A life-changing event prompted a mild-mannered Auburn man to become a superhero

Mark Wyzenbeek and his stepson glide through the shopping-mall doors, a trio of villainous teenage girls hot on their trail and ogling the man with the big "S" on his chest. The tight bright-blue bodysuit. The red shorts and boots. The flowing cape.

Wyzenbeek turns and confronts the girls, who giggle and whisper to themselves until one of them crows, "Are you doing a dare?"

"Naw, he likes it," says stepson Rick Stewart.

Wyzenbeek smiles. "People would have to dare me not to do it."

The girls consider this. "I dare you not to do it," one finally says.

Kapow! A zinger for the Man of Steel! Go on: Take your best shot. Plenty have already. "Yo, Spandex-Man!" they shout. Or: "Halloween's next month, dude." Such comments are mere marshmallows rained on the Metropolis Marvel.

Not that Superman doesn't feel pain. He's felt it in a big way. But he's also a guy who grew up believing in heroes, because, to paraphrase a popular saying, bad stuff happens, and someone's got to come to the rescue.

Four years ago, Wyzenbeek's estranged wife died in a car accident. The longtime pop-culture collector decided then that it was time to stop putting off his life's fantasy: Now, when the urge strikes, he hits the town as his favorite superhero. So bring on the bad stuff. He can take it.

As he parades through places near his Auburn home, such as the appropriately named Supermall, it's for the other reactions that he lives — the wide-eyed encounters with preschool kids, the bouquets of "Superman, you made my day!" tossed by adoring sales clerks.

"His presence just radiates," observes Stewart, 22.

A group of tourists approaches and leaves with posed photos. A high-school-age girl flies at him, shrieking, "Superman, can I have your autograph?" He complies; she runs back to amused friends: "I got Superman's autograph!"

See that? That's why a 46-year-old man dares subject himself to ridicule. "It's fun for me, but it's all about them," Wyzenbeek says. "She was really excited. It meant a lot to her. She'll have something to tell her friends about for weeks now."

Heroes are something the country has needed more than ever lately. Don't look at Wyzenbeek, though. He's not looking to save the world. But he just might be saving himself.

Early brush with a hero

He remembers meeting Fess Parker as a boy on the set of the "Daniel Boone" show he watched every week. Even got his autograph and saw him film a scene. "He was as tall as the Empire State Building with his coonskin cap," says Wyzenbeek, a local boy who grew up the son of a Continental Airlines executive. "That's something you never forget. That's what I want to give these kids."

As Superman, the little ones watch him, awestruck to the point of disorientation. He can almost guarantee that the man in blue will inhabit their brains for years. They believe. When they ask whether he can fly, he tells them Lex Luthor just laid some Kryptonite on him, so he's not up to full strength. He strives to promote the ideals of truth, justice and the American way — along with good manners. "I try to motivate them to be good in life," he says.

An easygoing man with thin brown hair and a boyish grin, Wyzenbeek stays mostly close to home, donning the cape on days off from his managerial job at a local ice rink. He's addressed kindergartners at Seattle's Westside School and cruised the power-lunch scene in downtown Kirkland. On occasion, though he does not drink himself, he crashes local taverns. Some cheer; others wonder whether they've had one too many. Once, he graced Children's Hospital, where, he says, "I think the doctors and nurses got a bigger kick out of it than the kids did."

He has yet to brave the mean streets of downtown Seattle. "I've been a little leery to do it myself," he says. "I wasn't sure I'd make it home with my clothes on."

That home — an Auburn condo — is a cluttered warren of pop culture, as disparate and bountiful as a Vegas buffet. "The Fortress of Solitude," he calls it — the name of Superman's arctic hideaway. There is a Star Trek corner, and an Elvis shelf. But mostly there are all things superhero, largely cultivated in decades B.E. (before eBay), some from his years as a kid.

Wonder Woman. The Flash. A Superboy/Supergirl set featuring Krypto the Superdog and Streaky the Supercat. A lifelike Joker mask he bought straight from its maker for $350. A Batman mask — "my pride and joy," he says — that he got from a collector in Texas. This stuff is art to him.

The king of all, though, is Superman — whose square-jawed visage or majestic "S" logo adorns mugs and glasses in kitchen cabinets, action figures on cluttered living-room shelves, a pop-up book he used to read to daughter Meagan, now 11. Against a wall, boxes and boxes of Superman comics dating back to the 50s; in his bedroom, a VCR and two TVs set up to play the same Superman movie so it doesn't matter which way he faces.

'Enjoy it while you can'

Most women would have told him to grow up. Not Melanie. She saw beyond that, he says, saw the greater good that he could do. He met her while helping a friend on an industrial renovation project after six years on the road trying to make it as a singer-songwriter.

Melanie Stewart had been brought in to work the same project, a fetching blond single mom with two young kids. "I just fell in love with the whole package," Wyzenbeek says.

The two married and had daughter Meagan a few years later; a decade after their marriage they'd separate, good friends despite the issues they could not conquer. He still looks at her picture every day. Thinks about what she'd be doing. All the things she didn't get to see.

At 34, on a late May afternoon, she was on Highway 9 in Arlington when she crossed the center line into the path of a dump truck.

