratory. The Powerpuff Girls. Samurai Jack. Ed, Edd n Eddy. Courage the Cowardly Dog. Ben 10.
He knew the anime theme songs, the ones that had been dubbed into English and broadcast on Toonami and burned into the brains of an entire generation. Dragon Ball Z. Sailor Moon. Pokémon. Yu-Gi-Oh. Naruto. He knew the niche ones, the deep cuts, the ones that only kids who stayed up too late or woke up too early would remember. Reboot. Beast Wars. Swat Kats. Biker Mice from Mars. Street Sharks. Extreme Dinosaurs.
He knew them all. And now, apparently, they were his weapons.
A musician armed with nostalgia in a universe full of gods and monsters.
It was, without question, the stupidest superpower he had ever heard of. And he had read the wiki page for every superhero who had ever existed, including the ones whose powers were "is very good at throwing boomerangs" or "can communicate with squirrels."
But it was his stupid superpower. And if the alternative was being dead — regular dead, staying dead, permanently dead, no system, no reincarnation, no second chance, just dead — then Marcus would take the stupid superpower. He would take it and he would use it, and if using it meant standing in the middle of New York City, in a universe where the Hulk could benchpress a mountain and Magneto could pull the iron out of your blood and Galactus could eat the planet for breakfast, and singing cartoon theme songs — then that's exactly what Marcus Elijah Webb was going to do.
Because Marcus Elijah Webb was a musician.
And musicians played.
"One more question," he said.
SHOOT!
"The Spectacular Spider-Man theme song. The one I died to. Does it count?"
The screen was silent for exactly two seconds. Then:
OH, MARCUS.
THE SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN THEME SONG ISN'T JUST A SONG THAT COUNTS.
IT'S YOUR SIGNATURE SONG.
IT'S YOUR ORIGIN SONG.
IT'S THE SONG YOU DIED FOR.
IN THE NOSTALGIA SHOP, IT HAS A SPECIAL DESIGNATION.
IT IS CLASSIFIED AS A "SOUL SONG."
A SOUL SONG GENERATES 10X NORMAL NOSTALGIA POINTS.
A SOUL SONG'S ABILITIES ARE UNIQUE TO YOU AND CANNOT BE OBTAINED BY ANY OTHER MEANS.
A SOUL SONG GROWS STRONGER EVERY TIME YOU PERFORM IT.
YOU DIED LISTENING TO THE SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN THEME SONG.
AND NOW, IN THE MARVEL UNIVERSE, YOU WILL LIVE BY IT.
Marcus felt something shift inside him. Something fundamental. Something that went deeper than bones, deeper than blood, deeper than the molecular structure of his being. It was like a key turning in a lock he hadn't known was there. It was like a note finding its place in a chord. It was like the first time he'd ever sat down at a piano, age seven, in his grandmother's living room, and pressed a key, and heard a sound, and understood — in that instant, in that single, crystalline, perfect instant — that this was what he was supposed to do.
"Okay," said Marcus Elijah Webb.
He was smiling. It was not the smile of a man who was confident. It was not the smile of a man who was brave. It was the smile of a man who was terrified but who had decided, consciously and deliberately, to be terrified while moving forward rather than terrified while standing still.
"Okay. Let's do this."
CONFIRMATION RECEIVED!
INITIATING REINCARNATION PROTOCOL!
DESTINATION: MARVEL COMICS UNIVERSE, EARTH-616!
LOCATION: NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK!
STATUS: ALIVE (AGAIN)!
THE NOSTALGIC CHILDHOOD SYSTEM IS NOW ACTIVE!
REMEMBER THE RULE, MARCUS!
AND REMEMBER:
NOSTALGIA ISN'T JUST A FEELING.
IT'S A WEAPON.
NOW GO OUT THERE AND SING YOUR HEART OUT.
AND TRY NOT TO DIE ON A TUESDAY.
