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I've been wanting to do this column for awhile, now and I'm probably going to end up calling this Part One, as there is quite a large volume of material to cover and draw from. 1986 was quite a year, for comics and comic fans. That year saw the completion of DC's "Crisis on Infinite Earths", the publication of Frank Miller's ground-breaking graphic novel series, "Batman:The Dark Knight Returns" and Alan Moore's and Dave Gibbons's masterpiece, "Watchmen". And, 1986 was the year that a series of anthology/shared world science-fiction novels with the theme of super-heroes in realistic world setting first began publication. The first book was titled simply "Wild Cards", subsequent books in the series would follow the series title with a sub-title, book 2 was Aces High, Book 3, Jokers Wild. To date there are, if I remember correctly, fifteen books in the series, the most recent book sub-titled Deuces Down.
The story behind the story is one many readers will probably identify with, if they haven't actually experienced a similar impulse themselves. As the story is chronicled in the GURPS Wild Cards game manual from Steve Jackson Games, "It's all Vic Milan's fault."
Actually, what happened is this. A bunch of writers in the Albuquerque, New Mexico area, including the future Wild Cards series editor, George R. R. Martin, belonged to a gaming group. They played a variety of RPGs, favoring "Call of Cthulhu" and "The Morrow Project", but that all changed when Victor Milan gave George R. R. Martin a copy of "Superworld" for his birthday. Soon, they other games were left behind and "Superworld" became their favorite game.
"Superworld" as the title should make clear, is a super-hero roleplaying game. I have a copy of the game manual, somewhere around here. I collect game manuals, especially super-hero games. I also did some work on a super-hero RPG a few years ago, called "Modern Knights" by Dave Van Domelen. Unfortunately, it's never been published, but it was fun to work on.
As many roleplaying gamers will be able to understand, some games and/or groups of gamers can make the game so interesting and absorbing that all your time and creative energy is diverted to the game. When you're a working writer, this can be very detrimental to your career, and this is just what happened with the writers in the Albuquerque gaming group. Credit goes to Martin for coming up with the idea of turning the game into a shared world writing project.
Martin told Melinda Snodgrass, another writer in the gaming group, of his idea and they hammered out a framework for the shared world. Beginning with the premise that paranormal powers are real, they had a desire to look at the effects of such powers in a realistic world setting. Unlike comic books, where characters' origins were the work of different writers working separately, with different backgrounds and no desire to make one character's origin fit with the origins of others, these writers decided to create a common origin for their super characters. Probably the closest Marvel or DC ever came to something of this kind was attributing super powers to being born with a genetic mutation, characters like DC's Captain Comet (a man born 100,000 years before his time, they used to say) and Marvel's famous mutants, The X-Men and the dozens of other mutants in the Marvel universe.
They needed a way to give people super powers, a way
that, with a little suspension of disbelief, would be
plausible and fit in with the science-fiction
approach. This led to the development of the idea of a
virus that could alter the host's DNA in ways specific
to the individual infected. This allowed for a wide
variety of powers, springing from a common origin. The
normal comic book terms, super-hero and super-villain
were thought to be inappropriate for a realistic
world setting and so they coined the term "ace" for a
person given paranormal powers. From this came the
playing card terminology, and the source of many of
the book sub-titles, the virus became the "wild card
virus", because unlike most comic book origins, the
virus kills most of those infected (this is known as
"drawing a Black Queen") or it could turn
a victim into a horribly deformed mockery of humanity
(called a "Joker"). Sometimes, the virus would give
someone powers of negligible utility (a "Deuce") and,
in other cases, some people exposed to the virus will
show no outward symptoms, these are known as "Latents"
and will be at risk for the rest of their lives. Most
victims will show dramatic effects, immediately upon
infection. Approximately 90% will die quickly, usually
horribly. Another 9% will draw the Joker and become
deformed, some more than others, and 1% will draw the
Ace and gain powers and abilities far beyond those
of mortal men.