Her death, at such a young age, rocked Wyzenbeek's world. That's when it hit home: "Life is about dealing with loss," he says. "You only have stuff for a little while. You have to enjoy it while you can."

For years, a piece at a time, he'd amassed a sizable collection of pop-culture memorabilia, but he'd never had the time or money to invest in costumes, his real interest. At the time, making a fairly good living in marketing, he could. What was he waiting for?

A perfect 'S'

Before then, he'd hardly touched a sewing machine, but he got one from neighbor Charlotte Johnson and now creates his own outfits. ("He also knows how to fix cars and light fixtures," Johnson says. "Those are the things I really appreciate.") The Superman outfit he wears is his fourth — blue with bright yellow belt, red custom-made boots. A swath of chest hair peeks from above a painstakingly detailed "S," and there are Superman rings on his fingers.

He's a stickler for authenticity. Christopher Reeve was a nice Superman, he says, but the shape of the "S" was all wrong, its edges rounded instead of pointy and sharp. "If the costume doesn't look 100 percent authentic, you're really wasting your time," he says. It still stings him to remember going out in a cheap Batman costume and hearing a little boy say, "That's not Batman." People have to connect you with the costume, he says. "Otherwise, they just think you're a joke."

That's why he liked the "Superboy" show, which ran on TV from 1988-92. The "S" on that outfit was just right, so he jumped at the chance to add an actual Superboy costume to his collection. He now uses it as a sewing pattern. Costumes dangle from hangers in his living room; look at this one, the one he's working on now — it's going to have an S with all-hidden seams, even better than in the movies. "This is the only one of its kind in existence on the planet," he says.

"You don't know that, Dad," stepson Stewart says.

"Yes, I do," Wyzenbeek insists. "This is going to be the most awesome costume."

Extra capes hang in his closet alongside Batman and Joker costumes, but it's a living-room bookcase that holds his darkest, most telling possession — a miniature image taken from the controversial DC Comics series, "Crisis on Infinite Earths," in which dozens of superheroes lost their lives. In episode #7, Supergirl sacrifices herself to save Superman, who later wails in agony as he holds her lifeless body. The figures are displayed on a center shelf along with the flier they made for Melanie's funeral. This, he says, is how he felt when she died. Powerless and all alone.

$500 boots

In some ways Wyzenbeek is still a kid. Every so often, he and Meagan play the mechanical claw machine at the local Fred Meyer, trying to win stuffed animals.

He's all schemes and dreams and imagination. The economic downturn of the past year felled Wyzenbeek's marketing enterprise, but even as he heads to his new job at the Kent Valley Ice Centre, ideas are cooking in his head. Star Trek story lines. Plans with Meagan to videotape a series of superhero "episodes" in full costume.

He parks his Pontiac, the one he ultimately hopes to convert into a Batmobile, in the lower lot of the ice rink. He's in full costume, running an errand before a stint at the mall. He eyes the 3-foot-high retaining wall of easily ascended rock and soil and opts instead for the nearby stairs en route to the main entrance. "I've got $500 boots on," he explains.

Inside, skating instructor Nanci Sullivan comes off the ice to see him, fascinated. "Wow, you look good," she tells Wyzenbeek. "Let me see the back." He turns and she rubs the cape between her fingers, pulls at it, testing it.

"Don't tug on it," Wyzenbeek says. "You don't tug on Superman's cape."

Then to the Supermall, to which Wyzenbeek has no official connection despite the name. At Spencer's Gifts, a burly sales clerk emerges onto the concourse with a huge, medieval-looking over-the-shoulder costume and battleaxe. "Bring it on, Superman!" he roars like one of those face-painted football fans.

Wyzenbeek is undeterred. He asks if they've got any new Superman merchandise in stock. These days, though, it's all Spider-Man. "That's the best we can do for you," the guy says. "Sorry, Superman!"

Another loop around the mall, greeting kids with handshakes, absorbing odd looks and strange reactions. A tattooed, tank-topped guy with a buzz cut eyes Wyzenbeek as he passes, grabs his girlfriend and says slowly, in near reverence: "He is a soldier. A soldier."

Limits to superpowers

This is what Wyzenbeek lives for — and he's confident that Melanie would have supported him, that her influence continues. Yes, they'd separated, but his are the sentiments of a widower, not a divorcée.

"She was the only one I thought I was ever gonna be married to," he says.

One week you see someone, the next you get a phone call that they're gone. There are some things even Superman can't stop. "It really opened my eyes," he says. "You never really know how many more tomorrows you have."

He had to have that Superboy costume, the one with the perfect S, and not long after Melanie was gone, he found himself making enough money to go after it. One day an e-mail from an eBay connection appeared offering a replica of a costume worn by George Reeves, who played "Superman" in the famous 1950s TV series. Wyzenbeek wasn't interested, but on a whim he asked the guy whether he knew anyone with a Superboy costume.

And the fact that the guy had one, and that it happened to be for sale, and that Wyzenbeek had enough money to buy it after years of living paycheck to paycheck — well, how can you explain that? "I'm convinced that was her doing," he says.

The next day, he and Meagan were at Fred Meyer, and there in the claw machine, atop the heap of cheap watches and teddy bears, was a little stuffed Superman. Offering itself to him like a gift. Saying: Save me. And he did, on the first try.

Marc Ramirez: 206-464-8102 or mramirez@seattletimes.com.