Presented here are the excerpts from UNDER THE HOOD.

In these next chapters Hollis Mason

discusses the formation of the Minutemen. Reprinted with permission of the author.

III.

From the moment that I decided somewhere deen inside myself that I wanted to try my
hand at heing a costumed adventurer, to the moment I first stepped out into the night
with a mask on my face and the wind on my bare legs, took about three months. Three
months of self-doub and self-ridicule. Three months of self-conscious training down at
the Police Gymnasium. Three months figuring out how the hellI was going to make
myself a costume. The costume was difficult, because I couldn't start designing it until I'd
thought of a name. This stunped me for a couple of weeks. eause every name 1cae up
with sounded upid, ad wha I really wanted was something with the same sense of dama
and excitement s "Hooded Justice" Evenly, a suitable handle was provided inadvertently
hy one of the ther cops that I Yorked with down at the siation house. Hed invited me out
lor a heer after work two or three imes only to be turned down because I wanted to
spend as much of my evenings working out n the Police Cymnasiums as posible, after
which I'd usually go to bed around nine o'clock and sleep through untl ive the next
morning, when d get up and put in a couple of hours orkout beore doning my badge and
uniform in readiness for my dlay job. After having his ffer of beer and relaxation turned
down yet again by reasCn of me waning tob in bed early, inaly gv up asking and took to
calling me "Nite wl" t of sarcaEsm until he finally ound somebody else to drnk with Nite
Owl" I liked it Now all I had to come up with was the costume A masked adventurer's
costume is one of thase things that nobody really thinks about. Should it have acape, or
no capeShould ite thiek and arnred ro protert you from har m, or exible and lightweight to
alow maneuverability What sortof mask shuld it have? Do bright olors make you more
ofa target than dark ones? All of these were things that I had to consider Eventually
Iopted for a design that let the arns and legs as free as possible, while arotecting my
boly and head with a tough leather tunic, light chainmail bries, and a layer of ather-over-
chaimi protecting my head. I cxperimented with aak, remembering how he Shacow woukl
use his cloak to misguide enemy bullets, leading them to shoot at parts of he swirling
hlack mass where his bady didn't happen to be. In practice, however, I found it too
nweldy Iwas always ripping over it or getting it caught in things, and s abancioned it for
noutfit tha was as streamlined as I could make it With the mail ari leather headpiece
hiding my hair, I nd I only really needed a small omino mask te ronccal my identity, hut
even this presented problems that weren't obvious at irst glance. My first mask was
attached to y face by the simple expediency of a string, bu his nearly got me killed dung
my lirst ever ouing in full costume, when a drunk with a knife ooked s fingers into the
eyeholes of the domino and pulled it down so that I could nly see of ne eye. If I'd been
less fit and alert or he'd been less drunk y career might well have nded then As it was I
wax able to tear off the mask completely and then disarm him, trusting hat the alehol
would tog any cle ar recollection of my fate. After that, dispensed with the nng and suck
the mask ta my face using spirit gum, suh as actors use to attach false beards
mustaches I first ame Nit Owl during the carly months o 1939, and although my tirst few
xploits were largely unspectacular, they aroused a lot of meia interest simply because by
939, dressing up in a cstume and protetng your neighborhood had become something of
a ad, with the whele of America at least briefly interested in its developmen. A month
after I nade my debut, a young worman whcalled herslf The Silhouctte broke into the
headlines by exposig the ativities of a crookcd publisher trafficking in child pornography,
delivering a unitive heating o the entreprencur and his tw chief cameramen in the prot
ess. A little after at, the lirst reorts o a man dressed lke a moh who could glide tougli the
air startcd to ome in from Con necti ut, and a particularly vicious and bruual young man
in a gandy yellow