So, they had a framework, they had a group of science fiction writers and from there the work began. As I've read it, the main group of writers wanted to set things in the 1980s, but one of the writers brought in from outside the gaming group, Howard Waldrop, had the idea to write an homage to the comic-book hero of the 1940s, "Airboy", and a character with his own jet plane would hardly stand out in the 1980s, plus, Waldrop wanted his story to climax on him own birthday, September 15, 1946. Martin gave in and the Waldrop contributed the first Wild Cards story, "Thirty Minutes Over Broadway-Jetboy's Last Adventure".
Jetboy was Robert Tomlin, described as the most "plane-crazy kid who ever lived." He ran awy from his orphanage at the age of twelve and found his way to Bonham's Flying Service in Shantak, New Jersey. There he met Professor Silverberg, who was working on an experimental jet-powered airplane for the U.S. Army Air Corps. Silverberg gave Tomlin a job on the project where he helped the professor build the experimental jet engines. Robert and the professor became the world's first jet pilots.
In 1939, Tomlin was testing the plane, which later became known as the JB-1, when a group of Nazi spies attempted to kidnap the professor and steal the plane. In the process, the professor was killed, but Robert was able to avenge him with the plane's .30 caliber machine guns, riddling the Nazis' car with bullets.
Tomlin fled to Canada, following the incident, the Nazi spies had diplomatic passports and their deaths created an international incident. Robert joined the RAF, unofficially, and fought in the Battle of Britain and in China with the Flying Tigers. Following Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt gave Tomlin a special presidential commission, and Tomlin flew under the auspices of the U.S. Army Air Corps. He was given the nickname Jetboy and he fought in every theater of the war, shooting down 500 planes, sinking 50 ships and cracking spy rings. Even so, he made small difference in the course of the war. In 1945, he was shot down in the Pacific and was marooned on a desert island until he was rescued in August, 1946.
The last week of August, 1946 was quite eventful. In the skies over New Jersey there was a spectacular "meteor shower", which turned out to be the result of a battle between two alien spacecraft. Debris from one of the craft fell on the New Jersey Pine Barrens, where one strange object came to the attention of a couple of criminal associates of one of Jetboy's long-time enemies, Dr. Tod, your basic criminal mastermind.
The same night, the surviving alien spacecraft landed at White Sands, New Mexico. The craft, looking like a giant seashell, covered with lights had only one occupant, a very human-looking occupant who spoke excellent, if accented, English and asked to be taken to President Truman.
Prince Tisianne brant Ts'ara sek Halima sek Ragnar sek Omian of the House of Ilkazam, a native of Takis, came to Earth in 1946 in an attempt to prevent the release of the wild card virus. The Ilkazam are one of the great houses of Takis, known as Psi-Lords, whose political intrigues led the Ilkazam to develop a means of increasing their power, both political and psionic. The problem was that the virus they created was too dangerous to test on their own people. Fortunately, from their point of view, there existed a planet full of genetically compatible experimental animals, Earth.
While describing the function of his starship, which used a kind of tachyon faster-than-light drive, his interrogators began referring to him by his future nom du guerre, "Dr. Tachyon".
The experiment was scheduled, over the objections of Prince Tisianne, and the ship departed Takis for Earth, with Tisianne's smaller craft, the living starship he calls "Baby", hot on it's trail. The two ships fought in the skies over New Jersey and "Baby" was victorious, though she'd burned out her faster-than-light "ghostdrive" in reaching Earth. Tisianne was unable to track the falling debris, so he flew to White Sands, probably the most visible center for scientific research on the planet, at the time. He told his story to the Army and, not surprisingly, no on believed him.
Not until President Truman received a ransom note demanding thirty million dollars, cash, to prevent the destruction of a major city.
Dr. Tod's associates had found was a shimmering spherical container from the downed alien spacecraft, in the Pine Barrens. They didn't have a clue what it was, but they knew Dr. Tod would be interested, so they carried it back to him. Dr. Tod experimented with the material inside the sphere and learned what it could, though he had no idea of it's true purpose. When his threat was ignored, he loaded the sphere into an airtight gondola attached to five large helium-filled type B-limp balloons.
