The Origin of Recipes

by Joey Peters

  Rob reached out and shook it. The Pinnacle's grip was strong enough to crush pencil lead into diamonds, but also gentle enough to crush tissue paper into a shape vaguely similar to an origami crane.

  "Good to meet you," said the Pinnacle, "And by the way, what's your name?"

  Rob was about to answer with, "Rob," but quickly thought better of it. A superhero name! He hadn't given it much thought.

  The idea percolated in his head, but he couldn't think of anything. The only words that formed in his mind were "taco" and "delicious". But... he needed to come up with something. He was talking to the Pinnacle.

  The the Pinnacle.

  "Captain..." Rob sputtered, "Taco...licious..."

  Captain Tacolicious? That was the best thing he could come up with? Shame and embarrassment exploded through the captain's body.

  But if the Pinnacle thought the name was unusual he did not betray it in his face. He smiled and nodded. After all, he lived in a world with a nudist speedster named the Streak. And the captain had battled a dude named Mr. Asparagus not a half hour earlier.

  "Pleased to meet you, Captain Tacolicious. Hope we can have a team up someday."

  The Pinnacle dropped the turtle monster into Beantown City harbor. The beast gurgled happily.

  The Pinnacle glided to the side and levitated toward his base, Pinnacle Mountain.

  "Think about the union," he said, as his speed began to increase. "No pressure!" He added and shot off at impossible speed.

  Rob hung in the air for a long while spraying ground beef and picante sauce in all directions.

  He talked to the Pinnacle again! And this time it was even better, because the world's greatest superhero spoke to him like an equal. Invited him to join his union, even.

  Candyman shifted back down into flesh as he stepped back toward the taqueria. His skin felt overly floppy and his flesh spongey.

  He'd never stretched himself as far and hard while in candy form.

 

  He didn't even feel satisfied that he'd helped save the day. But still, he felt some responsibility for what went down in front of the taco store. Also, how wanted to rubber-neck.

  Don't forget that he was still the worst Buddhist monk, folks.

  Professor Black Hole laid against his former restaurant. He looked dazed and defeated.

  "You... okay?" said Candyman.

  "I feel kinda dizzy and my stomach's all weird," said the professor.

  Candyman shifted into ginger-flavored rock candy form and snapped off his pinkie. He stuffed it into the professor's mouth.

  "This'll make you feel better," he said.

  Candman shifted into a solid chocolate form and ran the fingers of his other hand over the palm, pulling and molding more chocolate into position, and reforming his finger out of the stump.

  Professor Black Hole gurgled.

  A form flew awkwardly out of the sky. Ground beef and cheese splattered everywhere.

  The journalists paid the professor and Candyman little mind. They collected their equipment and prepared to leave—all except for WBTC TV anchor Simon Simon.

  He muttered to himself while reviewing the footage Timmy shot.

  "Little fool intern... let the mic get trashed...!"

  Captain Tacolicious landed immediately in front of Candyman and the professor. He tipped his taco-shell fedora to them.

 

  Candyman said, "What are you so excited about?"

  "I met the Pinnacle," said Cap, "Again! He talked to me like an equal!"

  Professor Black Hole grumbled, "For what it's worth, I'm very sorry I tried to kill you. When your life is in the crapper sometimes it's too easy to lash out."

  "You know what?" said Cap, "I can't even be that angry at you. Without your attempt on my life I wouldn't have attained my two fondest dreams... eating a lot of tacos and becoming a superhero. But that does bring up some other questions. Like why did you try and kill me in the first place. And how did you manage to give me taco powers instead?"

  "I saved my pennies very precisely," said Professor Black Hole, "Remember, before I became a supervillain I was a physics professor. I'm quite good at math. And basically, you ate so many tacos that I wouldn't be able to cover my other expenses. You put me out of business."

  A rush of shame shot up Cap's spine. He hadn't thought about that. And he did eat an incredible, almost uncountable, amount of tacos.

  "I—I put you out of business? I'm so sorry. I didn't know... I'll make it up to you somehow."

  "Whatever," said Professor Black Hole glumly, "I'll be going back to prison before long."

