After The Unmasking
ENTRY #24
0712.23
[WARNING: This essay contains potential spoilers for Jennifer Estep's novels Karma Girl and Hot Mama. If you have not read either of these books, if you think you might be reading them, or if you are simply the whiny little girly-man type that goes into a frothing rabid frenzy at the thought of encountering anything that even vaguely resembles a spoiler, scroll down to the next entry NOW. This will constitute your only warning!]
In Karma Girl, Carmen Cole is a reporter who quite by accident finds herself specializing in reporting on superheroes and ubervillains. Or more precisely, the public unmasking of same.
She proves to be quite good at what she does, too. Before she finally moves to Bigtime, New York (and the heart of the story), Carmen mentions that she has exposed the identities of 13 heroes and villains.
And she adds to her total during the course of Karma Girl. Carmen learns the identities of Bigtime's most prominent band of heroes, The Fearless Five. She also learns the identity of Malefica, leader of The Terrible Triad, the most infamous group of villains based in Bigtime.
One question seems to have been left unanswered, though. What happens to the a hero or villain after they have been unmasked?
For the six whose identities Carmen learned during the course of Karma Girl, we do know what happens. (That is a large part of the book's plot, after all.) The only identity Carmen publicly revealed during the book was that of Tornado, one of the Fearless Five. Soon after uncovering his identity is published, he commits suicide -- or, that is what we are led to believe for most of the book. Just before dropping Carmen into a vat of radioactive goo near the end of the book, Malefica states that she killed Tornado, and made his death look like a suicide.
While Carmen does learn Malefica's identity, she doesn't publicly reveal the secret. Not directly, anyway. For one thing, The Terrible Triad had captured first Striker, and then the remaining members of The Fearless Five. Carmen had been working with The Fearless Five after Malefica originally gave her the one-month deadline to learn the rest of their identities, and she is a little distracted by trying to think of some way to rescue her rescuers.
For another, Carmen learned that Malefica was really Morgana Madison, the publisher of The Expose -- her employer. Carmen learned that Morgana/Malefica had hired her to unmask The Fearless Five so that all of them could be eliminated the same way that Tornado had been. In other words, Carmen discovered that Malefica had been playing her for a fool the same way that she had been by her ex-fiance, The Machinator. That was something that Carmen swore would never happen to her again, and she is more than a little pissed.
But in an attempt to neutralize any potential threat from Carmen, Malefica has (as Morgana Madison) also tried to publicly discredit Carmen, so directly revealing her double identity is not a viable option for Carmen. A more indirect approach is needed this time, so just before making what would appear to be a kamikaze attempt to rescue the rest of the Fearless Five, Carmen gives all the information she uncovered on Malefica's identity to her friend Lulu Lo, and tells her hacker friend to wait one hour before releasing the information to Bigtime's news outlets. Carmen specifically suggests that Lulu first release the information to SNN -- the Superhero News Network -- and The Chronicle, Bigtime's other major newspaper. (The latter, incidentally, is one of the many companies owned by Sam Sloane, the alter-ego of Striker.)
As Carmen is giving Lulu the information and instructions on releasing it, she doesn't expect to survive her assault on The Terrible Triad's lair. The best she is hoping for is that she will release at least one member of The Fearless Five before she is killed, and that whoever she frees will be able to free the others.
Well, things turn out quite differently from the way Carmen thought they would. Not only does she survive the encounter, it is The Terrible Triad who are presumed dead when the dust settles. (And when you consider the beating that Malefica receives at Carmen's hands, if she did survive, she will probably be either in need of extensive plastic surgery or recovering from it should she ever make a return appearance.) The multiple dips in Frost's frigid radioactive goo that Carmen is forced to endure leave their own mark, giving her superpowers and the edge she needs both to defeat the Triad and rescue The Fearless Five, and later to join the team as Tornado's replacement as Karma Girl.
(One minor nitpick here. Why do the heroes continue to call themselves "The Fearless Five" after Tornado's death? Were they planning to hold auditions for a replacement? Or was there already another group somewhere calling themselves "The Fearless Four" that precluded them using that name? I'm having mental pictures of Striker and Fiera conducting tryouts in much the same way as the Legion Of Super-Heroes regularly held tryouts in some of their 1960s stories.)
