Lately, in creating a new comic concept, I’ve been looking at what makes a hero “super.” Is it clothes? Is it powers? Or is it something else?
I’ve come to the realization that it’s choice “C.” Because anyone can put on a costume but it doesn’t make you a superhero (best illustrated, so far, in Millar & Romita’s KICK-ASS). And folks with superpowers can go either way. So, by default, it has to be “something else,” but what is that something?
I’m starting to realize the effect of environment on characters (which is the point of this entry). In other words, setting and time & place are just as much a character as the people in costume (or out). As I said, recently, I’ve been tackling a creator owned concept that deals with a sidekick and his mentor’s legacy. In the plotting, I found it to be a straightforward superhero comic with a little bit of me inside. In the actual scripting, I found it to be the most cliche piece of fiction I’ve ever hacked out, and I feel that I’ve never hacked anything out. So, I took a step back. And in that retreat, I started to look at FALLOUT again.
FALLOUT is fantastic and yeah, I’d love for you all to seek out a copy of BEOWULF #7, but then you’d miss out on the whole story. Do yourself a favor, instead, and go here to see Dean’s art for the first 18 pages. This isn’t necessarily a post about FALLOUT, but rather, what it taught me a week or two ago, so let’s move on…
Remembering how FALLOUT came to be, it was suggested that the story be about a super-powered ex con. That was what I was given, so I had to fill in a lot. Is this ex-con a good man? Is he evil? Why’d he go to jail? How’d he get out? But I knew he’d be in New York City, and he’d lurk in places that I once haunted. The bars would be crappy hole-in-the-wall watering holes that had unfinished wooden floors and served only beer and shots of whiskey. The streets would be dirty and the gutters would choke on litter left behind by uncaring, apathetic individuals who once had a chance, but kicked that chance down a flight of stairs.
See that sentence there, in bold? That is what I was looking for with this new project. It’s pulpy, it’s noir, it’s dark. And only a hero can stand up in that kind of environment. Now, for it (the comic) to be a true noir, the hero would have to fail, or rather, not change and stay dark, which makes what I’m working on pulp (or maybe pulp noir). In fact, Edi Torres, my artist on this concept, suggested making the hero a villain at the end, but, I told him,
Making him a villain would certainly alienate him more and yeah, he’d be a stray forever. But one of my biggest themes in everything I write is redemption. I will watch my heroes fall a long way just to see they heights they’ll climb to.
(actual quote from my e-mail to Edi)
Which makes me a terrible noir writer (not like Brubaker or Rucka at all), but there you have it. So back to environment. I know what kind of character the hero will be (he was always supposed to be an “at the end of his rope” type) and I knew, looking at FALLOUT that this too would be set in NYC (in fact, I knew it would be 70s and 80’s NYC before the retreat). And all it took was FALLOUT to remember what NYC I would use. Giuliani NYC? No. Koch and Dinkins era NYC. Drugs, racial riots, and dirty dirty streets. The NYC I wasn’t allowed to venture out into.
That is where I plan on taking all of you…
with STRAY.
More to come…
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