Not many people know that Wellington is actually home to several superheroes (and their inevitable counterparts, supervillains). I’m not talking about those people down the government end of town who are endowed with such massive self-belief that they think they can walk on water. No.

I’m talking about the real thing. And in Wellington, being the most internet-connected region in New Zealand (whatever that means), the super-types have their own blogs.

Back in town from her escapade in Mexico is Kitty-Lifter. She’s obviously evil, as evidenced by her strangely corporate sounding mission statement thing:

I am Kitty Lifter, Evil Super Anti-Hero Extraordinaire, determined to meet my Performance Targets of stranding at least 85 percent of the world’s kittens in trees by the close of the next financial quarter, thus aiding the spread of mayhem and chaos.

She’s currently doing a diploma at what appears to be some sort of shadowy outgrowth of Vic, the International Institute of Evil Studies. A good post-graduate course should always extend the mind and widen the horizons, and it would seem that Kitty-Lifter’s mission scope is widening as the weeks go by.

Meanwhile on the other side of town (as they say), and maybe just in time for counter the growing threat of Kitty-Lifter, Rory, aka Evil House Monkey, has arrived on the scene.

OK, I think we can all agree he probably needs to get himself a better name, and it’s a little to early to tell how long he’ll keep going. It can’t be easy being endowed with a whole lot of as-yet unspecified super-powers following an accident involving toxic waste; reconstruction by a mysterious Belgian doctor; and finally multiple lightning strikes.

Wellington is in for interesting times.

[Update 20/3/2004: Rory is now known as Supermonkey. Thank goodness – at least now we have a better idea of whose side he’s on. I hope. As long as he’s not this sort of monkey.]