As for the remaining members of The Fearless Five, Carmen learns their identities during the one month that Malefica gives her, but when the deadline comes, Carmen flatly tells Malefica that she has no intention of turning over that information. After The Fearless Five rescue her on the first of several occasions (before she returns the favor), she becomes their ally. Slowly at first (and more than a little begrudgingly in the case of Fiera), Carmen finds herself becoming more and more a part of The Fearless Five. She initially finds herself in what is essentially the superhero version of witness protection, but finds herself taking on the role of superhero sidekick before she develops her own powers and becoming a full-fledged superhero. It would probably take an ubervillain with powers similar to Mr. Sage's telepathic abilities to force Carmen to reveal her allies' secrets.
But what of the heroes and villains that Carmen unmasked before arriving in Bigtime? We don't even learn all of their costumed identities; just four or five names that Carmen mentions in passing. What happened to them after their private lives became not so private?
I got the impression that things did not go so well for The Machinator, the first superhero Carmen unmasked (not to mention her ex-fiance). After Carmen discovered him in bed -- literally -- with his archenemy Crusher (who also turned out to be her now-former best friend), it was implied that he had something of a fall from grace. Not only did he and Crusher continue their romp between the sheets like a pair of nuclear-powered Energizer bunnies, they brought down the house -- or at least the hotel where Carmen and Mark's wedding was supposed to have taken place. According to Carmen, the hotel suffered considerable structural damage. (And I thought Klingons had some violent sexual practices!)
In the case of the ubervillains, we can assume that Carmen's unmasking was at least beneficial to the local authorities. I am assuming that the information that Carmen revealed in her exposes helped various law enforcement agencies to apprehend the villains. At the very least, I assume that the police would be able to make things more difficult for the villains to continue their normal operations. (Of course, in the comics, how many times have we seen superpowered criminals captured, only to see them escape once the writers came up with a new story using that villain? While Ms. Estep doesn't mention it, I suspect that the prisons in the Bigtime universe may have as much of a revolving door when it comes to ubervillains as the prisons in the DC and Marvel universes have when it comes to their supervillains.)
But the $256,000 question here is this: What has happened to the superheroes that Carmen has unmasked before she came to Bigtime? How did her unmasking affect them?
Carmen is again quiet on the subject, because she was more concerned with unmasking the heroes rather than what consequences might occur. At the time, she really didn't care; it took Tornado's death to change her feelings in that regard. So, we are left with suppositions and hypotheses. My own best guess is that, for the most part, the unmasking had to have had an adverse affect on the heroes. Carmen did mention that the authorities in some of the cities where she worked during her crusade wanted to send heroes and villains alike a bill for the damages they caused during their battles. It sounds as though it would be a distinct possibility that some heroes might find themselves tied up in litigation after Carmen publicly revealed who they really were.
Another possibility is that might find themselves at greater risk for attack from ubervillains, and not just the ones who had been unmasked by Carmen. After all, how long did Superman tell Lois Lane that they could never get married because he felt that she would be in constant danger from his enemies? (Never mind that Lois was finding herself in constant danger from his enemies even though they were only friends.) It might be something of a minor miracle that Tornado's death was the only one that came as a result of Carmen’s exposes.
It's implied more than anything else, but it seems that the primary consequence of a superhero being unmasked by Carmen is that the hero is no longer able to effectively function as a superhero. The Bigtime universe does not seem to have the equivalent of Ralph Dibny -- a hero who is so comfortable with the spotlight that he or she has publicly revealed his or her dual identity. Or if there is one, that hero hasn't been mentioned, and it's entirely likely that Carmen would be uninterested. After all, what is the point of unmasking someone who has already unmasked themselves?
But if it turns out that an unmasked hero somehow loses the ability to operate effectively as a superhero, what does he or she do then? Do they go into hiding, and then at some later point reappear under a new identity? And if they do, doesn’t it seem likely that the public would start thinking that new hero Major Magnet's powers seem awfully similar to the unmasked Magnetron's powers? Of course, this might hold true only if Magnetron had operated in a major city like Chicago or Los Angeles. If Magnetron had been a regional hero, living in Bozeman, Montana before relocating to Louisville and debuting as Major Magnet, it might escape all but the most diehard superhero watchers.
And now, in what truly has to be one of life's great ironies, Carmen finds herself on the other side of the mask, as a superhero. (Carmen, of course, thinks that it is just karma.) If she hasn't already, she will eventually realize that like Woodward and Bernstein before her, she has inspired some other young journalist, who will want to follow in Carmen's footsteps. Maybe even by uncovering the identity of the newest member of The Fearless Five.