September 15, 1946, high over New York City the cluster of balloons was spotted in the sky. Jet fighters were scrambled to intercept and Jetboy was with them. The balloons had risen so high that only Jetboy's JB-1 with special wing extensions and extra fuel from the drop tank, was able to reach it. Jetboy fired into the balloons, causing it to sink low enough for him to ram the gondola. He managed to get into the sinking airship before the JB-1 broke up and fell away. Dr. Tod managed to arm the bomb he'd attached to the Takisian container before drawing a gun and shooting Jetboy. One of Tod's henchmen managed to parachute to safety, more or less, before the bomb exploded, destroying the blimp and releasing the wild card virus over New York.
At first, no one knew what had happened. The blimp had been too high to determine who it was who'd bailed out of the craft and at 30,000 feet, it would be some time before the parachuting figure reached the ground. But, before long a gentle rain began to fall over Manhattan. That day, ten thousand people drew the Black Queen. Some died in horrible and spectacular ways, bursting into flames, dissolving into puddles of goo, turning to stone, etc. One man suffered constant opening and closing wounds, until one opened in his heart and he bled to death.
Over eleven hundred men, women and children drew the Joker, instantly transformed by the virus, some into hideous monstrosities, others into comical or merely pathetic forms. Some jokers' deformities carry with them certain advantages, such as the giant powerhouse called Troll or the beautiful, winged late night talk show host and sometime ace hero Peregrine.
And then there's the one person in a hundred who gained superhuman powers without any obvious deformity. Aces. Aces could be heroes, they could be villains, they could just be regular folks who happened to have one or more super powers.
Aces, like Jack Braun, Earl Sanderson, David Harstein and Blythe Stanhope van Renssaeler. Jack Braun gained superhuman strength and a golden force field, Earl Sanderson could fly and project a wave of force ahead of him making him a flying battering ram. Or David Harstein, a young chess hustler who gained the power to win friends and influence people through his pheromones. And the tragic wife of a US Senator, Blythe Stanhope van Renssaeler, who gained the power to absorb the mind of anyone she touched.
Together, these four made up the first and so far, only, super-team in the Wild Cards universe, the Exotics for Democracy. More popularly known as "The Four Aces". The Four Aces worked to bring escaped Nazis to justice and helped topple Juan Peron in Argentina. Jack Braun's athletic good looks and popularity helped him get a contract with a Hollywood studio, stardom was just a matter of time.
But the late 1940s were a volatile time, socially, politically, and the Aces were no less susceptible to these forces. The weak link, so to speak, in the Four Aces was Blythe van Renssaeler, whose power made her mind increasingly fragile, having absorbed the minds of first, her husband, a vile politician, then several of the greatest geniuses of the time, including Albert Einstein. Worse, she had become estranged from her husband and entered into a love affair with the alien, Dr. Tachyon, whose telepathic abilities and training had allowed him to help Blythe compartmentalize the various personalities warring for dominance in her mind.
Blythe wasn't the only chink in the Aces' armor, Earl Sanderson had a communist past and the Envoy's influence failed to prevent the communist takeover of mainland China. These things led to their being subpoenaed to appear before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Called to testify, Earl Sanderson refused to talk. David Harstein used his power to influence the committee and once his coercive power was removed, was recalled, this time to testify from an air-tight glass booth. The chairman of the committee controlled Harstein's microphone, cutting him off when he'd heard enough. Jack Braun, on the advice of his studio and attorney, cooperated with the committee, answering their questions, though he had little information to share. Except for one thing. He inadvertantly revealed that Brain Trust had absorbed the mind of Dr. Tachyon, who knew the names of every wild card victim he'd treated. Tachyon refused to reveal the information, himself and was cited for contempt and eventually deported.
Blythe was called to testify, the committee was brutal to her and she broke under their relentless questioning. About to give out the names of wild cards she'd obtained from Tachyon's mind, Tachyon seized her mind and the fragile structure shattered, sending her spiralling down into madness.
Sanderson fled to France, Tachyon was deported, Harstein disappeared and Blythe was committed to a sanatarium for the rest of her life. Jack Braun's movie career never took off, he became known as the "Judas Ace".
Time passes. The 50s were not a good time to be a wild card. Aces werein hiding, jokers were the lowest rung on the social ladder, shunned by normals, "Nats" as they came to be known. In the New York area, the Bowery section of Manhattan became known as Jokertown.