The cartoon void began to collapse inward, folding in on itself like a pop-up book being closed. The colors — the cartoon blue sky, the concept-of-grass green, the bright, saturated, outlined-in-black world that had assembled itself around him — began to dissolve, breaking apart into pixels and particles and then into nothing. The screen flickered one last time, displaying a final message in letters so small Marcus had to squint to read them:
P.S. — PROFESSOR THELONIOUS MONK WILL BE FINE. YOUR NEIGHBOR AGNES WILL ADOPT HIM. HE WILL LIVE TO BE 22 YEARS OLD AND WILL BECOME INTERNET FAMOUS FOR SLEEPING IN INCREASINGLY ABSURD LOCATIONS. HE WILL NEVER LEARN YOUR NAME. HE IS, AS YOU OFTEN NOTED, A CAT.
And despite everything — despite the death and the void and the system and the fear and the impossible, terrifying, exhilarating future that was hurtling toward him like a FedEx truck — Marcus laughed.
He laughed and the void collapsed and the darkness took him and the last thing he heard, echoing through the space between worlds, between universes, between the life he had lost and the life he was about to begin, was a song.
Living on the edge, fighting crime, spinning webs...
Marcus Elijah Webb opened his eyes.
He was lying on concrete. Not cartoon concrete — real concrete. Dirty, cracked, gum-spotted, rained-on, New-York-City concrete. The kind of concrete that had stories to tell and none of them were happy. The kind of concrete that had been walked on, driven on, spat on, bled on, and generally disrespected by eight million people for the better part of a century.
Above him was a sky. Not a cartoon sky — a real sky. Gray and heavy and low, the color of old dishwater, pressing down on the city like a lid on a pot. It was daytime, probably mid-morning, judging by the quality of the light, which was the kind of pale, diffused, reluctant light that happens when the sun is technically present but clearly doesn't want to be.
Around him were sounds. The sounds of New York City. Car horns and construction and distant sirens and the ambient hum of ten million overlapping conversations and the ever-present, bone-deep rumble of the subway, which Marcus could feel in his teeth. It was a wall of noise, a tidal wave of acoustic information, and Marcus's musician brain immediately began to parse it, to categorize it, to find patterns and rhythms in the chaos.
And then, right on cue, right exactly when Marcus was lying on the concrete and staring at the sky and trying to decide whether he was going to have a panic attack now or save it for later, a voice drifted down from somewhere above him.
"Hey. Hey, buddy. You alive?"
Marcus turned his head. Standing over him was a man. A large man. A man wearing a white apron smeared with ketchup and mustard and what appeared to be sauerkraut. A man standing behind a silver metal hot dog cart, on the corner of what Marcus's slowly focusing eyes identified as 5th Avenue and 42nd Street.
The hot dog vendor.
The hot dog vendor from the System's list.
The one who was, through a series of increasingly unlikely narrative coincidences, also a former agent of A.I.M.
"You okay?" the vendor asked. He had a thick Queens accent and the kind of face that suggested he had seen everything, judged most of it, and found it lacking. "You just kinda... appeared. Out of nowhere. Like, poof. One second, nothing. Next second, you. Lying on the sidewalk. That's weird, buddy. Even for this city."
Marcus sat up slowly. His body worked. Everything was where it was supposed to be. He patted himself down — arms, legs, torso, head, all present and accounted for. He was wearing the same clothes he'd been wearing when he died: jeans, a gray hoodie, his beat-up Converses, and a t-shirt underneath the hoodie that had a picture of Thelonious Monk on it (the jazz pianist, not the cat, although the cat was named after the jazz pianist, so in a way it was both).
His hands were empty. No phone. No wallet. No keys. Nothing but Marcus and his clothes and the Nostalgic Childhood System, which he could feel humming quietly in the back of his mind like a song he couldn't quite remember the words to.
He looked up at the hot dog vendor. The hot dog vendor looked down at him. A pigeon landed on the edge of the hot dog cart, evaluated the situation with the cold, calculating eyes of a dinosaur descendant who had seen empires rise and fall, and flew away.
"I'm fine," said Marcus. "I think. Yeah. I'm fine. I just..."
He trailed off. What was he supposed to say? I just died in another universe and got reincarnated here by a cosmic cartoon jukebox? He couldn't say that. That was literally the one thing he could never say. That was the one-way ticket to a threat level of 99,999 and a very short, very violent life.
"I just... tripped," he said lamely.
"You tripped," the hot dog vendor repeated, skeptically. "And appeared out of thin air."
"I trip dramatically."
The hot dog vendor stared at him for a long moment. Then he shrugged, the universal New York City shrug, the shrug that said I've seen weirder, this doesn't even crack my top ten.
