Introducing BookMan

Eugene Earnshaw was a lowly librarian's assistant who nobody, not the library patrons let alone the city respected very much. He could barely make enough money to afford living in an apartment located in pretty much the very worst part of town and girls ignored him. His car sucked; it was always just barely working since it was continually breaking down and in need of repairs. He liked his job though and respected written literature. His serious devotion to his job classifying and organizing books and magazines never seemed to pay off much though but this would all change when one day in the basement he was sorting out some forgotten old materials (things so old people hadn't even remembered they were in the inventory) to see what he could sell in the discard bin. The library was hard up for money and despite declining use and talks by city officials that maybe they should just stop having libraries in order to reduce overhead since people could buy their own private copies of books from bookstores and look up information on the Internet, Eugene could not bear to see his beloved library die. While going through Decimal classes 110 (metaphysics) and 130 (parapsychology and the occult) he accidentally opened and read aloud paragraphs from a powerful grimoire Dewey (yes the one who came up with the classification system he is named after) himself along with the best librarians from many generations had secretly written. This transformed Eugene into BookMan, the hero who is defender of the institution of libraries. He fights against censorship and in the battle of closing down city and school libraries, people know they can count on this superhero. BookMan's powers include the basic standbys of flight and superstrength but what sets him apart from other superheroes is that he also has the preternatural ability to quickly look things up through researching faster than possible for any normal human being. As the sacred library oath established in Dewey's spell, to be able to stay Bookman Eugene must retain possession of the magical book. While Eugene is in his BookMan alter ego he may not talk (one must be quiet in libraries). If he does talk this causes him to temporarily lose his BookMan powers for a certain period of time. As a way around this since the authors of the grimoire knew how important being able to communicate is anybody donning the identity of BookMan has the ability to silently communicate through telepathy.

In recognition for BookMan fighting various evils (think monster and supervillain of the week format) his city agreed to let the library remain open. Now Eugene knows there will always be a place people can go regardless of income to share media where they can borrow books and movies without having to worry about being able to afford purchasing private copies or having their own computers. Yet, his fight with evil and with those who would have there be no libraries is never over and he will always have to continue his battle with the forces of censorship.

I figured, there seems to be a dearth of redheaded superheroes, as well as not very many who come to mind having a soul patch. Also, the last notable curly haired superhero was Ralph from Greatest American Superhero. So I took those considerations when creating BookMan and also decided I'd have it be a superhero with a very unlikely power source/origin story. He's a tiny bit like Superman or Captain Marvel but more library themed.