It was April 27th, 2011 at the height of the Super Outbreak of storms when over two hundred tornadoes touched down across Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, and Mississippi. It devastated towns and killed 355 people over the course of four days. Four of the tornadoes that spawned that day were F5s, the strongest ranking possible on the Enhanced Fujita scale, and the so-called Super Outbreak became a trigger event for as many as three known metahumans including the most famous one today… Grimsta.
HERO BEAT: Thank you for speaking with us today.
GRIMSTA: Thank you for having me.
HERO BEAT: Many of our readers know the superhero, the movie star, the producer: Grimsta. But tell us about Charles Michael Hope, the man who came before Grimsta.
GRIMSTA: (Laughs) Come on, now, Charles Michael Hope is still here. It’s his heart in here, his kidneys, his bones. Hell, I still have his gallbladder scar.
HERO BEAT: So your remarkable regenerative abilities don’t heal everything.
GRIMSTA: No, they keep me together, but they don’t heal what happened to me before my trigger event. My gallbladder is still gone.
HERO BEAT: So tell us about Charles, in his own words.
GRIMSTA: Well, Charles was an athletic kid from Smithville, Mississippi who went on to play College football as fullback for the University of Alabama Crimson Tide.
HERO BEAT: But you got in on a scholarship for Engineering.
GRIMSTA: Yeah, thanks to my Dad. He owned a construction company in Smithville, and every day after school, if I didn’t have practice, I was doing my homework in his office. Dad had a head for math, and he made sure I did too.
HERO BEAT: Can you tell us about that day?
GRIMSTA: Look, I’ll be honest. There’s nothing in that story that makes sense—nothing in there that’s going to tell you why I deserved to have powers. Trust me, I’ve played that day over and over again in my head and it–it was the Hail Mary of genetics. Over 300 people weren’t so lucky. The tornadoes hit and I—I did something stupid. I was worried about my dad and his phone was dead, so I drove through the damn storms to reach him. I hit Smithville in time to watch it get destroyed, like… nothing I’ve ever seen. Just a column of wind and rage, and when the damn thing was almost on top of me? Boom… my crisis gene triggers just as I’m praying for Jesus to save me.
HERO BEAT: So do you believe it was the Crisis Gene that saved you, or God?
GRIMSTA: A bit of both, maybe. I can’t say. All I know is that I got tossed, what, three miles away by that F5? I hit the ground covered in my aura and my cuts and bruises? Well, those disappeared fast. As I made my way back to what was left of Smithville, I just started helping people.
HERO BEAT: And that’s when the television crew started following you around.
GRIMSTA: Right. I guess we both made each other’s careers that day.
HERO BEAT: Having survived a devastating event like the Super Outbreak, what do you think of Storm Chasers… I mean the fans who jump into danger hoping for their own trigger event.
GRIMSTA: I get it, you know. They see me living this life and they want a piece of it. But it’s not worth it. Behind every one of these trigger events is a real-life tragedy, and you’re at the heart of it, saving lives and powerless to save more. You know, I had a chance to talk to Freedom-X at a charity event out in L.A. when I was just starting. You know what he told me? He said: “God only gave us two hands to keep us humble.” The day I got my powers… I couldn’t save the man who raised me. I couldn’t show him who I’d become. That’s what I’d tell Storm Chasers.