When President Kennedy was killed, one young ace was moved to use his powers to help people, but this time, he made sure to keep his identity secret. His name was Tom Tudbury and he became the most powerful telekinetic ever known. Tom had just one problem, which his best friend, Joey DiAngelis pointed out to him, when he announced his intention to become some kind of super hero. Telekinesis takes concentration and no amount of power will keep someone from punching you in the face if you can't concentrate on blocking the blow. And, how can you stop a bullet you don't even know is coming at you? It took awhile, but Tom came up with a solution.
Imagine you have great power, but no real defenses. In some roleplaying games, the only way to start out with great power is to take major weaknesses, so your character isn't unbeatable. Since he started out as a game character, it makes sense that Tom would be dsigned this way, Plus, it gives a writer something to work with. In the comics, the character would probably build some kind of high tech armor, like Iron Man, but the Wild Cards world is built with real world technology in mind. Tom's solution is low tech, and along with Joey's help, reasonably low cost. Joey's father owned a junk yard and had bought a bunch of battleship armor at the end of the war. Battleship armor welded to the frame of a junked Volkswagen beetle, lights, cameras, TV screens, external microphones and a loud PA system, an old recliner for a pilot's seat and a small generator for power. And a powerful telekinetic in the driver's seat.
The Great and Powerful Turtle was the first publicly active ace hero with a secret identity and most of the trappings of the comic book heroes, except for the millions of dollars, the beautiful girlfriends and all that. Tom was just a regular guy, he worked in a TV repair shop in the 60s and 70s and got into computers in the early 80s.
Over the years, the Turtle's shells became a powerful psychological crutch, for Tom. It got so that his telekinesis would only work under the most extreme stress or with great concentration, outside the shell.
Other aces appear and take on more public roles. Not all are "heroes", some are criminals, some are motivated differently than other people. Onesuch is the ace "sorcerer" called Fortunato. He was a latent wild card, until he was introduced to tantric sex by one of the girls who worked for him as "geishas", more like high-dollar prostitutes with a veneer of geisha training. Fortunato is a major player in the second and third books, a reluctant hero, but a hero none the less.
The variety of characters in the Wild Cards books is
one of the things that makes the series so
interesting. One character pesonifies this. His name
is Croyd Crenson, called the Sleeper, because, since
the first Wild Card Day in 1946, every time he goes to
sleep he awakes to find himself different. In 1946,
Croyd was 14, on that day, and he left school when the
siren sounded and was exposed to the virus on his way
home. He began feeling tired and went to bed, when he
woke up, the world had changed almost as much as he
had. He'd grown, while he slept and he awoke famished.
Croyd went to the kitchen for a snack and before he
realized it, he'd eaten all the food in the house. He
discovered he was stronger than normal and had the
power to levitate, powers he used to steal food, to
help feed his family. He made friends with a joker
named Bentley, who taught him about breaking and
entering and helped him line up better paying
robberies. Bentley was helpless, having been
transformed into a dog-like joker form. In exchange
for his help, Croyd made sure Bentley had food and a
place to stay. When Dr. Tachyon announced he'd
developed an early form of the so-called "Trump
virus", a counter agent that was effective in some
cases, Bentley took a chance and was cured. But Croyd
never took that chance. Even though he was terrified
of waking up in some hideous joker form, the next time
he slept or worse, drawing the Black Queen, he would
simply put off sleep as long as possible, Bentley
helped him there, too.
The Sleeper becomes a fixture of the Wild Cards world, showing up in many forms in other stories than his own. He does sometimes awake as a joker, in those phases, he sometimes waits it out til he's sleepy and doesn't try to put it off. Other times, he's reasonably comfortable or he's got powers that are useful in crime, so he pulls a few jobs to build up a nest egg. When you sometimes sleep for weeks at a time, you need some money in the bank. To stay awake, he uses amphetamines and after awhile, he becomes a raging paranoid, until he can sleep it off.
