SCH #5: Teenage Fashion Victim! Traditional Cache

Do you remember when yellow trench coats and obnoxiously large pink sunglasses were the height of youth fashion culture?

Neither do I, but whoever created Jubilee seemed to think that was a real thing.

A teenage mallrat with the less-than-amazing ability to shoot fireworks out of her hands, Jubilation Lee, despite being a pretty lame and uninteresting character, has been a fixture in the X-Men universe for over twenty years. Why? Because the audience needs someone to relate to. Wolverine may be cool, but can we ever truly hope to understand him? Jubilee, on the other hand, is young, hip, and facing the struggles of young adulthood. Just like you, the intended reading audience!

I guess she's also a vampire now. Way to stay relevant, Jubilee.

Should be a pretty quick and easy one. Bring your own pen/pencil, make a reasonable effort to remain unobserved, and replace exactly as found.

If you were a character in a movie, you'd probably be the love interest's roommate, the henchman who gets unceremoniously shot in the second car chase, or maybe just the out of focus guy buying coffee in the background. A bit player, a cameo appearance, or part of a brief hiccup in the hero's journey. We can't all be the star of the show and there's nothing wrong with that. You need minor characters and extras to tell a story and make a world seem fully realized.

This is just as true in the ridiculously dramatic universe of comic book superheroes as it is in ours. For every Captain America, there's a Captain Britain, a Captain UK, a Captain Ultra, a Captain Universe, and a Captain Marvel. For every Wolverine, there's a Longshot, a Wolfsbane, a Sasquatch, and a Night Thrasher. These fictional worlds have casts of thousands and they can't all be memorable, interesting, plausible, or compelling. Still, they deserve a little recognition, even if it's only in the form of a few geocaches hidden by a weirdo with a little too much time on his hands.

Hence the Second-Class Heroes series, a tribute to some of these "lesser" heroes and heroines. These characters probably aren't your favorites, you may not have even heard of most of them. They probably won't get their own big budget movies and they often disappear from comics altogether for years at a time. But all of these misfits have a little bit of oddball charm that's kept nerds at least mildly entertained for decades.

The series is comprised of nine caches in all, with the first eight giving clues to the location of a secret ninth cache. None of them are insanely difficult, although a few are a bit tricky. I've tried to make each of them entertaining and worthwhile, not just forgettable park and grabs. Grabbing the caches in order will lead you from the Midway neighborhood in St Paul to the Prospect Park area of Minneapolis. All caches in the series are reasonably close to the previous listing but the total distance is probably a bit too far for a casual walk. Still, the whole thing could conceivably be finished in a single afternoon/evening depending on how lucky you get in avoiding passersby.

Godspeed to you and yours, and I sincerely hope you have some fun finding these caches and learning a little bit of completely useless information about obscure comic book characters. I did put a significant amount of effort into all of this and, while my time isn't exactly precious, I definitely could have used it to take some naps or play more video games. You're welcome.