Sometimes it still happens

Terrible iPad photo of midnight sketch.
Don't judge; the scanner is misbehaving.

Something really cool happened last week.

I was doing the dishes, as I recall--one of my favorite ways to avoid writing--when the crazy voices started up in my head. I've learned to love my crazy voices. They're the ones that say things like All the superheroes are dead; isn't that awesome? and What's the craziest thing that could happen in Chapter 10, and how can you make it even more psychotic? The crazy voices make the best stories. 

I had been feeding the crazy voices of late. The crazy voices live on good stories--both the kinds of stories that literary poobahs define as good and the ones that I just plain like. The crazy voices love Shakespeare plays and awful B movies. They feed on old radio dramas and random articles about World War I and strange conversations with my friends. The weirder the better. If it's bizarre and it holds my attention, the crazy voices eat it for lunch. 

Most recently, I'd been peering at set photos for the upcoming Winter Soldier movie (I cannot begin to tell you how excited I am for that thing) and thinking about characters with interesting, complicated, slightly scary backstories. I'd also been kicking around an old question of mine--an author of my distant acquaintance, whose work I much admire and with whom I've corresponded a tiny bit, released a story a couple of years ago set in the universe that had inspired Masks, way back when I was a scrappy kid of fourteen. And in that rather more recent story was a character who was briefly, mistakenly, called Trevor. 

I'm pretty sure this author was, at some point, aware of Masks, though I doubt he read it--he's a busy fellow. And the brief misidentification of an interesting, complicated character with a slightly scary backstory as Trevor had gotten me thinking. I didn't pick the name Trevor for its great significance to pop culture or superhero lore; I pulled it at random out of an old yearbook. (I think Trevor was in kindergarten when I was in seventh grade, or something like that.) There wasn't much outside meaning to the name Trevor. So was this beloved author's name-drop a reference to Masks? Or just a coincidence? I didn't want to feed my ego, as it could always stand to lose a few points, but the idea was intriguing. What if the name was this author's idea of a gentle poke at my hero, who could very easily end up looking a lot like that author's beautifully broken and slowly healing character a few years down the road?

And then the crazy voices whispered: Who cares if he did it on purpose or not? It's a damn good story either way. Because guess what?

What? (My crazy voices love a good dialogue.)

You know how Trevor doesn't have much of a backstory?

What are you talking about? He's a psychologically damaged former sidekick with a history as long as my arm. He's got more backstory than anyone else in the series, with the arguable exception of the Black Mask and Eagle Eye, and maybe the Masked Rider ... 

Yeah, but there's a hole in it. A big hole. You know that big hole that bugs you sometimes?

I don't know what you're talking about. There's no hole.

Is too. Right ... here!

Ow! Right in the plot cohesion! You're mean, crazy voices.

Whine, whine. This is why you're doing the dishes. Anyway, look what we found to fill that hole.

Stop saying "hole". What is that, anyway?

We take this character over here ... and then do this ... and that changes everydamnthing. And it even fills the hole. Right?

But he hasn't said anything about this incredibly important event. Ever. You've got to load Chekhov's gun before you fire it, stupid voices.

That's the beauty of it. You love Winter Soldier comics because there's always some new twist on his past, and the reason they never have to load that gun is ... ?

Because he's got memory problems. There's always something he doesn't remember.

And of all the people who'd be involved in this, who is the most likely to tell the audience about it ... and the least likely to know about it?

Oh. Ohhhh, boy. You are evil, crazy voices. 

We know. You're welcome. Want to break some dishes?

I've been working on Masks for fifteen years now. It's rare to get a big new idea on a project that's been going that long, especially when it concerns a core character like Trevor. Maybe I don't know Golem's backstory until I sit down to write it for the bonus features in Volume 1, but Trevor? Him I know. 

Right up until I don't. 

People can always surprise you--imaginary people more than most. And I'm really excited about this twist. It's going to require a lot of reworking of the outlines for later books, and that's a good thing. They were feeling a little stale. This is going to be lots of fun. All of a sudden I don't know where I'm going anymore, and I'm throwing the car into overdrive.

It's not supposed to happen a lot, fifteen years in. But sometimes it still does. 

And now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to sweep up some dish shards that have mysteriously appeared on my kitchen floor ... 

I'm not dead ...

