“So… It’s like a superhero book?”
Not really. But let me take a step back first.
I’ve always been interested that in the real world, we admonish and despise violence, but in the fictional world, it’s something we cheer on. Think James Bond. Think Batman. Any of the hundreds of super-powered character-focused movies and TV shows that have come out in the past 15ish years. These are the good guys in their stories, and still, their entire presence and justification for having their stories told is the violence.
It's the fantasy of it that lets people cheer them on. Stories about the hero dealing with a gambling card player who cries blood or a guy who can shoot a gun that freezes people. These stories allow people to disconnect and say, “Yeah, this is violence I’m allowed to enjoy because it isn’t real.” This is violence that for some reason we’re naturally inclined to cheer on but have been reinforced not to in the real world.
But what happens when those superpowers all go away and that line between fantasy and realism is blurred? I think that’s one of the reasons why the Dark Knight trilogy was so successful. Money as a superpower isn’t unheard of these days. It’s the closest thing we have to allowing the viewer to enjoy the violence in a speculative world while keeping it tethered to reality.
So, when I started thinking about writing a book, I wanted to touch on these things but keep it entirely tethered in a superpower-free reality. What would it look like if vigilantism was common and accepted as a replacement for the police in a major metro city? Would it be chaos? Would people fall into factions and rhythms and routines? Would people be afraid of it? Try to take advantage of it to become famous? What would the actual effect be on crime in the city? These questions were the framework of what I wanted to write about in VIGILANT, with one core question in the middle of it.
Who does violence affect?
This might sound like a dumb question, so just give me a second to explain. We decry violence in the real world because of the impact it has on people. Because it hurts people. And I don’t even mean the direct effects between two people involved in the instance of violence. I’m talking about the second-order effects of the violence.
James Bond movies never talk about the wife or husband of the armed guards/henchmen who were killed by an MI6 spy. The bullet fodder for an action movie probably just signed on to a security job to pursue a paycheck and will never come home to their partners and children. Those movies don’t show a wife pacing at home after her husband has been missing for three days. Since her husband took a dangerous line of work, she’s probably not able to pay the bills just on her own salary. How will she be able to care for the kids? Did she say goodbye and that she loved him before he went to work? Did she even know what his job entailed and how risky it was? And now all she’s going to be left with is good memories and the lingering questions of why did this happen?
In a comic book world, if you take out the superpowers, take out the billionaires and the suits of mechanized armor and everything else inaccessible to the modern human being, what impact does violence have? These second-order effects of violence in a semi-lawless world was what I tried to address in VIGILANT.
I hope you find the story exciting and entertaining, but I also hope it makes you argue with yourself a little bit. Is a city deep into the thralls of all-out comic book hero vigilante justice an entertaining thing? Or does the concept of crazy people walking around with deadly weapons fill you with a certain level of dread? I know, that’s a quite a lofty and potentially self-important goal, but you as the reader can take what you like from the book. Mostly, I hope you enjoy it.
That would be my superpower. Creating something you enjoy.
Stay vigilant.