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ladybusiness"Kid Dark Against the Machine", the new short story by Tansy Raynor Roberts, is the latest entry in Book Smugglers Publishing's season of superhero stories. It's available as an ebook as well as on the Book Smugglers blog
I can't even pretend to be objective about this story. It's got superheroes and reunion narratives, it plays with tropes and gender roles, and it's got Tansy Raynor Roberts, of whom I am a huge fangirl, mostly for her work on the Galactic Suburbia podcast -- my first foray into the world of fannish podcasting. But for all that I love Roberts as a commentator and fellow fan, I haven't spent much time reading her fiction. Happily, the one story of hers that I have previously read is "Cookie Cutter Superhero", her contribution to the (most excellent and highly recommended) anthology Kaleidoscope. This story is set in the same universe as Kid Dark and features a few of the same characters. I enjoyed "Cookie Cutter Superhero" a great deal, so when I learned there was a follow-up, I jumped on the chance to read it and spend a little more time in this fascinating world.
The underlying premise is that superheroes are real, their powers and identities chosen essentially by a lottery -- all over the world, there are machines that select one person to gain superpowers every six months, assigning them a codename and skill set. When a new hero is called, the machine selects an existing hero to retire, and they lose their powers. So anyone can be a hero, but only by the whims of fate, and there's no guarantee of how long it will last -- a few heroes only get one six-month term, while others remain active for decades. It makes for an interesting dynamic, both among the heroes (who, at least in Australia, where both stories are set, live and work together as a team) and the unpowered people.
"Cookie Cutter Superhero" focused on a teen girl who is called by the machine to become powered; "Kid Dark Against the Machine" takes us to the other side of the equation, and introduces us to a young man who was a hero in his youth but has since returned to live among the "mortals". In the good old days, he was Kid Dark, sidekick to a brooding crime fighter named The Dark (if you think this sounds familiar, that's clearly intentional). Now he's just a guy called Griff, doing odd jobs at a group home for children, reluctantly studying for his social work degree, and avoiding his past as much as possible. He thought he was out of that life forever, until one of the kids, a boy named Liam, reports that he's dreaming about another machine -- one that makes supervillians instead of heroes. And Griff is forced to do two things: ask an old teammate for help, and admit that he might miss being a superhero after all.
In her notes for this story, Roberts talks about using this universe to explore trope relating to superheroes and gender. This particular story looks at two tropes connecting to masculinity. First, we see Griff himself, coping with being a boy who grew into a man's role and a man's body too quickly. Perhaps that's why he was unwilling to become an ordinary 14-year-old boy when his designated time as a hero was up. Instead of waiting around for the machine to take his powers away, he ran, keeping his superior strength and acrobatic skills. The story also takes a hard look at what it means to be a child surrounded by adults, particularly when your boss and mentor is unwilling and distant -- in true dark-and-gritty Batman fashion, The Dark had no use for a sidekick and begrudged the machine's decision to give him one. (I particularly enjoyed reading this story in light of having just read The Caped Crusade, Glen Weldon's book on Batman and pop culture, which devotes a fair number of pages to Robin's often-controversial place in the Batman canon, and the ways in which the character has been gleefully murdered or otherwise kicked out of the story).
Another gender-related trope this story explores is the too-common idea that boys can't idolize female superheroes. Although Griff was officially sidekick to The Dark, his true mentor was Danni, formerly the acrobatic hero known as Catsuit. Several of the boys at the group home where Griff works also admit to having a female hero as their favorite -- Liam even goes so far as to make a series of charts demonstrating that Astra is objectively Australia's mightiest hero. The relationship between Griff and Danni is one of my favorite parts of the story, and it shows how healthy such bonds between men and women can be. I was happy to see it suggested that they would rekindle their friendship going forward.
All in all, I can easily recommend this story to anyone who enjoys superheroes, coming of age, interesting world building, and/or men and women being friends. And now I'm off to explore the rest of Roberts's short fiction, which I'm sure will be a pleasurable journey.