Well, this has been a lively little blog of late, hasn’t it?

I’m very sorry, everyone. It’s been a thoroughly craptastic couple of weeks—I’ve had my entire work schedule turned upside down, and I’ve had to reset my circadian rhythm as a result, and it’s not exactly cooperating. I’m very much a night owl by nature, and half the time I’m getting up so early I might as well not go to bed at all.

So to make it up to you, I thought I’d share this preliminary shot of some T-shirt art I’m doing for Comic-Con this year. That’s right, I’m doing a sequel to last year’s Rae shirt, this time with Trevor. I tried to give the figure a little sense of motion this time, an impression that he was plunging out of the darkness while Rae seemed to sidle back into it. I even managed to include the sling he used both in his sidekick days and against Cobalt in Volume 1. And yes, his right eye is blank by design—I’m trying to do something where the lens is at the wrong angle to show the eye behind it, so that only his left eye is visible. I thought it would mirror Rae’s single visible eye better, and also hint at Trevor’s rather shadowy nature. You never can see everything he’s up to, or everything he’s thinking, can you?

I haven’t decided yet what quote to slap on the design—although at least one person has suggested “Always run toward the screaming”—but I think it’s a good counterpart to the Rae image. What do you all say to his-and-hers bookmarks?

Colors soon … and feel free to suggest quotes in the comments!

What happens next. Also, thank you.

… I’m just going to wait here for a second while you scream at me for how Chapter 32 of Masks ended.

Got it out of your system? Good.

Yes, I will get around to showing more of the Black Mask’s hideout, and yes, I will explain what’s in those envelopes and how they got into the hideout well after the Black Mask got himself blown up ten years ago. All of that will come out in Book 2, which will begin serialization this summer (I’m aiming for July again). But considering some of the hysterical emails and comments I’ve been getting on this project, I think I should take a Monday to explain what’s going to happen next.

First things first. If you’re suffering from Masks withdrawal, I strongly urge you to buy the paperback or (if you can wait a week or two) the ebook when it comes out, for the sake of your own sanity. There are several nifty special features in there that I think you’ll enjoy, but probably the most relevant to those of you jonesing for more Rae and Trevor are the Hawkins Foundation Secret Files and a short story called “The Missing.”

The Secret Files feature is loosely based on something the Big Two comic companies would sometimes do in annuals—jumbo-sized bonus comics that came out once a year to supplement the main monthly title. In the back of an annual, which would usually include a main story and several backup features, there would often be little capsule bios of the hero and his major allies and enemies, just in case there were new readers who were coming in a little lost. The files would include things like the hero’s real name, his powers, his origin story, his history, and his affiliations with any major superhero teams. Because I designed Masks with the idea that every major character would have an arc—that everyone was the hero of his or her own story—there was lots of material to choose from, but I wanted to do something more than the usual biography. So I decided that these files would be Robert Paine Hawkins’ secret files on the various young masks who appear in the story, including his private analysis of their psychologies and possible futures as heroes (or not).

Probably the biggest surprise in writing those files was realizing that I hadn’t sketched out an origin story for Golem prior to the day he encountered Moon in that secret laboratory. How did a boy end up made of stone, and what sort of life would make him well-suited to being best friends with a chatty werewolf with poor impulse control? To my shock, I found his origin story taking shape almost immediately in my head as I typed—what his parents were like, what kind of student he’d been before he left school, how he came to be in that lab, and why he would never talk about any of it to anyone, not even Moon. Even his real name held a useful little secret. The exercise was a helpful one, not least because it showed me how his character would develop in future books, including a rather surprising romance. If you’ve enjoyed the mystery of Golem at all, you’ll probably want to check out the Secret Files feature. (There’s more dirt on Rae and Trevor, too, plus Soleil, Lady Luck, and Moonclaw.)

The second feature that might ease your Masks craving is “The Missing,” a short story that’s about as long as a chapter and a half of Masks and features four new Nicole Le sketches. The story’s about Rae and Trevor assisting in the search for a missing child—a search that takes them down into the side channels of the Los Angeles River just as it’s starting to rain, and a flood is building upstream. While they’re working against time to find and save a lost little girl, they must also hammer out a dent in their new relationship … and deal with the fact that each of them separately sees a bad omen, and chooses not to tell the other about it. Secrets and surprises abound, and I think you’ll like the ending.

