When you're born and raised in New York City, its hard not to go through life with a frequent case of the douche chills, as homegrown businesses and cultural hotspots are pushed out by outrageous price hikes and that gret blues joint is replaced by a Disney store, and your Brooklyn peeps are forced onto the street to make room for skinny-tie wearing art school kids just off the boat from Nebraska.

But I'll tell you - when it comes to shattered dreams - its hard to top the flock of New York "super heroes" that has cropped up in the wake of comics and films like Kick-Ass, and what I'll generously refer to as "success stories" like Phoenix Jones.

See, as a young comics fan, while I wasn't necessarily a Marvel or a DC kid, I did love one thing about Marvel very, very much. While Superman and Batman fought crime in the streets of the fictional cities Gotham and Metropolis, Spider-Man and The Avengers were kicking Kang's ass in my city! I can't even count how many Marvel comics use my apartment building in their panels. I mean literally, the artists use my building and my neighborhood as reference all. the time. From the Silver Age through this week's buy pile, my hometown has remained a superhero hotspot.

So, to see the influx of "real" super heroes is to say the least a bit of a let down.

This fellow calls himself Life. Am I a terrible person for wanting him to get into a relationship with Kyle Rayner, so that I may one day see him stuffed inside a fridge?

This attractive young lady goes by the name Nyx. I'm guessing she named herself after the short-lived Marvel title from the early 2000s, an early take on the "hot young mutants living wild on the streets" genre. Or its possible she's named something else entirely and you just can't understand what she's saying because SHE HAS L'EGGS EGGS COVERING HER MOUTH.

Both of these "super heroes" avoid crime in favor of stuff like feeding the homeless and helping the elderly, which are nice things to do but don't require a uniform and a secret identity - in fact with the whole mask shpiel, a homeless person or senior citizen is liable to think you're a thief or terrorist and either take a crack at you or have a massive coronary, but hey.

It's all about getting some media attention to fill that massive hole in your self-esteem.

And, uh, I guess I just enabled you. Feel better? Great. Now put on some normal people clothes and go back home to Iowa.