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The whole bird theme had been a joke, really. Cardinal’s
joke, specifically. None of us found it funny, but it’s not like the rest of us
had any better ideas. He’d said if we were going to be superheroes, we should
stick to a theme, some sort of iconography people could instantly recognize. He
settled on the bird idea when he was trying to think of how to fit us into
primary colors.
I thought that was really weird, honestly. I vaguely
remember from my old comics that hero teams tended to consist of more specialized
characters; you’d have your strong guy, your energy guy, your space alien tech
guy, your one animal themed character, a wizard, and a mad scientist. Or
something like that. And their colors were usually not coordinated, since most
teams consisted of people who already had their own solo comics, and thus had
their own style independent of the others.
I later found out Cardinal was a huge fan of those goofy Japanese
hero-team shows. Still was, even though he was in his mid-thirties. The kind of
show where a handful of teenagers all got their powers from sci-fi wristwatches
or magic amulets or something. Say a phrase, hit a button, and poof, they’re
covered in fabulous spandex and bike helmets, each one a specific color. They’d
all have the identical powers of knowing martial artists and shooting laser
guns. Also, they had giant robots.