  "I won't press charges against you!" said Cap.

  "Won't make any difference. I admitted it on camera," said the professor.

  "No! No, that's the thing," cried Simon Simon, "That blasted intern screwed up my footage. It's no good."

  "See?" said Cap, "There's still hope after all."

  "I still don't have enough money to buy any more taco fillings. I might as well go back to jail."

  Cap hand his hand out in a cup shape and a corn tortilla instantly appeared. He pointed the forefinger of his other hand at it, then fired successive shots of ground beef, sour cream, pico de gallo, and lettuce into the form.

  "How about this," said Cap, "I really owe you for giving me super powers. Let me work off my debt until your taco joint gets off the ground."

  A little shimmer of hope shone in the professor's eyes.

  And just then a delivery truck sped through a red light and skidded to a stop in front of Cap and Candyman and the professor. The door swung up into the side of the van and a dude dressed in the tiny brown shorts of a UPS uniform, vaulted out.

 

  "One of you Professor Black Hole?"

  The professor looked up at him confusedly.

  "Y—yes?" he said.

  "Singin' telegram," said the UPS man, "Ahem."

  Cap, Candyman and the professor looked up in confusion.

  "This letter it comes from a myriad loved ones," sang the messenger, "Your roommate, his dog, your cousin and sons. Don't think for a moment that I have reached the end, for this comes also from your mother and ex-girlfriend."

  "My family?" said Professor Black Hole, "They fell in a volcano... they all died!"

  "Ahem!" shouted the UPS man, "This letter is sent to tell you we're well, even if the place we are in closely resembles Hell."

  "The next bit is stuff you can't already know, like how we survived falling in a volcano."

  "Somehow the bus protected us from all that super heat. It cushioned our fall when we crashed into a rock man street."

  "We would have sent word earlier but we didn't have cash, so we worked at odd jobs ever since we had crashed."

  "Then your cousin has married a molten rock woman, we objected at first but now we welcome her kin."

  "Her father finally fronted us enough cash, so we could send a message up through the earth's smoking gash."

  "I'll end this message now that the light's fading to orange. Oh, crap, I can't rhyme that. Something something door hinge."

  And, his song complete, the delivery man shouted "Message ends," and lurched back up into in van and sped away.

  Professor Black Hole watched it until the van disappeared behind a corner.

  "Okay," said Candyman, "Even as a dude raised by shapeshifting Buddhist monks in a secret monastery who can turn himself into any candy in the world, that was weird."

  "I know, right?" said Cap.

  "I'll take your offer..." said the professor.

  "Great!" said Cap, "That makes me feel a lot better. That still leaves my other question, though. About my powers."

  "Ah," said Professor Black Hole, "Nothing could be simpler. I put a poly-dimensional bomb in your last taco. The bomb was designed to shunt most of your mass into a parallel universe, which wouldn't be very comfortable for a living being—but, you had eaten so many tacos and they had increased your mass by so much that passing through th
e wormhole caused your body to collapse into a quantum singularity. This allowed the aperture between the universes to stabilize and allows you to open and close it at will."

  Cap said, "Of course! It's so simple!"

  Candyman stared blankly.

  "And the universe that the bomb was aimed at has laws basically entirely unlike our own. Any matter sent there from our universe will, infinitely replicate, allowing you a functionally unlimited source of taco matter to use in concussive beams."

  Cap nodded.

  "Sweet," he said, "Anyway, I notice that you're gonna open in an hour. You want me to start work?"

 

  A smile cracks across Professor Black Hole's face. For the first time in years everything seemed to be working out—his family wasn't dead. It didn't seem likely he'd go on trial for the murder of the superhero in front of him.

  He lead Cap toward the gaping hole where the front door once was. Rob formed a taco shell plate to server until they could afford to get it repaired.

  Candyman said, "That's great, but I've got some video games and they can't play themselves.

  Epilogue

  Candyman just wanted to play his video game. He reloaded his save, just before the boss fight with the evil wizard. As the progress bar slowly crawled across the screen Candyman heard a loud noise and a familiar rumbling from the stairway to his apartment.