Now, you may ask, what will I be doing while you’re stewing in your own juices?

Well, the picture at the top of this blog entry might give you a clue. I’m still working on revising The Novel, which has to go out to prospective literary agents before I do anything else. (I’ve promised to send it out by the end of March … fingers crossed!) After that, it’s full speed ahead on Volume 2 of Masks, and I’ll be dropping lots of hints and other goodies in this blog as I go. Remember, I managed to fill a blog with interesting content for years before my first novel came out, so I shouldn’t have too much trouble keeping up with it for a couple of months.

And then, of course, there’s Free Comic Book Day.

I can spill a little more about that story now that Chapter 32 is out. The FCBD story will serve as a kind of appetizer for Volume 2—which will involve the Black Mask quite heavily. I know, I know; the Black Mask has been dead for ten years, so how can he be a factor in the adventures of Rae and Trevor? Let’s just say there’s more than a couple of manila envelopes in that hideout, and the Black Mask wasn’t quite the lone wolf he appeared to be. In particular, the FCBD story will introduce two of his companions from World War II and follow him and them on a daring postwar rescue mission that you definitely won’t find in any of the official histories of superheroics. That unlikely trio will cast a long shadow, and two of them will appear in person in Volume 2, with a few secrets to reveal. I wouldn’t rule out an appearance by a certain cowboy, either. The story will be available on Pocket Coyote, as a free download, and maybe in a limited print edition on May 5. Until then, watch this space and Pocket Coyote for hints, spoilers, and all the goodies I can cram into them.

And now, a more personal note.

1 a.m. self-portrait, with coyote. :)

I’d like to take a moment to thank all of you for reading along this far, and for being so supportive with your comments on the various pages and on Facebook and Twitter. I began writing what became Volume 1 in a pit of black depression, and your support and enthusiasm gave me a lot of the momentum I needed to climb back out. With all of you behind me and everything I’m learning from The Novel, I think I can safely say Volume 2 will completely blow your minds.  One of my goals in serializing Masks was to give myself a public laboratory in which I could test what did and didn’t work in my storytelling, with real-time feedback, and you guys have really gone above and beyond in helping me learn. I plan to pour all that new knowledge and experience into making Volume 2 utterly fantastic.

I don’t like to talk much about my personal life online, except in the past tense, both because I think some things should stay private and because blogging about my dirty laundry seems like a great way to get myself sued, arrested, or beaten to a bloody pulp. But I want you guys to know that when I’m having a really bad day, when things are at their blackest, I pull up your comments, your cheers and jeers and questions, and I remind myself that there are total strangers out there who willingly return to my website, week after week, to read little bits of my soul in the form of stories. And they like them enough to comment, and to keep coming back. That’s enough to silence the vampires in my head for a little while, and to let me create more of the stories I love. So please, keep reading, keep commenting, and invite as many of your friends as you think can stand to join you.

You are my friends.

You are my tribe.

I hope to share joy with you for many years to come.

Thank you.

What's next for MASKS

 

Well, Masks is rapidly barreling toward a conclusion over on Pocket Coyote, I’m working on the ebook, and people are starting to come at me with that special glass-eyed stare and ask, “When is Volume 2 coming out?”

Yeah, okay, only two people have asked me that, but I hate conversation enough that I’m going to blog about it so I can refer people to this blog next time they ask. So this is a time-saver for me, and a sneak peek for you guys. Win-win, right?

(Don’t give me that hurt look. I like talking to all of you, I really do … it’s just that I have to curl up in a ball for an hour afterward. I used to get migraines from chocolate, too, and it didn’t stop me from loving it—or eating far too much.)

(There was going to be a point to that anecdote, I swear.)

So what’s next in the magical world of Masks? Well, without giving too much away, I can tell you that the current serial will end with Chapter 32, after seven months of weekly superheroic action. The main plot will be tied up at the end of the serial—we’ll find out Cobalt’s secret, the good will end happily and the bad unhappily (well, mostly; I have mentioned that I like to kill off characters, right?), and most of the trailing threads will be tied up. There will be a clearly identifiable ending, with just a bit of a teaser for future adventures. Then we’ll take a break. Just a short one.

