Are they the biggest comic-book nerds around? You decide after you see their NC home.
As comic-book nerds go, the man formerly known as Mark Taylor and the woman formerly known as Carol Blackman have grounds to claim that they’re two of the biggest in the town of Matthews, and perhaps in all of Mecklenburg County.
It’s not just that — 14 years ago, when he was with his former wife — he named his only son Kal-El, in honor of the birth name given to the boy who would become Superman; or that 12 years ago, Taylor legally changed his first name to Jor-El, in honor of Superman’s biological father.
Nor is it just the fact that the couple each wore red and yellow leather The Flash costumes when they got married in March 2019, or that they required every one of their guests to come to the wedding dressed head-to-toe in superhero garb.
Sure, those are pretty hardcore comic-book-nerd moves. But wait till you get a load of their home.
While some guys have man caves where they can relax and pursue hobbies away from the rest of the family, and while some women have she sheds for the same purpose, Jor-El and Cubby-El Taylor (yes, she changed up her name, too — more on that in a minute) didn’t want to settle for one room.
Instead, over the past year and a half, they’ve turned the majority of their 3,100-square-foot house into a collection of shrines to their heroes. Every room has a theme, and each room is fervently committed to the chosen theme.
“You can go to every other house on this block, and they’re probably gonna all look similar in the inside,” Jor-El, a 54-year-old Navy veteran who works as an IT specialist, starts to explain.
He’s flanked, as he speaks, by Cubby, 50, who works in a finance job and changed her name after the two got married — officially adopting a longtime nickname (she’s always loved the Chicago Cubs) and combining it with the “El” to match up with Jor-El.
They’re standing in the foyer in front of a life-size replica of the Trident of Neptune, which is mounted on the wall underneath a framed image of actor Jason Momoa posing as Aquaman.
To their right is her office, which is painted in The Flash colors and has a ridiculous number of The Flash toys and touches throughout, along with a wall lined with dozens of still-in-the-box female-superhero action figures and another dedicated to SpongeBob SquarePants toys.
To their left is the red-and-blue dining room, which is dominated by a gigantic wallpaper mural featuring actor Henry Cavill depicted flying through the sky as Superman and is all about the caped hero — right down to a plastic Superman bust in the centerpiece and the red-and-blue throw rug under the table that’s adorned with the iconic “S” logo.
Believe it or not, the tour is barely getting started.
“They’re gonna look ‘normal,’” Jor-El continues, referring to his read on most other people’s homes. “Now, there’s nothing wrong with that. But at this point of our lives, if we want to actually be able to express ourselves, to show our passion, what we love, why shouldn’t we be able to do it in the place we call home?”
And for Jor-El in particular, getting to a point in life where he could finally do just that wasn’t at all easy.
‘Nobody wanted to act like a little kid’
Mark Taylor grew up in what he describes as “the worst parts” of Baltimore, Maryland, and was navigating elementary school during the early 1970s, when homicides were peaking as the city was being flooded with cheap heroin from Mexico.
Gunshots were a familiar sound. Getting robbed or killed was a constant fear.
So, he says, he often shied away from going outside and would instead immerse himself in comic books.
Superman was always one of his favorites, and his love for the character deepened after the release of the 1978 film version starring Christopher Reeve, whom he credits with leading him to eventually get out of Baltimore.
“That scene in ‘Superman’ where he tells his mom he’s gotta go, and he leaves home and throws the crystal — that was my whole inspiration for going into the service,” Jor-El says.
In 1985, he joined the Navy, and he was introduced to the hell of war just over a year and a half later: His was the first ship to arrive on site after the USS Stark was struck by two Iraqi missiles in the Persian Gulf off the coast of Saudi Arabia. Thirty-seven Navy personnel died as a result of that attack.
Once again, he found himself gripped by paranoia and fear of danger. Every time he saw a bright object moving across the night sky from then on, he had the panicked thought that it might be a missile.