"You want a hot dog?" the vendor asked.
Marcus realized, with a sudden and overwhelming clarity, that he was starving. Not just hungry. Starving. The kind of starving that was less of a feeling and more of a state of being. His stomach didn't growl so much as roar, a deep, primal, existential roar that was less "I'd like some food please" and more "FEED ME OR I WILL CONSUME MY OWN ORGANS."
"I want a hot dog more than I have ever wanted anything in my life," Marcus said. "But I don't have any money."
The vendor looked at him. Marcus looked at the vendor. The pigeon came back, landed on a fire hydrant, and watched them both with an expression of utter contempt.
"First one's free," the vendor said. "You look like you've had a rough morning."
"Brother," said Marcus, accepting the hot dog with trembling hands, "you have no idea."
He bit into the hot dog. It was, without exaggeration, the greatest hot dog he had ever tasted. It was a New York City street hot dog — gray and slightly rubbery and of profoundly questionable provenance — and it was glorious. It tasted like being alive. It tasted like having a body that could taste things. It tasted like a second chance.
And as he stood there, on the corner of 5th and 42nd, eating a hot dog given to him by a man who may or may not have once worked for an evil science organization, standing in a universe where actual literal superheroes flew overhead and actual literal supervillains plotted in underground lairs and actual literal cosmic entities contemplated the fundamental nature of reality — Marcus felt the System pulse in the back of his mind.
Not words, this time. Not a screen. Just a feeling. A warmth. A melody, faint and distant, like a song heard through a wall.
And a notification, small and quiet, appearing in his mind's eye like a whispered secret:
╔═══════════════════════════════════════╗
║ WELCOME TO THE MARVEL UNIVERSE, MARCUS! ║
║ ║
║ YOUR FIRST QUEST HAS BEEN GENERATED! ║
║ ║
║ QUEST: "OPENING NUMBER" ║
║ OBJECTIVE: Perform a cartoon theme song ║
║ in public within 24 hours of arrival. ║
║ REWARD: 10 NP + First Ability Unlock ║
║ ║
║ TIME REMAINING: 23:47:12 ║
║ ║
║ GOOD LUCK! ║
║ DON'T DIE! ║
║ (AGAIN!) ║
╚═══════════════════════════════════════╝
Marcus finished his hot dog. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He looked up at the New York City skyline — the Marvel Universe New York City skyline, where, if he squinted, he could just barely make out the distinctive shape of the Baxter Building, home of the Fantastic Four, gleaming silver against the gray sky like a middle finger pointed at the laws of physics.
Somewhere in this city, Spider-Man was swinging between buildings. Captain America was probably doing something noble. Tony Stark was probably doing something expensive. Doctor Strange was probably doing something incomprehensible. And Marcus Elijah Webb, musician, cat enthusiast, deceased owner of a 2009 Honda Civic named Dolores, was standing on a street corner with zero dollars, zero powers, zero connections, and a magical system that wanted him to sing the DuckTales theme song in public.
"Okay," he said, to himself, to the city, to the universe, to the System humming quietly in his skull. "Okay. Let's get dangerous."
He paused.
"That's from Darkwing Duck," he explained to the hot dog vendor, who had not asked.
"I know what it's from," said the hot dog vendor. "I'm not an animal."
Marcus grinned.
Then he walked out into the Marvel Universe, armed with nothing but a lifetime of cartoon theme songs and the unshakeable, irrational, bone-deep conviction that nostalgia was going to save his life.
Behind him, the hot dog vendor watched him go, shook his head, and muttered something in Italian that roughly translated to "That guy is going to die on a Tuesday."
The pigeon cooed in agreement.
END OF CHAPTER ONE
[NOSTALGIC CHILDHOOD SYSTEM — STATUS UPDATE]
User: Marcus Elijah Webb
Location: New York City, Earth-616
Status: Alive (Miraculously)
Nostalgia Points: 0
Songs Performed: 0
Abilities Unlocked: None
Threat Level: 0 (Civilian)
Hot Dogs Consumed: 1
Times Died: 1
Current Mood: Terrified But Musically Motivated
System Message: The Spectacular Spider-Man was perfect and we will not be taking questions at this time.