No whining, now! How many TV shows produce 32 episodes in a single season? Or air one episode a week, without interruption, for seven months? This stuff takes time to produce, and I’m working three jobs, so there will be a little bit of a delay before the action picks up again. You’ll probably want a bit of a lie-down after Chapter 32 anyway, and if you’re absolutely desperate for more Masks, you can buy the Volume 1 paperback or the ebook (available soon!), each of which contains a previously unpublished 4,500-word short story, “The Missing,” that takes place after the end of the first serial and drops lovely little clues about the second one.

Oh, did I say second serial? Yes, there’s going to be one. I’m not getting as much traffic as I’d like (invite your friends, for God’s sake, it’s a free book!), but I’m getting some, so I’m planning a big Volume 2 launch. Just not yet.

I have to finish work on The Novel before I do anything else, and work on the ebook and a couple of videos, but I expect to start writing Volume 2 around the time Volume 1 wraps up on Pocket Coyote. To tide you over while you’re waiting (or recuperating), I’m planning my usual madness for Free Comic Book Day, a big free story that, er, doesn’t have a title yet but will be a complete rip-roaring adventure and also set up quite a bit of what happens in Volume 2. This story will expand the Masks universe by introducing three heroes who haven’t appeared in the series before—one of whom is the Black Mask. That’s right, the Black Mask will actually show up in person instead of in grainy video footage, he’ll bring two unlikely pals along with him, and you’ll get to find out at least one rather embarrassing secret of his. That story will hit the web—as a PDF, as a Pocket Coyote entry, and as a free download—on May 5, 2012. There will be pictures, although I’m not sure yet who will draw them.

Meanwhile on Pocket Coyote, there will be more news, regularly—the release of the ebook, at least two (maybe three!) videos, and lots of spoilers about Volume 2, which I hope to start up sometime in early July. I’ll be ramping up the advertising, too, and there will be opportunities for you guys to get involved in promoting the Masks universe.

Because I really do need your help, folks. Tell your friends and family, tell strangers, tell your Facebook buddies—this series is awesome, and you can read all of it (well, except the bonus features) for free! And because some of them will very sensibly point out that there’s no such thing as a free lunch, and ask what I’m getting out of all this work, you can tell them that as long as they’re looking at the site, I’m getting exactly what I want—eyeballs. All I want is proof of concept; I want a bunch of people reading my stories each week so I can shove my raw traffic numbers in the faces of people who think nobody reads my stories. I want people to read my stories. You like to read my stories. You are people. Win-win.

As for what’s in Volume 2 … well, I can’t say too much without giving away the ending of Volume 1, but let me see how many hints I can drop. 

1. Dead people will turn up in unexpected places.

2. Romance will bloom in other, equally unexpected places.

3. Trevor’s foxhounds will catch up with him.

4. Rae will make a new friend and a new enemy, perhaps at the same time.

5. The secret cause of the superhero purge will be revealed.

6. There will be a truly ridiculous amount of running, punching, and stuff blowing up.

7. Trevor will get kissed and concussed again (probably in rapid succession).

8. Rae will wear leather pants, but not for the usual reasons.

9. The Masked Rider has a plan.

10. There will be a cute fuzzy animal in a prominent role. And Moon and Soleil will be in the story, too.

There, I think that’s enough spoiling for now, don’t you? I can’t wait to see what happens next …

MASKS Commentary Track: Chapter 22

This chapter was unusually difficult to write, for a fairly stupid reason.

When I began writing stories as a child, I was usually pretty good at what I now call “character work.” I had a pretty good sense of how people felt and how they would react to the events of the story. Vividly realized characters were my forte, beginning with a large cast of imaginary friends who followed me to school and amused me by making faces behind any teachers who dared to bore me (which, sadly, was most of them).

But I wasn’t any good at complicated plots. I enjoyed reading them—I just didn’t have the sort of brain that naturally came up with them. It’s why I didn’t gravitate toward writing mysteries or thrillers. While I work very hard on my plots—a lack of natural talent is no excuse for mediocrity—it is work in a way that character work really isn’t. And every once in a while, I hit a complicated bit of plotting or design that just knocks me flat, because it really belongs in another genre.

This is a very long way of saying that I have a couple of consultants helping me design my deathtraps.