Before she finally decides to become a superhero, Carmen has an encounter with Swifte, Bigtime's answer to The Flash. She tries to downplay her recently-acquired powers as martial arts skills, and Swifte plays along. But during their brief conversation, Swifte lets Carmen know that The Fearless Five have let the rest of Bigtime's superhero community know who really was responsible for Tornado's death. They were also told how Carmen had rescued The Fearless Five from The Terrible Triad. When Karma Girl made her first appearance as a member of the Fearless Five, it would seem almost certain that Swifte would know who she really was. But who else in Bigtime's superhero community knows?
And there is one other thing that none of The Fearless Five seems to have realized. When Carmen decided on a costume design, she settled for a silver costume -- the same color as Tornado's costume. Did she choose the color, even unconsciously, as a form of penance? It's particularly interesting to note that Fiera, who not only designed the costume, but was also engaged to Tornado, has not made the connection.
Of course, this may just be a case of karma working in strange ways . . .
-30-
0712.23
[WARNING: This essay contains potential spoilers for Jennifer Estep's novels Karma Girl and Hot Mama. If you have not read either of these books, if you think you might be reading them, or if you are simply the whiny little girly-man type that goes into a frothing rabid frenzy at the thought of encountering anything that even vaguely resembles a spoiler, scroll down to the next entry NOW. This will constitute your only warning!]
In Karma Girl, Carmen Cole is a reporter who quite by accident finds herself specializing in reporting on superheroes and ubervillains. Or more precisely, the public unmasking of same.
She proves to be quite good at what she does, too. Before she finally moves to Bigtime, New York (and the heart of the story), Carmen mentions that she has exposed the identities of 13 heroes and villains.
And she adds to her total during the course of Karma Girl. Carmen learns the identities of Bigtime's most prominent band of heroes, The Fearless Five. She also learns the identity of Malefica, leader of The Terrible Triad, the most infamous group of villains based in Bigtime.
One question seems to have been left unanswered, though. What happens to the a hero or villain after they have been unmasked?
For the six whose identities Carmen learned during the course of Karma Girl, we do know what happens. (That is a large part of the book's plot, after all.) The only identity Carmen publicly revealed during the book was that of Tornado, one of the Fearless Five. Soon after uncovering his identity is published, he commits suicide -- or, that is what we are led to believe for most of the book. Just before dropping Carmen into a vat of radioactive goo near the end of the book, Malefica states that she killed Tornado, and made his death look like a suicide.
While Carmen does learn Malefica's identity, she doesn't publicly reveal the secret. Not directly, anyway. For one thing, The Terrible Triad had captured first Striker, and then the remaining members of The Fearless Five. Carmen had been working with The Fearless Five after Malefica originally gave her the one-month deadline to learn the rest of their identities, and she is a little distracted by trying to think of some way to rescue her rescuers.
For another, Carmen learned that Malefica was really Morgana Madison, the publisher of The Expose -- her employer. Carmen learned that Morgana/Malefica had hired her to unmask The Fearless Five so that all of them could be eliminated the same way that Tornado had been. In other words, Carmen discovered that Malefica had been playing her for a fool the same way that she had been by her ex-fiance, The Machinator. That was something that Carmen swore would never happen to her again, and she is more than a little pissed.
But in an attempt to neutralize any potential threat from Carmen, Malefica has (as Morgana Madison) also tried to publicly discredit Carmen, so directly revealing her double identity is not a viable option for Carmen. A more indirect approach is needed this time, so just before making what would appear to be a kamikaze attempt to rescue the rest of the Fearless Five, Carmen gives all the information she uncovered on Malefica's identity to her friend Lulu Lo, and tells her hacker friend to wait one hour before releasing the information to Bigtime's news outlets. Carmen specifically suggests that Lulu first release the information to SNN -- the Superhero News Network -- and The Chronicle, Bigtime's other major newspaper. (The latter, incidentally, is one of the many companies owned by Sam Sloane, the alter-ego of Striker.)
As Carmen is giving Lulu the information and instructions on releasing it, she doesn't expect to survive her assault on The Terrible Triad's lair. The best she is hoping for is that she will release at least one member of The Fearless Five before she is killed, and that whoever she frees will be able to free the others.
Well, things turn out quite differently from the way Carmen thought they would. Not only does she survive the encounter, it is The Terrible Triad who are presumed dead when the dust settles. (And when you consider the beating that Malefica receives at Carmen's hands, if she did survive, she will probably be either in need of extensive plastic surgery or recovering from it should she ever make a return appearance.) The multiple dips in Frost's frigid radioactive goo that Carmen is forced to endure leave their own mark, giving her superpowers and the edge she needs both to defeat the Triad and rescue The Fearless Five, and later to join the team as Tornado's replacement as Karma Girl.
