The Star-Spangled Giant (Chapter 2) (Patreon)

Barbara sat beside George’s hospital bed, softly gripping his hand, even though he was still asleep. She was comforted by the doctor’s insistence that she could take the poor guy home within the next few days, but still felt distraught over the fact that he’d been caught in the crossfire of a super-powered battle. Given that George was the grandson of a now-dead “coworker” of Barbara’s from the good old days, she’d felt a certain maternal obligation to watch over George in the stead of her brave friend, especially considering the social challenges of her roommate’s autism and his cute semi-obvious crush on her. It stung keenly to imagine that if she’d taken just a little longer to cold-cock that monster out, she’d have lost her ward.

So much had changed; the world now resembled so little of the one she knew almost a century ago. Yes, Barbara was grateful to have a second chance to do right, a sort of second coming just when it seemed a deadly disease was to be the “villain” that finally defeated her in her vulnerable twilight years. Still, the rejuvenation that had purged her of illness, dramatically increased her power levels, and de-aged her back to her prime, quite possibly on a permanent basis, came with its own fair share of side-effects, much like the sickness itself. Her adult children had trouble with the concept, of course, seeing their elderly mother essentially rebirthed and looking young enough to be their offspring instead. Even once they consented to the procedure, their lingering resentment had burdened the family tree ever since. Barbara still had a great deal of trouble as the relentless march of time threatened someday to claim her son and daughters: a hefty price for eternal vitality. Her grandchildren were almost as difficult to handle when breaking the news, and at a certain point, to spare everyone the future awkwardness if not emotional pain, Barbara had chosen to stop explaining her condition altogether.

Keeping a clear head, undistracted and focused on her mission statement of defending those in need, was vital for Barbara. After all, her longevity made her the natural bridge between generations of heroes, and she felt a certain obligation to act as mentor and protector to the upcoming supers, just as she felt toward George, even though he hadn’t a clue of her real identity. Much like the globe itself and its jungle of shifting politics, the newest crop of heroes coming in the wake of the golden age took some adjustment for Barbara.

It wasn’t all doom and gloom, naturally. While Barbara treated her “job” with solemn importance, she also couldn’t help but love having powers, especially now that they’d been boosted by the process that saved her life and extended it indefinitely. She’d always known that size-changing felt good, getting a little rush every time she shrunk in the golden age, only to realize now in her regular practice of becoming a giantess that it felt a hundred times better to expand. Who knew? There had even been times, which Barbara would never admit to anyone except her like-powered coworkers, that she felt more than just plain “good” when reaching especially humongous heights. She also felt… stirred.

Yet it wasn’t always so easy to be her true self. When she’d first started out in the early half of the twentieth century, Barbara went by “Red Giant,” which despite its ominous insinuation, acted as a star-based pun and description of her size-changing power-set and bold flame-red suit. Then of course communism freaked out the globe, and she was told to switch to “Star-Spangled Giant,” a name which then stuck in history once they put her in comic books, even though Barbara had always preferred her original title, but didn’t believe she had the clout to object. Back then, she’d primarily used her stature-altering powers to shrink, specializing in stealth missions and sticking to the shadows, while the male heroes took the limelight, in an unfortunate reflection of the era’s gender politics.

Conversely, complicated though the world seemed recently, there were certain advantages to being a superheroine today. Widespread gender equality made a huge difference, literally. After her resurgence, Barbara was actually encouraged to rebrand herself as a “giant” hero, using her shrink abilities sparingly and instead putting herself front and center as the stalwart, tower-sized figure standing between innocents and the forces of darkness. She was delighted to do so, feeling this had always been her calling, and found she had her best success by growing to get the job done instead of diminishing. More lives were saved, the bad guys were frightened, and Barbara was satisfied.

The costume and name still irked her slightly when she thought back to her original duds, but even she had to admit she looked pretty damn heroic when the news reports showed her triumphant mega-scale blue boot resting atop a supervillain’s stolen tank, crushed like a soda can. Her developing powers had also gifted Barbara with the first signs of energy-based powers, supplementing her already intimidating toolbox of mega-sized fists and iron-squashing feet, with long-range energy pulses that allowed her to stand toe-to-toe with kaiju and other threats that made that chimera in the mall yesterday look like a kitten. And yet she couldn’t have felt more ready to embrace those particular changes; it was the rest of the world around her that made Barbara feel at a loss sometimes.

When George stirred in his hospital bed, his guardian soothingly whispered to let him knows she was here, brushing back his hair, and smiling at his oblivious expression. Maybe some of her worries were for naught. It wasn’t like this day and age represented the first major shift in her unusual life as a crime-fighting amazon. Far from it. After the end of World War II, the country’s desire to project an image of peace had forced Barbara out of duty for a time, back into civilian life. Her husband, a Congressman-turned-Cabinet-Minister, had unknowingly ensured she felt even more trapped between duty to governmental whims and her own need to aid those in peril. Though she loved the man, his obsessively conservative values and obligation to the Cabinet made Barbara feel deeply at odds with her superheroine identity, which in time came to feel more “authentic” than her civilian disguise. White picket fence stay-at-home-mom suburban life was the most taxing mission she’d ever faced, especially when she discovered that her husband’s lack of fatherhood warmth made rearing her kids more of a solo venture.