The design of Trevor’s prison—the tiger cage inside the shipping container—was the work of John Konecsni, author of the very complex and plotty A Pius Man, among other tales. It’s really one of the better trap designs I’ve used, given the resources I handed him and the needs of the project. Cobalt’s impromptu prison had to be something he could construct out of commonly available materials, for starters—when you’re trapping superpowered kids, you have to assume that part of the trap will get trashed from time to time, so you’ve got to make sure you can replace any damaged elements. The trap also had to be modular; because, as he says, he’s selling the kids to the highest bidder, he needs the ability to put kids in and take kids out without interacting with them too much, and also keep them from working together too easily.

And if you’re not impressed, just wait a couple of weeks; you haven’t seen the entire trap yet. Trevor will find out more about his prison when he actually has to get out of it. Remember, there’s a whole world outside that shipping container that could have anything in it …

This chapter also marks the point where Trevor finally starts to revise the way he thinks and acts. While I never intended Masks to be a navel-gazing sort of story, the changes in Trevor’s and Rae’s characters are a major driving force, and some of Trevor’s changes are particularly intentional. He’s going to work his way back to being more of a traditional superhero, and that process starts here, locked in a cage next to an angry werewolf. After all, what’s the point of self-examination if it doesn’t come with face-clawing?

Random note: if you’ve never seen Otter Pops, you can find out more about them here. I knew Cobalt wasn’t stupid enough to give Trevor anything hard to work with, so that meant his water couldn’t come in anything made of glass, metal, or rigid plastic. An IV line would be too much trouble, and for reasons you’ll see later, Cobalt can’t come throw a bucket of water over the cages on a regular basis. Otter Pops were my solution. And for the record, Sir Isaac Lime was my favorite flavor, so there.

This week’s soundtrack is (what else?) Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues.”

MASKS Commentary Track: Chapter 20

This has always been one of my favorite chapters. I’m not sure exactly why—it’s not very plotty, and it’s a bit short on action, and even the funny bits aren’t my usual kind of funny. I think it’s just because I enjoy watching the way Trevor and Jude interact, even if it’s in a sort of strange, hallucinatory sequence.

In a lot of ways, Masks is about orphans. Trevor’s an orphan twice over—his parents died in a car wreck, and then his mentor disappeared on him. Rae is estranged from her family, as are many young masks. And of course, orphan stories are very much about either rediscovering family or building a new family. So Trevor gets a bit of both in this chapter, and seeing him finally get a moment of happiness, however awkward, makes me happy in ways I can’t quite express. I suppose this chapter exists just because it makes me smile.

Still, there’s some good stuff in here, isn’t there?

It was a surprise to me when I wrote this chapter that Jude was a fairly good parent. It really was a toss-up, and one of those things I didn’t know until I sat down to write him. I’d originally conceived the character as someone who would appear only in flashbacks and in Trevor’s memories. After all, by definition, he had to be gone—Trevor didn’t really work as a character if his mentor was running around in the story. Jude was the aching void in Trevor’s life, the hole that would never be filled. So it almost didn’t matter what kind of father he’d been to the kid, as long as Trevor remembered him as a good one. He could have been a real jerk. But for what it’s worth, I think this is very much the way Jude was in real life. Everything was a teachable moment to him, he was never completely without a sense of humor, and he loved his “son” more than he ever said.

The way he plays with Trevor, making him think the situation out, teasing him for being morbid and dramatic—that’s the sort of father Trevor would need to become the man he’ll eventually be. A lot of what went into Jude in this scene was the idea of what Trevor must have lost. I knew when I created him that he’d become a sidekick to protect someone he loved, so I had to make Jude worthy of that kind of devotion. And a kid whose parents have just died isn’t going to become a wisecracking, happy-go-lucky sidekick unless he feels relatively safe and secure in his new family situation—he can’t constantly be worrying that Jude will abandon him, or he won’t have been the kind of kid he was. So while Trevor is very much like Robin in some ways, Jude is very unlike Batman. He’s much more of a dad, and a good one.

