In 1987, a group of writers under editor
George R.R. Martin set out to create a shared fantasy universe that would
reflect how superheroes might fare in the real world, where they'd have to deal
with HUAC, Vietnam, and the Cold War in addition to the usual four-color villains.
Over the course of 17 vivid, colorful, but increasingly sordid tag-team
anthologies and solo novels, they developed an alternate history in which an
alien biological weapon known as "the wild card" infected earth. Sometimes it
lay dormant in its victims' bloodstreams for a while, but when it activated, it
killed most of them. Only a small percentage of lucky "aces" survived and
gained superpowers, while a few unlucky "jokers" made it through with horrid
deformities.
Simultaneously a giant metaphor for AIDS
(particularly a cautionary tale about the fear and suspicion with which America
was handling the then-mysterious syndrome) and a platform for grim-and-gritty
heroics that matched the contemporaneous trend in comics, the Wild Card series was initially popular,
but as the series dragged on, the world degraded into an almost parodically
dark version of our own; excellent characterization and intricate plots bogged
down under an obsession with the rape, mutilation, psychological destruction,
and murder of significant characters. By the early '90s, the series'
several-books-per-year pace dropped to one a year, and only two more books were
released between 1996 and 2008.
All of which may help explain why it's so
jarring that the latest series revival, Inside Straight, starts off with a fluffy
tone and dramatically lower stakes. It begins with a blog entry by
self-absorbed ace Jonathan Hive—a young man who can turn into a vast
swarm of wasps—waxing shallow about the entire past history of the Wild Cards universe as just a bunch of
incomprehensible stuff that happened epochs ago; now, he says "the world's
moved on." As if to illustrate just how trivial his world has become, he rushes
out to audition for American
Hero, a Real World/Who Wants To Be A
Superhero?-style reality show pitting 28 young
aces against each other. The first half of the book follows in the footsteps of
Carolyn Parkhurst's lively reality-show novel Lost And Found; American Hero plays out in detail, amid
team challenges, camera confessionals, hook-ups and hurt feelings, personal
politics and vote-offs. Each segment goes to a new author and a new POV
character, in a familiar Wild
Cards
dynamic that often isn't entirely satisfying; some of the chapters feel like
self-contained stories, but others introduce rich, complicated characters who
seem worthy of their own novels, but who promptly wind up as background scenery
in subsequent chapters. And halfway through, the book shifts gears radically,
yanking half the show's squabbling cast into the middle of an anti-joker
genocide in a destabilizing Egypt.
Part of Inside Straight's purpose is no doubt to
reinvigorate the Wild
Card series
in the wake of shows like Heroes, Smallville, and The 4400, all of which put a hip, young, populist
dynamic on the wanky superhero genre. And in that light, it works; the book's
initial chipper superficiality paves the way for knotty political and personal
questions, letting new readers ease into the deep end of the pool, with its
politics and its questions about what heroism really means. The book can be
frustrating—much as with Martin's New York Times bestselling solo books, the
"Song Of Ice And Fire" epic fantasy series, the jarring leaps between
characters sometimes squander a lot of potential. And it asks some pertinent questions
that it doesn't bother to answer, particularly whether a few exceptionally
powerful individuals have the right to impose their will on entire countries,
regardless of their humanitarian intentions. But as a pop novel, along the
lines of Austin Grossman's Soon I Will Be Invincible, Inside Straight is solidly enjoyable for
comics fans who want more depth than the average 24-pager can generally offer.
It may not fully work either for Wild Cards vets or newbies, but it's an
entertaining first shot at reinvigorating a series that really needed a shot in
the arm.