and triumphs.
So what, exactly, are superheroes?
Superheroes are our modern myths, but it’s hard for many people to understand the attraction. On its face, the idea of the superhero—someone born with or given superhuman powers who adopts a codename and costume to become a freelance crime-fighter and do-gooder—seems dated in our secular and often cynical world. Yet there are those who risk their lives for us every day: firefighters, policemen, coast-guard sailors, our men and women in uniform. Why do any of them do it, when there are safer, easier ways to make a living?
More problematic is the public and police response to freelance crime-fighters. After all, there’s a word for such people: vigilantes. In the movie Death Wish, Charles Bronson played Paul Kersey, a New York architect and social liberal whose wife is murdered and daughter is raped in a horrific home-invasion. The police are unable to do anything, but Kersey becomes a vigilante; armed with a revolver, he walks the city’s dark streets and rides the subways, shooting down unlucky thugs who try and rob him and others. Most New Yorkers, citizens of a city where crime is spiraling out of control, love the “vigilante slayings” and street crime actually drops. But murder is murder, and the police have to stop him. In the end the police detective on the case figures out Paul’s identity; instead of arresting him, he orders him to leave town.
One reason we love superheroes is they are effective. Like Paul Kersey, they protect the innocent and bring the guilty to justice (or deliver justice to the guilty) in situations where the police—tied by laws and regulations—are often unable to. But in the comics, although superheroes don’t kill, and are usually dedicated to protecting citizens rather than meting out justice themselves, they are rarely part of the law-enforcement system and often break the law and violate civil rights in the course of their activities. At the very least, Superman’s x-ray vision and super-hearing amounts to an ongoing invasion of privacy. And Wonder Woman’s magic lasso, that compels those she binds with it to tell the truth? Who polices the superheroes? When a caped crusader uses excessive force in stopping the bad guys, who holds him accountable?
I could go on, but my point here isn’t to pick the superhero archetype apart; after all, Superman is as real as Gandalf, less real than Merlin. My point is that superheroes raise a lot of real-world questions. Assume the reality of superheroes: what then? And this can be fun; over the past couple of decades, a loose and ill-defined genre of fantasy literature, ideal for playing with these kinds of questions, has become more and more popular: alternate-reality stories.
I’m not referring to stories set in other worlds, such as The Lord of the Rings or Terry Pratchett’s excellent Diskworld novels. Alternate-reality stories take place here, whether in the past, present, or future. But here is different. In the Lord Darcy series, history is divergent (England and France are united under an Anglo-French empire) and magic works. In the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series, vampires, werewolves, witches, elves, dragons, etc., are an open part of an otherwise normal grim and gritty modern world. Bookstore shelves are filling with urban fantasy novels, many of them asking the fun questions or assuming the answers. How would a city police department deal with supernatural crimes? How would the public react to the sudden revelation of the existence of vampires? How would a sorcerer really make a living?
So far superheroes have largely lacked this real-world treatment. One notable and very successful exception is the Wildcards anthology series, coauthored by George R.R. Martin. The Wild Cards setting features a history that diverges from our own just after World War II, when an alien race unleashes the Wild Card Virus, a genetic virus that rewrites its victims’ genetic codes. Most of its victims die horribly, others survive but are mutated, often grotesquely, and a small handful gain superhuman powers. Through its stories, the series has worked out society’s reaction to the reality of superhumans. Given the comic-book stereotypes to fall back on, many of these superhumans have taken on codenames and some even put on tights and a mask. Others don’t. The Wild Cards series, under many contributing writers, has recently released its 21st book.
More real-world treatments of superheroes have come in the comics. In recent years writers have re-imagined such iconic heroes as Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, with greater attention to motivation and character as well as to the social and political environment in which they operate. Marvel Comic’s Ultimate titles (Ultimate X-Men, Ultimate Spiderman, The Ultimates, etc) lean towards greater social realism. Other comic series have taken non-traditional and often more socially realistic approaches to superhero worlds; Powers is a series about cops in a world of very human superheroes, Wildguard was a miniseries spotlighting a superhero reality-show team, and Noble Causes chronicled the adventures and family lives of a family of superhero celebrities.
And now there are the Wearing the Cape books. Like Wild Cards they take place in a real-world setting, a world where, in the decade since the Event, many superhumans have consciously adopted superhero personae. And while most superheroes are hardworking street-heroes who pay their union dues, the more powerful and flamboyant ones are true supercelebrities, with agents, publicity teams, even their own franchises or marketing empires.
Given this environment, anyone in the world of Wearing the Cape who experiences a breakthrough (an event that triggers their superpowers) is under strong social pressure to take up the cape and mask and become a career superhero. But superheroes are still human, the existence of superhuman powers has not made the world a safer place, and for normal people who must depend on superhumans for protection, fear and envy are natural human responses. And a cape and mask doesn’t put a superhero above the law—if anything it draws the law’s attention.
Is this what the world would look like, superhumans added? I would like to think it could be, but I’m an optimist. Meanwhile it’s fun to dream, to imagine, even to take a little inspiration from the story. And that, after all, is what our modern myths are for.
Enjoy!
Astra’s story is finished for now, but the story of Artemis’ trip to New Orleans will be told in Bite Me: Big Easy Nights, available in 2012!
Want to know more about the author? Go to marionharmon.wordpress.com.
Table of Contents
Episode One: Preemption
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Episode Two: Pursuit
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty One
Chapter Twenty Two
Episode Three: Countermoves
Chapter Twenty Three
Chapter Twenty Four
Chapter Twenty Five
Chapter Twenty Six
Chapter Twenty Seven
Chapter Twenty Eight
Chapter Twenty Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty One
Episode Four: Endgames
Chapter Thirty Two
Chapter Thirty Three
Chapter Thirty Four
Chapter Thirty Five
Chapter Thirty Six
Chapter Thirty Seven
Chapter Thirty Eight
Chapter Thirty Nine
Observation and Uncertainty
Life, Fiction, and Capes