That much was intentional; I always thought that most of the kids Batman trained would be pretty solid adult heroes when Batman was gone, but Trevor was so shattered by the loss of his mentor that Jude had to be a different kind of person. He’s much more emotionally involved, wiser and more foolish at the same time—more human, basically. The kind of solid, moral man you’d want defending your city against supervillains, especially because he wouldn’t take himself too seriously. This is not the kind of father you want to take away from a kid like Trevor when the kid is thirteen years old; they’re too good for each other. I knew when I wrote the early drafts of this scene that I would have liked to hang around with Jude before he vanished, and by the time I finished the chapter I missed him just as much as Trevor did.

And that, ultimately, is why not-exactly-Jude was the perfect person to deliver the lesson Trevor needs to learn at this point in the story. As several readers have pointed out, Trevor has been on a very dark path through this whole novel. Even when I was playing around with the possibility that either Trevor or Rae was a murderer, Trevor always seemed like the stronger candidate, and with good reason. All those rules in his head—they could be telling him anything, couldn’t they? What kind of person would teach his surrogate son the things that messed Trevor up so badly? And now you know—Trevor didn’t learn all his lessons from Jude. Like most of us, he has to sort out the good things he’s learned from the bad, and decide for himself who he’s going to be.

Of course, he’s got quite a head start, hasn’t he? His true self looks and sounds remarkably like the man he thinks of as the perfect hero. And he’s not such a bad guy. Trevor might just make it out of the shadows after all, if he survives what Cobalt has in store for him.

And yes, I do know why Jude passed his mantle on to Rae instead of Trevor. It’s an answer worth waiting for, too.

Fun random fact: Nicole’s illustration is loosely based on the Canadian actor Sebastian Spence, who recently appeared in the Canadian drama Sophie. I ran across him when he starred in the sci-fi series First Wave in the late 1990s, and I used him as a mental model for Jude when I first created Trevor. I mentioned this to Nicole in passing, and the next thing I know she’s dug up his current headshot and used it as a starting point for the painting. They didn’t look very much alike by the time she finished, but it amused me to watch her work. So if they ever make a Masks movie, I’m calling it now—Sebastian Spence is my first choice to play Jude. It’s only fair.

This week’s soundtrack is “Famous Last Words,” off Captain Tractor’s new album of the same name, in honor of dead people saying portentous things:

MASKS Commentary Track: Chapter 19

Well, what do you guys think of this one, huh? Tell me I surprised you at least a little. Go on, tell me. No, seriously, I’ll cry otherwise.

Oh, all right. This chapter is one of those points where the differences between Trevor’s point of view and Rae’s become really apparent. Trevor’s actions in the previous chapter made perfect sense to him, but to Rae they were absolutely crazy. And of course the explanation only makes the whole situation worse.

I enjoyed bending genres in this chapter. I deliberately wrote Rae creeping through the tunnels as if she were in a horror movie. One of the things that always intrigued me about superhero comics is the way they combined genres in utterly insane ways. They’d have team-ups between kung fu masters and wizards and secret agents and vampires and space aliens and cowboys and time travelers and God knows whatall else. You never knew when your favorite superhero would find himself in the middle of a horror movie, or a spy thriller, or a cosmic odyssey. And the superheroes mostly take it for granted that these things happen. So the horror overtones in this chapter were my way of reminding everyone that in a book with a ghost cowboy, a teleporting super-commando, a were-tiger and the last son of a dying planet all running around, anything can happen. And it usually does.

Moving on!

I know I’m going to get asked about this, so I’ll mention it now: the “artist’s impression” Rae mentions was planted waaaaayyy back in Chapter 5, when Rae was griping about her bad press. Yeah, I plan that far back. Anything can happen!

Once again, the conflict in this chapter comes down to whom you believe. We’ve seen in Trevor’s flashbacks that he’s haunted by the train bombing, but do we believe his version of events—that he screwed up—or Rae’s—that he’s a murderous terrorist? And do we believe Rae’s story about finding the Peregrine costume in a box, or do we think she had something to do with Jude’s disappearance? Don’t worry, we’ll get into all these issues in later chapters.

The Masked Rider makes another appearance in this chapter, but you might notice the change in Rae’s behavior—for the first time, instead of hiding from him, she tries to chase him down. I think this is the first scene where we see how reckless Rae’s capable of being. We know she’s scared of the Rider, but that doesn’t matter when someone she loves is at stake. She’s willing to literally chase after the angel of death. She doesn’t do the greatest job of it—there’s no way she’s going to catch that horse on foot—but this is a major turning point for Rae, and you’ll see how it affects her as we move into the last third of the book. This won’t be the last time she does something crazy because she’s run out of non-crazy options.