I can't begin to cover all the stuff in the first book, but I've tried to hit the highlights and illustrate some things that I think have never been correctly depicted by cover artists and the like. Turtle's shell, for instance. His first shell was built on a Bug frame, but the later shells weren't. Most artists have styled the first shell as simply a Volkswagen with a few add-ons. Others, such as Chrysalis, the owner and proprietress of the Crystal Palace, a Jokertown bar, have never been depicted according to the written descriptions. Chrsyalis is described as looking like a walking skeleton, her skin is invisible, her muscles, organs, nervous system and such are faintly visible, almost completely transparent. Her face is a skull with eyes, though she wears lipstick on her invisible lips.
The second book of the series begins with action and adventure, a 30 foot gorilla is loose in Manhattan. Again! We meet Modular Man, the android creation of Dr. Maxim Travnicek, who joins in with the other aces capturing the giant gorilla. He becomes quite a ladies "man", having been made anatomically correct and programmed with simulacra of human emotional responses.
We meet Peregrine, the beautiful winged joker/ace (yes, the wings count as a "deformity") with the late-night talk show "Peregrine's Perch". Peri, as she is known to her friends, sometimes joins in with other Ace heroes, wearing a pair of clawed hand weapons when she does so.
The main story of the second book deals with the invasion from space by the alien Swarm. The Swarm is not really a "race", but is instead a kind of sophisticated intelligent yeast that is able to grow an army of monstrous creatures to attack a life-bearing world. The Swarm eats until the planet is fully engulfed and then fires off fresh "swarm mothers", large hollow bodies like asteroids that travel between the stars until they detect life, then the mother maneuvers toward the planet and fires off "seeds" it controls telepathically.
The Swarm invasion begins with the first generation Swarm "buds" falling to earth in dazzling "meteor shower". Reports come in from New Jersey of monsters from outer space. Aces from all over the area rally to push back the invasion, Modular Man among them.
The Turtle uses his telekinesis to smash swarmling, crushing them with invisible "fists".
The first generation swarmlings are all large, powerful and carnivorous, with little or no intelligence. They are very hard to kill, but not hard to outsmart. Their most effective tactic was simply to overwhelm an enemy with sheer numbers.
As it turns out, there's more to the story than just a random attack on Earth. Somebody knew it was coming and they gave a tachyon transmitter to a famous 18th century scoundrel, Count Cagliostro, who used the device's other properties to perpetrate some of his greatest frauds. He passed knowledge of the device through a secret society he formed, a branch of the Freemasons charged with preserving the device, called "Shakti" and using it when the Earth was andangered by the monster they called TIAMAT.
This is one of the more interesting sub-plots of the series, introducing the Astronomer, a truly heinous villain. The Astronomer, no other name is ever given for him, except the name Lord Amun, which he takes when he projects the image of the Egyptian god to intimidate others, is truly evil. His powers of mind control and astral projection are recharged in a perverse mirror of Fortunato's tantric sex. The Astronomer kills and partially eats his victims, while raping them. Nothing redeeming in this guy. Physically, he's just a withered old man with thick glasses.
Another character who appeared in the first book, but really makes his ace debut in Book 2, is Mark Meadows, whose ace-name is Captian Trips. Meadows is unarguably the greatest biochemist on Earth. He has developed chemical cocktails that trigger an ace transformation, so far, he has five "friends", all with different personalities and powers.
Aquarius is something like a human/dolphin hybrid, able to transform into an orca-sized bottle-nose dolphin. He doesn't have a lot of nice things to say about land dwellers. He can telepathically control marine mammals. Moonchild is a supreme martial artist, stronger than a normal human and faster. Cosmic Traveler is able to take on anyone's form and even mimic their voice, he can walk through walls and even fly in space. Jumpin' Jack Flash can fly and generate flame, he can absorb flame, as well. Starshine can fly at the speed of light, is extremely strong and can generate intense laser-like beams of light, as well as having an energy shield sufficient to protect him in space.
The fascinating thing about Trips is that each of his personae have totally different personalities and even have memories of backgrounds, as if they'd lived his whole life.
The battle with the Swarm and the Astronomer's masons is made all the more difficult when Tachyon's relatives make their appearance, determined to return him to Takis. If I had more time, I'd do a few more pieces of artwork, but I am running way late this month. I hope I've put enough stuff in here to entice a few people to find the Wild Cards books and dive in. Always looking to share my favorite books with other people.
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