In Hero Years... I'm Dead Delux Edition

by Michael Stackpole

  Coyote as a survivor fit perfectly into the nature of this novel’s hero. If nothing else, he’s a survivor. He’s also a trickster, or uses a bag of tricks, so that ties back into certain Native American legends. This latter point wasn’t a consideration during the writing, but sounds good for any academic analysis of the work. What really was a consideration was alliteration. Kid Coyote sounds great, and I loved the idea of someone adopting Coyote’s abandoned identity. All I had to do was justify it in the story, and it would work. That justification became another point to write toward.

  The whole system of the world, with Superfriends and fantasy leagues and leaked plans and the like came together pretty easily. The idea of a villain leaking plans grew out of Crossover Earth. The idea of ratings points comes from television and folks playing fantasy leagues and folks watching endless YouTube videos. Using non-lethal weapons and staging great fights come straight from Professional Wrestling—which really presents simple morality plays in a very entertaining way. All I needed to do was to figure out a few aspects to make it a viable business model—albeit one built on a shaky foundation—and the world worked.

  Being a lifelong comics fan, there’d always been questions I wanted to address in a serious manner. For example, I always found Batman to be a greater hero than Superman because nothing could hurt Superman. Or there was always the question of Batman’s sanity, or the lack thereof. Little practical things like the vulnerability of secret identities begged for exploration. In this novel I could tag all of that, and more.

  There were two greater issues that this story made available for exploration. One is the nature of the consensual reality in which we live. By and large we live by mutual consent. Sure, there are laws that proscribe some behaviors, but being a jerk isn’t against the law. It’s also not pleasant, and most folks prefer acceptance to hatred, so they act within social norms. Still, we all realize that the old saw “the squeaky wheel gets the grease” is valid—and there are times when greasing a squeaky wheel seems like a great option.

  This consensual reality and its collapse in the face of extremism is one of the things that bothers me about both Libertarianism and Pacifism. If someone is stronger, is a bully, is well-armed and not afraid of killing someone for offenses imagined or real, society implodes. The thing is that we all know this. It’s the reason that terrorism is so daunting. Terrorists are agents of chaos. They’re willing to operate outside the rules, which means society has no way to fight them effectively. It’s like so many stories of the Wild West, where it takes a gunfighter to save society from other gunfighters, but once he’s done his job, he becomes the new threat.

  The other issue I got to play with is one that shows up a lot in my work. I am fascinated by heroes and what makes them heroes. Why do people do things where they put their own lives at risk to save others? I’ve done a lot of reading on the subject and haven’t yet found a one-size-fits-all answer. That’s actually good, since it allows for all sorts of stories to be written around heroism. One aspect of things is that someone who is a hero to one person, might not be a hero to another—including himself. And he can easily be a villain to many others. All those factors provide a lot of energy for a story.

  Unlike most of my novels, I started writing on this one without a complete outline. My process for this book started with to an early-morning walk to Starbucks. I’d think about what I wanted to write and sketch things out for the next two or three chapters. I’d pull notes from the previous chapters and project them forward. I never really had a sense of who the true villain was until halfway through the writing process, and wasn’t able to make all the connections backward and forward until the second draft.

  The operating situation for this book can be summed up as progressive complication. My main character had three areas of conflict in his life: re-entry into the world, dealing with friends and family, and sorting out the mystery of why he’d been away for so long. Just as he made headway on one problem, I’d hit him with something from one of the other areas. As a result, he never really got a chance to reach some sort of equilibrium. He life was constantly in chaos and picking up speed as the lines merged and tangled.

  The first three chapters really bear this out. In the first, he’s setting himself up to work on the mystery of his exile. As he defines the problem, the weirdness of the world kicks in. Just as he gets a handle on how he relates to villains in this new world, he discovers he has a daughter who can kick his ass, and doesn’t seem to like him much. And then he’s back to world weirdness and feeling out of place in a world he was stolen from two decades earlier.

  As with any novel, there are things that pop in which surprise the writer. In this book, it was the character Puma. As I noted above, the situation at Comicon led me to create the Hall of Fame sequence. I really wanted to contrast how the actors were more popular than the real heroes, which is a bit of social commentary. Puma became a means toward that end, and his sacrifice went back to the true nature of heroism.

  I had only intended Puma be used in that one situation, but he kept injecting himself into the book backward and forward. Once I realized his catch-phrase was ‘Be Good,’ it became really easy to slip into the story. For each different character it had a different meaning. The fact that it galled some characters while provided the purest of motivations to others made it great fun. Puma also gave me a link back into the “Golden Age” of comics, which then placed Graviton and Nighthaunt properly. That, in turn, set the stage for all the other heroes.

  Clearly some of the characters here are analogs of well-known comic superheroes. There are some characters who are parodies as well, but these are incidental characters and used for comic relief. I’ll admit that I’ve always had a soft spot for heroes who aren’t quite ready for the big leagues—the heroes with a single power who are fine in their own venues but close to useless otherwise. When I used to play Revenant in a Champions campaign, that was the role he usually occupied, since everyone else was incredibly powerful.