I can't even pretend to be objective about this story. It's got superheroes and reunion narratives, it plays with tropes and gender roles, and it's got Tansy Raynor Roberts, of whom I am a huge fangirl, mostly for her work on the Galactic Suburbia podcast -- my first foray into the world of fannish podcasting. But for all that I love Roberts as a commentator and fellow fan, I haven't spent much time reading her fiction. Happily, the one story of hers that I have previously read is "Cookie Cutter Superhero", her contribution to the (most excellent and highly recommended) anthology Kaleidoscope. This story is set in the same universe as Kid Dark and features a few of the same characters. I enjoyed "Cookie Cutter Superhero" a great deal, so when I learned there was a follow-up, I jumped on the chance to read it and spend a little more time in this fascinating world.
The underlying premise is that superheroes are real, their powers and identities chosen essentially by a lottery -- all over the world, there are machines that select one person to gain superpowers every six months, assigning them a codename and skill set. When a new hero is called, the machine selects an existing hero to retire, and they lose their powers. So anyone can be a hero, but only by the whims of fate, and there's no guarantee of how long it will last -- a few heroes only get one six-month term, while others remain active for decades. It makes for an interesting dynamic, both among the heroes (who, at least in Australia, where both stories are set, live and work together as a team) and the unpowered people.
"Cookie Cutter Superhero" focused on a teen girl who is called by the machine to become powered; "Kid Dark Against the Machine" takes us to the other side of the equation, and introduces us to a young man who was a hero in his youth but has since returned to live among the "mortals". In the good old days, he was Kid Dark, sidekick to a brooding crime fighter named The Dark (if you think this sounds familiar, that's clearly intentional). Now he's just a guy called Griff, doing odd jobs at a group home for children, reluctantly studying for his social work degree, and avoiding his past as much as possible. He thought he was out of that life forever, until one of the kids, a boy named Liam, reports that he's dreaming about another machine -- one that makes supervillians instead of heroes. And Griff is forced to do two things: ask an old teammate for help, and admit that he might miss being a superhero after all.
In her notes for this story, Roberts talks about using this universe to explore trope relating to superheroes and gender. This particular story looks at two tropes connecting to masculinity. First, we see Griff himself, coping with being a boy who grew into a man's role and a man's body too quickly. Perhaps that's why he was unwilling to become an ordinary 14-year-old boy when his designated time as a hero was up. Instead of waiting around for the machine to take his powers away, he ran, keeping his superior strength and acrobatic skills. The story also takes a hard look at what it means to be a child surrounded by adults, particularly when your boss and mentor is unwilling and distant -- in true dark-and-gritty Batman fashion, The Dark had no use for a sidekick and begrudged the machine's decision to give him one. (I particularly enjoyed reading this story in light of having just read The Caped Crusade, Glen Weldon's book on Batman and pop culture, which devotes a fair number of pages to Robin's often-controversial place in the Batman canon, and the ways in which the character has been gleefully murdered or otherwise kicked out of the story).
Another gender-related trope this story explores is the too-common idea that boys can't idolize female superheroes. Although Griff was officially sidekick to The Dark, his true mentor was Danni, formerly the acrobatic hero known as Catsuit. Several of the boys at the group home where Griff works also admit to having a female hero as their favorite -- Liam even goes so far as to make a series of charts demonstrating that Astra is objectively Australia's mightiest hero. The relationship between Griff and Danni is one of my favorite parts of the story, and it shows how healthy such bonds between men and women can be. I was happy to see it suggested that they would rekindle their friendship going forward.
All in all, I can easily recommend this story to anyone who enjoys superheroes, coming of age, interesting world building, and/or men and women being friends. And now I'm off to explore the rest of Roberts's short fiction, which I'm sure will be a pleasurable journey.
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Date: 2016-06-29 05:17 am (UTC)omg, this is what people who are friends with me feel like all the time.