On the plus side, the military gave him a chance to work and live in some of the most beautiful places in the world. Over the course of his 20-year career, he found himself stationed in places like southern California, Hawaii and Japan.
But he was still heavily into comic-book culture, and being in the Navy didn’t provide much opportunity for him to let his geek flag fly.
He recalls that, while living in Hawaii, he would sneak off to comic-book conventions with a garment bag containing a costume that allowed him to transform into Geordi La Forge, the character portrayed by LeVar Burton on “Star Trek: The Next Generation.”
“Then when I came back to the base I’d be in my regular uniform, so that way people wouldn’t see me dressed up in Star Trek stuff, because, yeah, I didn’t have anybody in my circle who was into that,” he says. “Everybody was so by-the-book. Nobody wanted to act like a little kid. ... But I had to sneak because I was afraid I’d be made fun of.”
On top of that, he says his previous wife — the mother of Kal-El and Kal-El’s older sister, Theresa — routinely belittled his penchant for cosplay and his passion for superheroes.
So, for the most part, he repressed those desires. For years, he was miserable. After retiring from the military in 2005, he battled PTSD due to the war and had become anxious and depressed due to what he says was a toxic relationship for him.
Then one day, after separating from Kal-El and Theresa’s mother, he met Carol.
And it was clear from the start that she was as big of a nerd as he was.
While hunting Pokémon, she found love
The window of opportunity was rather slim.
In 2015, Carol — who at the time was a single mother with two teenagers at home — was hired as a credit analyst at the same company where Jor-El worked. But because they were employed by different divisions, their paths didn’t immediately cross. Not inside the building, at least.
“I had friends of mine that would walk a trail outside the office,” she recalls, “and we would play Pokémon GO — which is a game that you catch Pokémon ... on your phone.”
Jor-El, on break-time walks with his own colleagues, often encountered Carol’s group.
“They were never looking up,” he says. “They were always on their phone, and you see ’em swiping and all that. Finally, I asked, ‘What the heck are you all doing?’ They said, ‘Oh, we’re playing Pokémon.’”
Carol in particular caught his eye. He considered making an advance. But a close friend initially warned him against it, arguing that Jor-El’s life was too complicated then, and that it wouldn’t be fair to drag Carol into his messes. So he bided his time.
He almost waited too long.
In the fall of 2016, Carol submitted a request for IT help that Jor-El fielded. He responded with a somewhat clumsy Pokémon reference. It was cute enough to make Carol laugh, though. From there, they struck up a friendship — just in time: Shortly thereafter, in October, Carol took a job at another company.
Their first date fell on the day after Thanksgiving.
In the early days of their relationship, they often went hunting for Pokémon together. They also came to find out that they had a mutual affection for “Smallville,” the TV series that aired from 2001-2011 and centered around Superman from his high school years into young adulthood.
“We were talking about superheroes, and she said, ‘Please tell me you saw ‘Smallville,’ ’” recalls Jor-El, who says he immediately gushed about the trove of “Smallville” collectibles he owned. “She was totally excited about it. She didn’t say, ‘Oh my God, this is some geek,’ or something like that. And that just confirmed the fact that this was the one for me.”
As they grew closer, he opened up to her about his mental-health struggles. She not only eventually persuaded him to seek therapy for the first time, but he says she also was the first partner to express empathy and to act as a calming force for him when he was having an anxiety attack, or when he couldn’t stop crying.
“I think that no one ever really appreciated him,” Cubby says, “so I’ve always tried to show him how important he is to me, and build him up.”
On March 23, 2019, two years and four months after they started dating, Jor-El married Carol in front of friends and family who all were dressed up as superheroes. Jor-El’s mother, Theresa Sellars, ministered the ceremony in a Supergirl costume.
Carol changed her name to Cubby after the wedding, and they bought the house in Matthews together six months later. Their transformation into The Perfect Couple was nearly complete.