After that point, as the decades rolled on, her distaste for the socio-political landscape did not improve much. The sixties onward saw the world lit aflame in Barbara’s eyes. Sure, new technologies sprouted up that advanced the lives of ordinary people, and also made it easier to even help those in need as a superhero; no wars yet had ravaged the country’s living standard quite like what happened in the forties, but Barbara was utterly dismayed at the cracking apart of American solidarity. Patriotism meant something different today.

Growing up through the Depression in the Bronx, Barbara was a dyed-in-the-wool New Dealer. The vision of America as represented by the Statue of Liberty was her gospel, especially being a first-generation citizen. She just couldn’t witness such widespread societal suffering as a young girl and not remain dedicated to that mindset, in her heroism and her personal politics. Fairness and equality, even at occasionally higher cost, were essential in her mind. To see now in the modern day that certain populations were in need of such aid, only for the government to stand more in defense of companies and a billion-dollar bottom line, made Barbara wonder at times, if only for a moment, whether she was fighting the wrong villains.

Her stance often put her at odds with George and his equally-fervent libertarianism, a concept she just couldn’t wrap her head around. He was good at his government job for superhero-concerned agency, relatively high up the food chain and making a solid paycheck, yet couldn’t get past his fear that the system was sinking its claws into his rights, even proclaiming that America was transforming into another China. Some of that was to be expected, Barbara supposed, since his upbringing in Hong Kong and Singapore contrasted so sharply with hers, but that only excused him up to a point. Nice as George was and as much as she cared for him, they clearly weren’t at all on the same page regarding what it would take to benefit this troubled world.

After three days in the hospital, as optimistically projected, Barbara was allowed to transport George back home to recuperate. For an instant she considered taking a “shortcut” by growing to a titanic enough size that would allow her to cradle the little man in her hand while she simply jogged home in half the time it would take to drive. Nevertheless, since he was now awake and simply in need of a nurse to tend his wounds, Barbara refrained from risking her identity and took him home the human way, then resumed watching over him, this time couch-side, in between his frequent recovery naps.

She was glad anyway to have a little time off to be a hero in this way instead of her usual more bombastic ten-story-tall methods. Instead she spent half her days in a calm office job where nothing exploded or tried to attack her, and the other half tending to her patient, getting a slight kick out of leaning her bosom close to her face on the off-chance this view would help heal him of his wounds faster. It certainly seemed to work, and she giggled at his eye-boggled smile each time she reached into close proximity, ruffling his hair and stroking his cheeks to help encourage him back to full strength. In no time, things would be back to normal, and Barbara could don her “real” work clothes instead of a business-casual suit, though that wasn’t necessarily all good news.

Her de-aged body and hyper-charged powers meant that crime-fighting life was an absolute blast for Barbara, but once again, the internal politics of the contemporary superhero job itself were a real letdown. This latest iteration of the country’s brightest team of heroes left something to be desired in her eyes. They were certainly more powerful than their golden age forefathers, capable of taking on global threats and even traveling to the cosmos when the danger necessitated it; the group was smarter, too, more tactical, harder-working, and better prepared. Still, they lacked the fellowship that Barbara remembered from her halcyon days, even when performing super-saves at the top of their game. Her first team of co-working heroes had been akin to a family. By comparison, this bunch was more like a group of passive-aggressive classmates, and indeed she couldn’t help but see them as kids.

Barbara had faith, at least, in the team’s current leader. He certainly looked the part with his spit-curl and glossy spandex, virtually a clone of the old commander even if he didn’t have the same Mister-Olympia super-enhanced musculature; in fact, Barbara occasionally gently teased him about the fact that she was taller than him, no growth-surge required. More important than all that, though, he had smarts and battle-savvy coupled with genuine virtue that ensured he never saw innocents as acceptable collateral to saving the day. What he lacked in actual superpowers he more than made up for in grit and gumption, which Barbara deeply admired, and made her yearn all the more for a sign of the old-days heroism she remembered better. The rest of his team wasn’t quite so impressive to her, often putting their own glory about the ideals of civic stewardship that she saw as so crucial to the job.

The most vexing trend Barbara saw in these modern supers was a sense of haughty elitism from the especially mighty beings, the team’s “big guns” who could crack the planet’s crust without breaking a sweat. They got the job done, certainly, but some of them also did a poor job hiding their smugness, celebrating victories with parties and viewing ordinary citizens as mewling lemmings who relied on god-like beings for survival.

Barbara was well-aware of the potential hypocrisy in this judgment of hers, of course, seeing how she had developed a fondness for one such hero, a good-hearted yet slightly arrogant young woman who’d recently tapped into her own size-changing powers. Their friendship had changed rather quickly into something more serious after that first breath-taking bout of giant-sized sex. Then again, she couldn’t deny her feelings once the de-aging was completed and the Star-Spangled Giant effectively received a chance to remake herself anew, her sexual preferences included. She was part of G.U.A.R.D.’s top squad, yes, but also less-publicly now a member of an unexpected sisterhood of size-changing lesbian and bisexual heroines, and Barbara was grateful to find others who felt, and loved, the same as her.

All that behind-the-scenes drama considered, Barbara still believed each of one of the new guard had the potential to become better: to live up to the names of the people whose shoes they’d filled. Plus, she’d have hated to have to give up her sexual-partner-and-possible-girlfriend over a principle like that, when so much of Barbara’s job and image as a hero was mounted on hope. And she had plenty of that.