  Graviton and Nighthaunt especially had to appear in the book because they are analogs of the two most iconographic heroes in all of comics: Superman and Batman. That was always the dichotomy, not only among fans, but in character world view. Superman is optimistic and believes in the good-heartedness of people. Batman is just the opposite. For the most part, all other heroes fall in between. In addition to needing them as points around which I could muster arguments, their presence served to put my hero in his place. Their changes also marked the changes in the world. If the two greatest superheroes had retired, what was my hero doing thinking he could still be part of the game?

  Though I was writing the book without an outline, I did have an end in mind. In keeping with the genre there would have to be some huge battle. I also knew that my hero would adopt his identity as Revenant. He would become a new hero, not resume being the hero he had once been. Only by abandoning hope of returning to who he’d been would he accept who he had become. This need to drop the past and rediscover himself drove most of the conflict in the center of the novel, and really pointed me toward the true villain’s identity. All Mr. Big’s planning had been predicated on our hero resuming his old identity, and his steadfast resistance to that forced escalations.

  It wasn’t until the Hall of Fame sequence that I realized Doctor Sinisterion was our hero’s father. I’d made the name up as a parody of many villains. That’s a pattern that repeated itself throughout the book. But when Puma grabs our hero and accuses him of being Sinisterion, instead of accepting it was a senior moment for Puma, I created a link. That then pushed forward to when Vixen gets introduced to her grandfather, and got built back into the circumstances that linked Nicholas Haste to Leonidas Chase. Once those things started to fall into place, the novel began to tighten up really well.

  There was one scene that I’d looked forward to writing, but opted not to include. For a brief moment it looks as if our hero will appear on the O’Lily television show to debate with Colonel C
onstitution III about Capital City’s new superhero force. O’Lily is, of course, an analog of Bill O’Reilly. The chapter would have been rather cathartic and fun to write, but really wouldn’t have advanced the novel at all. I opted not to write it and let the previous bit with Sinisterion and O’Lily stand as my comment on that brand of TV punditry.

  The whole progressive complication idea really helped shape how the novel worked. I ended up looking at every scene and asking myself how I could bring more pressure to bear on my hero. This resulted in his making some choices that I usually don’t offer characters. All too often my characters tend to be smarter than they are emotional, but here I let them acted based on their feelings more than their intellect. This isn’t to suggest they’re brainless emoting machines, but that they need to force themselves to think instead of react. It’s only after our hero realizes he’s been being played that he has a chance to figure out who’s doing the playing.

  Because I was letting my characters play against type, I never could have really worked with a full outline. Part of progressive complication is to do something that surprises the reader and, at the same time, surprises the writer. The what if question is one that’s spawned many stories, and I used it many times to explore how to make the story nastier. If I came up with a number of options and I found one to make me wonder “how will I get him out of this?” that became the option I picked.

  The process, which is always cyclical anyway, churned more quickly than normal. My morning Starbucks routine became review, project forward and make notes on what I’d be doing for the next two days. If I discovered something that needed a link to previous material, I made a note and transferred it to the manuscript. I did not edit as I went along (I never do). Anything that needed to be fixed got done in the second or third draft. The book, which took two months to write, really needed the momentum rushing forward.

  Once I’d realized who the villain was, my morning deliberations became more difficult. Since Mr. Big was the puppetmaster, everything had to be viewed through his eyes and tweaked to achieve his end. This meant creating motives which would remain invisible until the very end. Those motives then created more links between characters and brought some of them back on stage when, just as easily, I could have employed some anonymous body to that same end. Then I’d have to see what my hero was going to do and figure out why he didn’t see Mr. Big’s hand in things. He really should have, of course, except that so many things were coming at him so fast that life became overwhelming.

  When things lock in on a book, when all the pieces have fallen in place, I develop a sense of urgency to finish things off. I also start looking at the material through the eyes of a reader. This is when I slip in bits and pieces of misdirection. A lot of that is based around human emotions and reactions. Emotions are reality for many people, and if readers react to an emotion, they might miss some of the clues layered in that same scene.

  An example of this would be the last conversation our hero has with Nighthaunt. They discuss the current situation in Capital City and there’s a sense of Nighthaunt wanting to pass his torch to our hero. This hits on two emotional levels. One has to imagine the equivalent conversation where Batman is trying to cede his role in keeping Gotham City safe to another hero. It’s bittersweet because it has Nighthaunt acknowledging his mortality; and yet the offer means that he, a grand hero, is accepting our hero as a peer. Pride and regret go to war there, and then our hero refuses the offer, triggering regret. And yet, at the end, when our hero offers to meet with Nighthaunt further, and Nighthaunt says he’d like that, he validates our hero in ways that point to any of us, as children, being accepted by a hero figure. We’d be ecstatic at having the torch passed and, secretly, given the kind of book this is, we know our hero will accept that torch somewhere down the line.

