It's a novel idea becoming a real superhero, creating an alter-ego and then taking to the streets to stop crime in your neighborhood or community. It's even a concept that comic books like Kick-Ass have tackled. In fact writer Mark Millar goes on a tangent on how to realistically become a superhero. Unfortunately as "real" as Kick-Ass tried to be it still failed miserably at capturing what would really happen, what in fact happened to Phoenix Jones. Phoenix Jones hit the scene as a real life crime fighter in Seattle. Well, he had a run in with the law after he pepper sprayed a group of clubbers. Some "he said, she said" crap came out and he was arrested and his identity forcefully revealed. Now it's come out that he's been fired from his job from working with autistic children helping them learn day-to-day things that we all take for granted. Frankly I find this really sad. Here he's doing a job that affects real people, but because he was playing superhero and may have gotten involved when he shouldn't have. Now he's lost a good job that again really had an effect on people and needs to figure out how to pay the bills.
He's also an MMA fighter and has been offered to fight with Stikeforce, but he's committed to fighting crime still. I can already see where this is going. He'll do Strikeforce, he'll do comic conventions, he'll license his rights to a comic company I'm thinking Dynamite. He'll make some money, maybe even a lot of it, but at the end of the day he'll be forgotten like the winners of Stan Lee's "Who Wants To Be A Superhero?" This is just my best guess given how things like this pan out usually and again... it's sad.
This is why real life vigilantism doesn't work. Sure we'd all like to think that it could and hell, maybe in another country it could, but not here. You're going to get caught by the police and treated like a criminal even if you are trying to do something good. My hope is that Phoenix Jones or Ben Fodor finds his path and figures out another way to positively affect his community since that really seems to be what he was trying to do. Hopefully he's not convicted and doesn't end up in the prison system because I doubt very much that he'd go all Rorschach on the other inmates. If he avoids the system then look for him at the next comic convention.
