The Tragedy Of Bug-no-pain-man
At approximately 8:42 pm, on October 23rd, 2015, in a dimly lit basement beneath a repurposed warehouse in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Dr. Martin McDougal irreplicable ended the normality of his existence. A longtime entomologist at M.A.T. Institute, Dr. McDougal had become singularly focused on the scientific theory that insects lack the ability to feel pain.
“If they can’t feel pain, what if we could apply that to humans?” McDougal wondered. And so, he made it his life mission to figure out just that. M.A.T. stripped away his project's funding as they deemed it “not scientifically plausible in the slightest,” which left him with only one available test subject...himself. And so, at 8:42 pm, after years of working to alter his own nervous system, McDougal swung a hammer down upon his hand and felt – nothing.
Not satisfied with simply reaping the scientific glory and receiving what he considered to be his well-deserved Nobel, McDougal sought a different route. Disillusioned after years of mockery and ridicule, McDougal no longer wanted to be known as a research scientist, and so he turned his attention to another lifelong dream, being a member of the famous “League of Superior Superheroes” also known as LOSS.
That very same year, a man clad in a cape and plastic beetle mask would confront a mugger in an alleyway, and after getting beaten and stabbed repeatedly would eventually get up and apprehend him. Bug-No-Pain-Man, ``the semi-impervious vigilante”, would arrive. .
In the course of his career, Bug-No-Pain-Man would sustain: 86 bone fractures, 148 lacerations, three ruptured organs, break his nose five times, and be put in a coma twice, but would never feel any of it.
“Crime can’t hurt me…well it can damage my body, but you know what I mean” he would tell the press.
Revered as a self-sacrificing hero willing to get beaten to a pulp to protect others, he would find the acceptance he had long craved within the halls of academia within the halls of justice. He was welcomed into LOSS as a replacement for the disgraced hero Pastrami Man, and his life seemed to be on an upward trajectory. There, he would first meet his eventual wife Susan (Cactus Woman), and by the fall of 2019, they were expecting their first child. Martin McDougal, it would seem, had at last found satisfaction in life.
At approximately 9:59 pm, on November 2nd, 2019, while driving home from a family gathering, Martin and Susan’s Volkswagen beetle was unexpectedly rear-ended by a pickup truck pushing them into the middle of a busy intersection. The passenger side of their car was then struck by an oncoming vehicle hard enough for the beetle to flip on its side. Susan would not survive the collision. As usual, Martin didn’t feel any of it. “I couldn’t get over that. It felt like it should hurt more. I’d just lost my entire world, all of it. But my body…numb. It felt so wrong. I wanted it to hurt more. I hated that I didn’t feel anything, like she must have, it filled me with shame.” McDougal would later tell an interviewer. Martin would never put on the cape and mask again. Today, he resides in his hometown of Long Beach, California, and spends his time volunteering at a local animal shelter. He and his late wife’s seats at LOSS have respectfully never been filled.
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