  Finally, the game loaded. The evil wizard wasted no time in hurling fireballs and lightening bolts at Candyman's avatar.

  The door to the apartment swung open. Air rushed into across the living room, followed closely behind by Cap.

  He was wearing a suspiciously long tortilla trench coat, one that even scraped against the floor as Rob walked.

  He held a white cardboard box as well.

  The evil wizard hurled a flaming soul at Candyman's little dude on the screen, who promptly exploded.

  "Dude, dude!" called Cap, "Check this out."

  Candyman reluctantly peeled his eyes away from the screen and looked at his roommate.

  "Yes?" he said.

  Cap's trench coat tore itself to shreds and swirled up and into Cap's body. This revealed the outfit he was wearing underneath.

  Cap wore a brown spandex unitard as the base layer of his costume. A yellow semi-circle was carefully embroidered on his chest. The highlights—the aspects of his uniform that broke up the lumpy brown wasteland—were all in dark red. A cape dangled from his shoulders. He stood upon a pair of those crazy superhero boots with no seems or any obvious method of getting into or out of. And of course he had on overpants.

  Because superheroes wear those.

  Crunchy taco shells drained out of Cap's forearms, creating a layer of padding, and a taco helmet, complete with ground beef and lettuce, knocked off his fedora.

  "Whaddya think?" said Cap.

  "Oh, Siddhartha," Candyman said, "That box has another one for me, doesn't it?"

  Cap popped the top of the cardboard box and u furled Candyman's unitard for him to see. It was red, while the boots, overpants and cape were brown. The other difference was the logo on the chest--while Cap had a taco, Candyman's costume instead was adorned with a chocolate bunny.

  "Okay..." said Candyman, "I know you're going to talk me into this superhero silliness sooner or later, so I'm going to pick my battles from the start. I am not wearing that cape."

  "That's cool," said Captain Tacolicious.

  * * *

  Professor Black Hole ran a moderately successful restaurant for a few years, after which he got a gig teaching at Molten Rocksbury Community College.

  He never committed a crime again. No, wait, that's not entirely accurate. Ten years later he jaywalked across a street, but it was late and there weren't any cars. No police and no security cameras caught him. He lived happily ever after.

  Mr. Asparagus, on the other hand, had his life pretty much ruined. He immediately swore revenge against Captain Tacolicious and became a supervillain. Strangely, this made him less frustrated and unhappy—because he didn't need to pretend to be the good guy all the time.

  The Pinnacle spent a few months trying to make him turn good again, but it never took.

  Timmy reverted back to his human form a few minutes after the Pinnacle dropped him in Beantown City harbor. His internship didn't work out so well at WBTC TV. Simon Simon ended up giving him a lousy reference. He couldn't even get a job writing fluff for free for any of the superhero blogs.

  Eventually, he moved to Japan and got a job as a stunt double in Kaiju movies.

  The Pinnacle continued on as Beantown City's foremost superhero. Along the way he was rebooted a couple times, drastically retooled even more often than that, and his origin story kept being told over and over and over again.

  And that brings me to Captain Tacolicious and Candyman.

  What of their further adventures? How many dangers will they face? Keep watching.

  Captain Tacolicious

  will return in:

  The Death of Captain Tacolicious!

  About the Author

  Joey Peters is a cartoonist, writer and beauty contest champion. His work has appeared in In a Single Bound, Leftovers of the Living Dead, the Weekly Dig, Boston Phoenix and the CoCoMoCo Gallery at San Diego Comicon.

  He lives in Boston with his wife Donna.

  Keep updated about the future adventures of Captain Tacolicious by checking out:

  captain.tacolicious.net

  Copyleft Information

  The creator of this comic, Joey Peters, is a kopyleft advocate and believes in a strong public domain. As such, he advocates a return to a shorter and more sane copyright term.

  All works by Joey Peters will return to the public domain and he will reverse all rights fourteen years after their original publication.

  "Captain Tacolicious in The Origin of Recipes" will enter the public domain April 21st, 2027.

  All characters and events depicted in this comic are entirely fictional and any resemblance to real persons or events is purely ridiculous.