  And in all that emotion what’s missed is that Nighthaunt has provided our hero with a lot of disinformation. He knows exactly how our hero thinks and is able to poison him and his thinking. Then he seals the deal with a sincere offer of friendship. The only way our hero could figure out what was truly going on was to invalidate the sincerity of that offer. Never happen. Emotions for the characters canceled conscious thought. Since Nighthaunt knew he’d be faking his death, he also knew the guilt triggered would drive our hero to do things he’d been dead set against previously.

  The social satire and commentary was cutting edge in 2007. As I revised the manuscript in 2010 I found it terribly disappointing that it was all still relevant. I guess that makes me both a prophet and a cynic.

  Two characters were the most fun to write: Puma and Sinisterion. Puma wasn’t modeled on anyone or hero—I just wanted him to be the kindly mentor/grandfather I suspect everyone would like to have in their lives. He stood for truth and justice. He represented a simpler time. He also had the clarity of vision that came from being self-aware but not being self-important. Without a doubt he is the most virtuous character in the book and, therefore, is the only one to ever defeat Doctor Sinisterion—even getting a blow in after death.

  Sinisterion was the other fun character to write. There’s something about unbridled arrogance coupled with ruthless competence that makes a character an utter joy to work with. His book, If I was a Supervillain, was meant to parody the tome O. J. Simpson had written and almost had published while I was writing this novel. The tension between our hero and his father kept things interesting. How Sinisterion dealt with our hero implies depths there which would be fun to explore in another story.

  Graviton and Nighthaunt fall next into line. They let me look at how people adapt to life changes. All of us self-identify as something. I’m a writer and a soccer player. What happens when I can’t play soccer anymore? What happens if folks stop buying stories? What will I do? Who will I become? I think that one of the reasons that we read about old married couples dying in close temporal proximity to each other is because the surviving partner has spent forty or fifty or seventy-five years being a husband or wife, and all of a sudden that role is denied them. It’s a short trip from wondering “Who am I?” to “Do I really exist?” The energy necessary to make a change to a new role may just not exist. And the methods for discovering, defining and attaining that new role can be twisted for good or evil.

  The two of them definitely provide contrast. Their methods of adaptation go back to their basic philosophies. Graviton believed in the innate goodness of people, and he changed positively. Nighthaunt believed in their inherent evil and succumbed to it. Both of them remained true to themselves and had to deal with the consequences.

  Scarlet Fox is a clear analog to Catwoman. She serves as our hero’s love interest and a very visible reminder that choices and actions have consequences. Twenty years of separation certainly gives both characters ample time to lay down emotional layers over their relationship, but it still doesn’t heal the wound. His abrupt disappearance would always leave her wondering why he vanished. His having had no word, having had no rescue attempt, would forever leave him wondering if she’d even tried to find him. Those questions, and the fact that their relationship had never had an ending that either of them could accept, meant the chance of reunion rekindling their relationship were huge.

  The triangle that would have been Nighthaunt-Scarlet Fox-our hero serves to sharpen the contrast between Nighthaunt and our hero. Nighthaunt would have wanted Scarlet Fox because she was forbidden fruit and offered him the chance to redeem her. If he could redeem her, then he could imagine redemption for his parents. To that end she is more a means to a selfish end, not a person to be loved and cherished. She clearly understood this, which is why she declined his offers of marriage despite being a single mother.

  Our hero wanted her not because she was forbidden, but because he could understand her and her life. Scarlet Fox isn’t evil. She’s addicted to adventure. She’s someone who might steal a painting to return it to its rightful owner, or punish someone who resorted to cruelty to get the painting. She, like our hero, was an
agent of Chaos, but one who didn’t indulge in darker passions in her pursuits.

  Ultimately, however, Scarlet Fox is our hero’s means of redemption. To further his involvement with her twenty years ago, he’s willing to create a permanent identity. To that point everything he’s done is in reaction to his father. Over and over he’s denying he is Sinisterion’s son. To be with her he decides who he is willing to be. Before he can realize that dream, however, he’s yanked away. Upon his return, she’s still his lifeline. If she accepts him again, it validates his earlier choice and confirms that he exists independent of his father. I know that’s a lot of psychological neepery, but it’s one aspect of our hero that motivates him throughout the story without being terribly apparent.

  Through out this essay I keep calling our hero “our hero.” If you go back through the book, he’s never given a real name. He never calls himself Coyote, though its pretty obvious that’s who he once was. Castigan is just a role. In fact, until he identifies himself as Revenant, he’s never assigned himself a true identity.

  Here’s the curious thing about all that: this is the first character about whom I’ve written without knowing his name. I still don’t know this character’s name. Yes, his family name has to be Chase. With his father being Leonidas he’s probably got some ridiculously pretentious first name. I can imagine the ones in the middle are wild, too. Oddly enough, while I ought to find this unsettling, I don’t. I think that level of ambiguity is key to this character, so it feels right.