The next chapter gave me an interesting bit of trouble. I don’t know whether you’ve noticed, but the chapters in Masks alternate points of view—Rae gets all the odd chapters and Trevor gets all the even ones. Trevor’s just been kidnapped by Cobalt, so the next chapter would logically show what happens to people after Cobalt takes them. But … well, what you see isn’t always what you get, okay? Just come back next Wednesday for a guest star you won’t forget …

This week’s soundtrack is “Reason to Breathe” by Acacia Sears. (Personally, I prefer the recording on her album, "Dialtones", but I couldn't embed it here.) Something about this song speaks to the misunderstanding between Rae and Trevor: “Couldn’t we please just try this again from hello? / Take back the history, make believe we just didn’t know …” 

Reason to Breathe

MASKS Commentary Track: Chapter 18

 

I’m going to say it one more time, for those who missed my snark on Facebook: This is Trevor’s Inigo Montoya moment.

Nobody who has seen or read The Princess Bride can forget the scene where Inigo, a fencing “wizard” who has trained all his life to kill the six-fingered man who murdered his swordsmith father, finally confronts his quarry and gets to say the words he has waited all his life to say: “Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.” 

One of the things I most wanted to play with in Masks was the idea of revenge-driven heroes. A surprising number of heroes are motivated by either a desire for revenge or a desire to make sure that a past wrong is never repeated. That’s a great motivation—come on, it’s propelled The Punisher for nearly 40 years and Batman for more than 70. And there’s a reason—it really speaks to readers, and it makes the job easier for writers.

Let’s face it, we’ve all wanted revenge, and sometimes that revenge has been disproportionate to the offense. I hated the bullies who tormented me as a kid, and I wasn’t above meting out horrible fates to them in my fiction—usually accidentally, of course, since they hadn’t actually wronged my characters. There’s nothing that makes us quite as savagely happy as seeing the bad guy get his. And revenge is an easy plot for a writer of adventure stories; if the bad guy definitely did something terrible, you can cram in some really crackling action scenes, secure in the knowledge that no punishment you can devise is too severe for a murder/child molester/terrorist/etc. None of this namby-pamby business of reasonable doubt; if he murdered the hero’s girlfriend before his very eyes, the audience is totally fine with seeing that villain get blown into hamburger.

But by now, you might have figured out that I can’t leave things alone, especially when they’re easy things, and the superhero obsession with vengeance always interested me because superheroes, almost by definition, don’t rely on due process. When they’re right, they’re really, really right—but they can also be really, really wrong. Trevor gets a lot of the classic elements of superhero origin stories, including the quest for vengeance on behalf of a murdered mentor … but what if all the evidence pointed to the last person the readers would want to see hurt? And what if we couldn’t be sure whether Trevor was wrong about her, or we were? Remember, we’ve had flashbacks to Rae’s childhood friend who went missing, but we have only her word about how she came by the costume and what happened to the man who gave it to her. Trevor, meanwhile, came to Los Angeles hunting the man who had stolen Jude’s identity, and it’s been pretty clear all along that whoever is wearing that costume—the man Moon was tracking—is connected to Jude’s disappearance. Now Trevor, like Inigo, has finally come face-to-face with his quarry … and it’s the girl he loves. Whoops.

This, by the way, gives me the opportunity to invert another trope. In superhero comics, a girlfriend finding out the hero’s identity is very often a cue for her to get killed off or turned evil. Well, Rae’s not going down so easily, and if she’s evil, she’s been evil all along. So are we dealing with a tragic case of mistaken identity, or a stone-cold sociopath who’s been stringing our hero along while wearing the symbol of a man she murdered?

The answer is … I’m not going to tell you just yet. But don’t kill me, because next week’s chapter picks up about ten seconds after this one ends, and Rae and Trevor are about to have their first really big fight. And once again, there are surprises in store.

This week’s soundtrack is Mumford and Sons’ “Dust Bowl Dance,” with lyrics drawn from the John Steinbeck novel The Grapes of Wrath. It’s become a sort of personal soundtrack for me when I write vengeful characters whose quests for vengeance end in a very, very bad place. I think the end of the song might be how Trevor’s feeling about now …