SECOND-CLASS HERO #5: MOON KNIGHT
Moon Knight isn't really from the moon and he really isn't a knight. He's more like a Batman kind of guy, but a Batman with a much paler motif.
Marc Spector was once a bloodthirsty mercenary but managed to impress an ancient Egyptian god who gave him some mystical powers and sent him back to the US to mete out justice to the wicked. Donning a cape and cowl, Marc took up the mantle of Moon Knight and used his vast fortune to attain a variety of gadgets and weapons (never guns) to fight crime. Sound familiar?
After that, things got weird. Writer after writer tried to find some crazy way to make Moon Knight more interesting than Batman. Writer after writer failed. Clones, resurrections, werewolves, adamantium armor, multiple personalities, and mystic Egyptian hoodoo all added up to make one of the most convoluted backstories in superhero comic history before Moon Knight more or less disappeared for the better part of a decade.
Recognizing that it's always easier to dig up a stale old franchise from the past than it is to come up with something new, there have been a few attempts at bringing Moon Knight to modern audiences with a more realistic, grittier feel. Again, sound familiar?
NOTES ON THE CACHE ITSELF:
CACHE IS LOCATED ON WELL-MAINTAINED PUBLIC LAND BUT HAS BEEN STRATEGICALLY PLACED TO AVOID ANY DAMAGE TO THIS NEIGHBORHOOD TREASURE. PLEASE DON'T STOMP ON THE PRETTY FLOWERS OR MANICURED FLORA WHILE SEEKING THE CACHE.
THANKS.
This is a pretty busy neighborhood filled with watchful watchers so be at your stealthiest. This one turned out to be a lot harder to find than I thought it would be but if you look at the clues, you shouldn't break a sweat. Replace as found and take extra care to remain unobserved.
THE SECOND-CLASS HERO SERIES:
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.
Congratulations to Tippytoesk8er on being the first to find this cache, even if I did kind of steal your thunder. If nothing else, you have great timing.