Crucible:Matinee

Real Name: Unknown

Background: Matinee was a young man found by policeman Galahad O'Boyle in the wreckage of a destroyed San Francisco movie theater where a rite of demonic summoning had taken place. He had no memory of his past, and only a ticket to that afternoon's matinee to give him any clue. But he possessed strange and fearful skills.

The Midnight Men took in the young man as one of their own, both to learn more about him as well as to protect him from what pursued him.

Matinee tells his own story:

I was tired of telling this story, especially to this O'Boyle flatfoot that kept coming by my hospital room to ask questions and scribble notes with his little stubby pencil. I sighed and began at the beginning.

"They found me under the rubble of the Guthrie Theater down by Fishermen's Wharf. Apparently, the owner of the theater, Bob Ruhlmann, wanted money or power or something that he didn't want to sweat for and he figured that his own personal demon would help him get it. So, he went looking for a way to get one. He poked around on the Q.T., put the word on the street, and finally got in touch with someone who had less of a conscience than him. It was some sailor off of a ship from South America. He was trying to make some extra cash selling contraband. This guy had spent a two-month cruise talking to some weirdo on the ship that had all kinds of magic books and stuff. He learned enough to make a copy of a summoning ritual from an ancient manuscript this guy had and sold it to Ruhlmann. Unfortunately, they were both just as stupid as they were lazy. The spy didn't bother to copy the notes from the margins of the manuscript onto the papers he gave Ruhlmann, and Ruhlmann didn't bother to learn anything about magic before he tried to summon the demon.

Ruhlmann didn't know that lots of ancient magic texts are booby-trapped. The old-timers were pretty tough guys when it came to keeping their secrets. It seems they actually changed the words and drawings in their rituals when they wrote them down, kind of a magical Pig Latin, if you get my drift. Any egghead that studies magic knows this, but Ruhlmann wasn't a studious type of guy, just a bum who wanted something for nothing.

So he bought a copy of an ancient manuscript from this sailor and ran off to the basement of the Guthrie. I guess it was the only place he could go with enough room to draw the circles and pictures that he needed to call up his demon servant. What he didn't know was that the symbols in the circle weren't for protection. They were words of power and anger; symbols that would call an angry demon that would destroy whoever had called it. Ruhlmann was only the first to die; the demon leveled the theater and seventeen other people were killed. I was the only survivor.

The doctors say that it's a miracle that I'm alive. The firemen pulled me out of the rubble and rushed me to Saint Vincent's. My clothes were totally burned and the building had collapsed on top of me. I was in a coma and I should have been dead, but when they washed the ashes off, I didn't have a scratch on me. I stayed in the coma for the next thirty-eight days. All that time, the Midnight Men hunted the demon that had escaped the wreckage of the Guthrie. Three days ago, they finally tracked it down and defeated it. As soon as they had beaten the demon, I woke up.

And now you know as much as I do, maybe more. I have no memory of anything before I woke up. My head is full of images that the doctors say could be left over memories, but I feel like I'm looking at pictures from someone else's picture books. Nothing clicks in my head anymore. What's even weirder is that the doctors say that I don't act like an amnesiac. All the docs say that I should be mad or sad about losing my memories, but I'm not. I just want people to stop asking about who I was before it all happened and just take me as I am.

I stood up from the chair and stepped over to the window to look out at the last sliver of the waning moon. "The Midnight Men have been by to visit a few times since I woke up. They were real nice to me! Caerulia even said I could come and stay at their headquarters until I get back on my feet. It's hard to find a job if you can't tell a boss what your name is or what kind of work you can do."

O'Boyle flipped his notebook closed and put his pencil away. "We'll be in touch if we have any more questions, kid." He stared at me a long time, and then he walked out of the room, gum-soles squeaking softly on the freshly waxed tile.

Matinee was later romantically involved with the costumed crimefighter Zephyr.

Group Affiliation: The Midnight Men

Status: Unknown

Powers: Matinee possessed a number of minor occult powers, which may have been related to his origin.

Skills: Matinee was an extremely nimble and agile hand to hand combatant, trained by Templar.

Creator: Frank Carroll

First Appearance: THE MIDNIGHT MEN #1