Special Chapter: Apollo

My name is Maxwell Troy Goodman, but you can call me Max. Most people do. I was born on June first 1994, in Forest Hills, Queens. A beautiful blue eyed, blond haired baby boy, to two amazing people. Johnathan Goodman and Eleanor Goodman.

I am an only child, my parents didn't really want more than one kid. They said one bundle of joy was enough for them. I have a best friend named Kevin Webster good kid, really smart.

My dad was an underground MMA fighter and my mom was a nurse, quite the team. My dad comes home battered and bruised, and my mom fixes him right up. I used to think it was cool, seeing all his 'battle scars' as he calls it.

We were a happy family, we would do happy family stuff....whatever that is.

My dad was a good fighter, great even. It was all he was good at. He won most of his fights and only lost a total of five times.

One day he had his sixth loss, which didn't quite end well. You see on this fight that my dad lost, the leader of the local gang in Queens had bet quite a large sum of money which he unfortunately lost when my dad lost.

Now this guy is a real piece of work. I'm talking pouring milk before cereal types of crazy. Point is the guy is a psycho, he calls himself Jakal...like come on!!.

Anyway Jakal throws a fit because of all the money he lost and now his angry, instead of going to anger management or trying to channel his anger in a productive way. He gets petty and decides that my dad owes him money now.

My dad not knowing about any of this goes about his life without a care in the world.....well he cares about his family, family means alot to him...considering he was an orphan...yeah.

On my eighth birthday, as my parents and I were on our way home, from celebrating my birthday at a local diner....anyway eight year old me and my parents were walking home really late at night.

We were cornered by Jakal and five of his men. Jakal started going on about how my dad owed him money and that he has come to collect. Of course my dad who didn't know what he was talking about, denied everything and stating that he did not owe him money.

And as you can guess Jakal didn't like being 'taken for a fool' as he said. And told three of his men to rough up my dad to 'jog his memory'.

My dad was a great fighter, he managed to knock out all three guys.

I remember being all smug and happy about how easy my dad beat those three guys...it didn't last long.

BLAM BLAM BLAM

Jakal supposedly having enough and apparently not caring about the so called debt anymore....shot my dad three times in the chest.

I stood there frozen scared to shits watching in horror as my dad fell on his back clutching on to his chest. My mom that was holding me ran over to my dad sobbing and crying trying to stop the bleeding but.....

BLAM BLAM

She took two bullets to the back of the head and fell across my dad's body.

BLAM BLAM BLAM

He shot his three men that were knocked out by my dad each one a bullet to the head.

He looked over to me and just stares at me for a few moments and then just smiles and winks at me, holstering his gun and walking off with his remaining two men while whistling a tune.

30 minutes later my uncle Gregg who is a cop finds me, smelling to piss and shit crying over my parents dead bodies.

I'm not gonna bore you with the extra details but long story short my uncle took me in. My uncle was a boy scout he did everything by the books and he had a strong sense for justice. He tried to get me some help like therapy and stuff but I closed up.

I stopped talking, never leaving the house except to go to school, I stopped hanging out with Kevin.....I barely even sleeped, I was plagued by nightmares and the sounds of those gun shots.

BLAM BLAM BLAM

Every time I try to sleep I would hear it echoing through my head.

BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM

Even loud banging sounds will set me off and I'll start having a panic attack, with those gun shots echoing through my head.

BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM

Everything around me just turns to static and all I hear is that FUCKING SOUND!!!

BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM

...I saw my uncles service pistol once and I went into a full blow panic attack, happily accompanied by chest pains and dizziness. Scared the shit out of my uncle I can tell you that much.

Turns out I have Hoplophobia...Google it, cuz I ain't gonna tell ya.

After two years of panic attacks, night terrors and crippling depression. On my tenth birthday my uncle took me to a Archery range.

I was confused about why he brought me here and my uncle told me that my mom used to come here when she was in high school and college. That whenever she felt an overwhelming amount of emotions she come here and as she said 'Shoot it out at the world'.

Feeling bad for all the trouble I put my uncle through even though he assures me everyday that he's not, and also wanting to be closer to my mom in some way I decided to take up archery.

I was a natural at it, like it just felt right having the bow in my hand and firing off arrows with ease....Anyway archery became my coping mechanism of sorts, when ever I feel overwhelmed by my grief and sadness, I would just ask my uncle to take me to the archery range.

It helped for the most part I started sleeping more, starting going out more, I started talking again and I even reconnected with Kevin my best friend....I still get panic attacks when seeing a gun or hearing loud banging noises, but I guess I'll just have to live with that...

When I turned twelve I asked my uncle if I can take self-defense classes, he said yes right away without making a fuss about it.....And I had a whole speech prepared to try and convince him.

I took up Judo, Taekwondo and Kickboxing. My uncle was confused at my choice of fighting styles but he didn't question it.

While I was taking the classes, I realized something. The three fighting styles I was training in came easy to me, almost as easy as it was when I started taking archery...I guess my parents left me something after all.

When I turned fourteen years old.....I had a very crazy idea, can you guess what it is??...OK guess over. I decided to be a hero like Red Hood. He is kind of like my idol by the way....but anyway I had the crazy idea of wanting to use my skills that I have acquired over the past four years and use it to find and unalive Jakal.

I always had these thoughts of going after my parents killer and unaliving him, but I'm still smart enough to realize it was stupid and reckless. But then The Red Hood emerged striking fear into the hearts of the bad guys of Hells Kitchen.

And I thought maybe it wasn't so stupid and reckless.....Fast forward to 18 June and I made my first appearance as Apollo with the help of Kevin as my 'Guy in the Chair', in the nightly streets of Queens.

Then one month into my super heroing, Red Hood found me and forced me to be his 'intern' as he says....He took me under his hood and trained me to be 'great', while also helping me with finding Jakal.

He also helped me with my Hoplophopia by giving me ear buds that would cancel out any noise that's on the frequency of a gun shot....with the visual issue he basically tied me to a chair and made me watch documentaries about guns....He would help me through the panic attacks and then sent me back to the chair.....

It helped a little bit.....I guess.

Red Hood is mostly a pretty laid back and funny guy, I think he might be a bit crazy because I caught him a bunch of times talking to the air....yeah he's crazy. After six months of being his intern. He finally took me to his Hideout.....well his girlfriends Hideout...I was shocked to find out his in a relationship with Black Cat....anyway after introducing me to her, he finally showed me his secret identity and then proceeded to threaten me with bodily harm if I ever snitched on him.

Yeah.....and that's my origin story, I probably left out a few details here and there but don't worry about that....So I'll see yah next time...Bye... :)