For some reason, choose-your-own-adventure books seem to be on people's minds lately. You know the stuff: you encounter a pirate; to fight him, turn to page 17; to talk to him, turn to page 36. But to have a real adventure, you need to close the book, get out there and take some risks.

Like me, for example. Not so long ago, my roommate got engaged and, because my pants-optional at-home wardrobe is apparently not conducive to marital bliss, he moved in with his girlfriend and I took it upon myself to find a subletter. I could've just put an ad in the paper, but instead I chose ADVENTURE. I decided to expand my horizons and do something exotic, different and crazy: find a black roommate.

As a lifetime resident of Wisconsin, I've never actually met a black person. They sounded like a lot of fun from what I'd heard, but I didn't have any obvious connections through whom to find one. An ad saying “Black roommate wanted” seemed like it might send the wrong message. Instead, I got by with a little help from my Superfriends.

I don't like to talk about it a lot, but before I buckled down to a tough but honest life of scholastic achievement, I tried the seductive path of supervillainy. I made a costume out of my favorite indie-band T-shirts cut up and then sewed back together into a patchwork of logos, and I wore a sequined red eye patch and called myself "Hell Rocker," though nobody else did.

I didn't really have any "powers" to speak of. I would just carry a rock around and threaten to throw it at people unless they gave me $6.66. If they surrendered the cash, I'd declare a victory for the dark gods of youth-oriented alternative rock while thrusting my actual rock into the air to emphasize the pun. Then I'd use the money to buy groceries. Usually they would just laugh at me or walk faster while avoiding my dread gaze. So I'd have to throw the rock at them, which was generally futile because the eye patch ruined my depth perception. It was pretty pathetic, and I was actually grateful when The Flash found a couple of spare seconds in his schedule to kick my ass and set me on the right path.

Now I'm on the Superfriends Villain Rehabilitation Program. Green Lantern is my sponsor, and when I casually mentioned my horizon-expanding plan to him during one of our bimonthly checkups, he told me he knew somebody who was looking for a place.

So that's how I ended up with Black Vulcan as my roommate — you can tell he's black because it's right in his name. He has mastery of electricity, which somehow translates into the ability to fly and time-travel and a ton of other amazing and highly unlikely powers. Sometimes he uses them to fight evil, but mostly he uses them to appear at the nick of time when any UW-Madison publicity photo is being taken and appear as the token black guy.

You might remember the scandal when a snapshot of cheering students at a Badger game had a black student photoshopped in to give the illusion of diversity. Well, that need never happen again because the Black Vulcan is capable of negatively charging photons in such a way that he is transported at the speed of lightning to any university-sponsored student gathering, rendering it less painfully white, in return for which he receives a free ride for tuition. Even as an ex-villain I find this to be a gross abuse of his power, but he says he's increasing the visibility of minorities on campus and accusingly asks, "Do you have a problem with that?"

"No, man, I just think there are better ways to do it, like offering scholarships to disadvantaged — "

"Oh, so now black people are 'disadvantaged'? We need your help to make it, huh?"

I think he's just touchy because since Superfriends went off the air he hasn't had any other offers, and he's had to get an education and find a real job, so I can excuse his hypocritical behavior. But in addition to that, he's also a straight-up asshole. Every time I talk to him, he's got to have the last word and remind me that he's basically omnipotent compared to me.

"Holy shit, Vulc, check it out. I just beat 'Super Metroid' in under three hours! I get to see Samus in her panties!"

"That's really cool for you, man. I just saved half a dozen sorority girls from a swarm of radioactive bees. You know, it took a lot less than three hours."

"Radioac — there's not even a nuclear power plant anywhere near here."

"I know, man. They came from space. Crazy shit. Listen, I gotta go be non-threateningly black at a hockey game, a Club 770 show and the Wisconsin Film Festival at the same time and then go on a sextuple date with a few ladies from Delta Gamma. Hey, have fun replaying 'Contra' while you think about the double entendre implied by 'sextuple date.'"

Until my lease runs out, I've got to put up with him and his depressingly successful strategy of hitting on my dates by subtly hinting at the intensities of pleasure he can deliver to a woman during lovemaking using a mild electric current in certain sensitive areas. Actually, it's not subtle at all when he gets drunk and starts shouting "Who wants some sta-dick electricity!"

The lesson here is that real adventures suck because you can't go back to the page where you decided to invite some jerk to live in your apartment and instead choose to sleep in. Having been reminded of that, I've been spending my time exploring the 223 possible endings of the delightfully baffling choose-your-own-adventure at www.bradthegame.com, authored by the creator of The Brick Testament, a picture-book series of gospel stories illustrated with photos of Legos.

Ben Freund knows Black Vulcan is just a cheap unlicensed rip-off of Black Lightning, DC Comics' first African-American superhero to star in his own book. But he just doesn't care. Express your anger at his blatant disregard of canon with an e-mail to [email protected].