All that they had left to do was decorate.
‘We know this is not for everyone’
It took three months to set up the rooms the way they wanted, and it’s still a work in progress — they’re constantly adding new touches.
Today, it’s almost as if you’re walking through an art gallery, or a museum, with separate exhibits dedicated to various superheroes and movie and TV characters.
“I always had all of this inside of me, but I never had the courage,” Jor-El says of his desire to go over-the-top on the decorating. He turns to look at Cubby and rests his hand on her knee. “No one was strong enough to push me but this one.”
It’s worth noting, though, that she was as into the overall concept as he was. He says she was an equal partner in visualizing how to transform the house from the very first time they walked in with their real estate agent, and estimates she’s bought more stuff to fill and decorate the rooms than he has.
What they’ve created is truly astonishing.
Whereas themed rooms in private homes often feel like rooms that were given a theme after the fact, it feels like the Taylors did things the other way around: Like the theme was the priority and then they figured out how to make the room functional later.
At one point during a recent tour, which lasted the better part of an hour, it took a visitor several seconds after walking into a Harry Potter-themed room they refer to as Hogwarts to realize he was standing in their master bedroom.
That’s because this room also has a massive wallpaper mural (“If you ever been to Universal Studios, that’s an exact replica of Diagon Alley before you get to Gringotts,” Jor-El says) and pretty much every piece of decor in the room matches it, from the fake candles hanging in the air to the red replica telephone booth.
There’s also a bonus room upstairs that doubles as Jor-El’s office and is tricked out with all kinds of Black Panther collectibles and memorabilia, purple walls and purple LED lights, black Black Panther curtains, a Black Panther throw rug, a wall plastered with new-in-the-box male superhero action figures, and much, much more.
There is no place you can turn inside the house and not be overwhelmed by a theme.
The living room is devoted to The Avengers, with a heavy lean toward Captain America. The laundry room is all about Star Wars. The landing between the first and second levels of the house is dedicated to “Game of Thrones.” Cubby’s mother, Patsy Adams, lives in a downstairs bedroom and chose a Wonder Woman theme.
(Jor-El’s kids and Cubby’s youngest son Zachary, 18, live with them part-time, and while their bedrooms are closer to typical teens’ rooms, there’s still a fair amount of superhero decor in each.)
Even the details were obviously important. There are mini superhero figurines on the ceiling fan pulls, superhero skins on the security cameras throughout the house, and rotating superhero wallpapers that have been loaded onto the CPI Security touchscreen.
Yet simple descriptions cannot do justice to what the Taylors have created. You have to see it for yourself.
And when you do, it’s likely you’ll have some variation of one of these two reactions: “This is awesome!,” or “These people are out of their minds.”
Jor-El and Cubby can understand either.
“We realize that it’s a lot to take in,” Cubby says, smiling, as she sits next to Jor-El in the shadow of a floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall mural of The Avengers in their living room. “People that come over, they’re like, ‘Give me a moment.’”
“Yeah, we know this is not for everyone,” Jor-El says. “We know people might be like, ‘Oh my God.’ ... My best friend, John, he would tell you the same thing: ‘Yeah, dude. There’s too much going on it that house.’”
“‘It’s too much. It’s too much,’” Cubby chimes.
Jor-El and Cubby are wearing matching The Flash football jerseys. At one point, Cubby’s cellphone rings, and the tone is the opening theme music from Disney+’s “The Mandalorian.”
It all does seem, perhaps, a bit too much.
But, Jor-El continues, “This house makes us happy. As I said to John, ‘We didn’t decorate the house for you. We didn’t decorate saying, ‘Oh, John’s coming. We gotta make sure the house looks normal for John.’’ We don’t care about John,” he says, laughing.
“We love you, John, but the house is not for you, buddy.
“This house is for us.”
This story was originally published April 9, 2021 at 10:38 AM.
