(Dark Horse Comics)
Editor's Note: The Portland Timbers and Portland Thorns FC have partnered with iconic, local comic book publisher Dark Horse Comics to create player-specific superheroes in recognition of National Superhero Day. As part of the project, comic book writer Arvid Nelson created fictionalized origin stories for each player, detailing the genesis of their individual “super-powers.
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Tobin (Tobin Heath)
illusions and energy manipulation
Quote: “Winning is the best defense.”
Tobin has always been obsessed with The Beautiful Game, kicking balls against the wall of her local YMCA since she learned how to walk. By the age of four, those balls were bursting into fields of crackling energy. “My mom had to host more than a few bake sales to make up for lost equipment,” Tobin says with a guilty shrug, playing down the fame that quickly spread of the soccer wunderkind from Basking Ridge, New Jersey.
“We can’t account for it,” says doctor Sandra Battenauer, a leading expert on sports medicine. “Physically? Yes, she’s gifted, but it goes beyond that.” No super serums, no radioactive bug bites, no cosmic rays – Tobin’s powers are, according to Battenauer, “a manifestation of her raw determination to be the best.”
Tobin brushes off modern medical science’s consternation about her energy manipulation abilities. “Science?” she says. “Watch this,” kicking a ball that lights up like a miniature supernova, blasting right through the net and leaving a smoking hole behind. Tobin has refined her powers since her early days at the Y, and can even generate energy field skateboards and surfboards, two of her favorite past-times. “Who knows?” she says. “Maybe one day science will catch up with me.”