(One minor nitpick here. Why do the heroes continue to call themselves "The Fearless Five" after Tornado's death? Were they planning to hold auditions for a replacement? Or was there already another group somewhere calling themselves "The Fearless Four" that precluded them using that name? I'm having mental pictures of Striker and Fiera conducting tryouts in much the same way as the Legion Of Super-Heroes regularly held tryouts in some of their 1960s stories.)
As for the remaining members of The Fearless Five, Carmen learns their identities during the one month that Malefica gives her, but when the deadline comes, Carmen flatly tells Malefica that she has no intention of turning over that information. After The Fearless Five rescue her on the first of several occasions (before she returns the favor), she becomes their ally. Slowly at first (and more than a little begrudgingly in the case of Fiera), Carmen finds herself becoming more and more a part of The Fearless Five. She initially finds herself in what is essentially the superhero version of witness protection, but finds herself taking on the role of superhero sidekick before she develops her own powers and becoming a full-fledged superhero. It would probably take an ubervillain with powers similar to Mr. Sage's telepathic abilities to force Carmen to reveal her allies' secrets.
But what of the heroes and villains that Carmen unmasked before arriving in Bigtime? We don't even learn all of their costumed identities; just four or five names that Carmen mentions in passing. What happened to them after their private lives became not so private?
I got the impression that things did not go so well for The Machinator, the first superhero Carmen unmasked (not to mention her ex-fiance). After Carmen discovered him in bed -- literally -- with his archenemy Crusher (who also turned out to be her now-former best friend), it was implied that he had something of a fall from grace. Not only did he and Crusher continue their romp between the sheets like a pair of nuclear-powered Energizer bunnies, they brought down the house -- or at least the hotel where Carmen and Mark's wedding was supposed to have taken place. According to Carmen, the hotel suffered considerable structural damage. (And I thought Klingons had some violent sexual practices!)
In the case of the ubervillains, we can assume that Carmen's unmasking was at least beneficial to the local authorities. I am assuming that the information that Carmen revealed in her exposes helped various law enforcement agencies to apprehend the villains. At the very least, I assume that the police would be able to make things more difficult for the villains to continue their normal operations. (Of course, in the comics, how many times have we seen superpowered criminals captured, only to see them escape once the writers came up with a new story using that villain? While Ms. Estep doesn't mention it, I suspect that the prisons in the Bigtime universe may have as much of a revolving door when it comes to ubervillains as the prisons in the DC and Marvel universes have when it comes to their supervillains.)
But the $256,000 question here is this: What has happened to the superheroes that Carmen has unmasked before she came to Bigtime? How did her unmasking affect them?
Carmen is again quiet on the subject, because she was more concerned with unmasking the heroes rather than what consequences might occur. At the time, she really didn't care; it took Tornado's death to change her feelings in that regard. So, we are left with suppositions and hypotheses. My own best guess is that, for the most part, the unmasking had to have had an adverse affect on the heroes. Carmen did mention that the authorities in some of the cities where she worked during her crusade wanted to send heroes and villains alike a bill for the damages they caused during their battles. It sounds as though it would be a distinct possibility that some heroes might find themselves tied up in litigation after Carmen publicly revealed who they really were.
Another possibility is that might find themselves at greater risk for attack from ubervillains, and not just the ones who had been unmasked by Carmen. After all, how long did Superman tell Lois Lane that they could never get married because he felt that she would be in constant danger from his enemies? (Never mind that Lois was finding herself in constant danger from his enemies even though they were only friends.) It might be something of a minor miracle that Tornado's death was the only one that came as a result of Carmen’s exposes.
It's implied more than anything else, but it seems that the primary consequence of a superhero being unmasked by Carmen is that the hero is no longer able to effectively function as a superhero. The Bigtime universe does not seem to have the equivalent of Ralph Dibny -- a hero who is so comfortable with the spotlight that he or she has publicly revealed his or her dual identity. Or if there is one, that hero hasn't been mentioned, and it's entirely likely that Carmen would be uninterested. After all, what is the point of unmasking someone who has already unmasked themselves?
But if it turns out that an unmasked hero somehow loses the ability to operate effectively as a superhero, what does he or she do then? Do they go into hiding, and then at some later point reappear under a new identity? And if they do, doesn’t it seem likely that the public would start thinking that new hero Major Magnet's powers seem awfully similar to the unmasked Magnetron's powers? Of course, this might hold true only if Magnetron had operated in a major city like Chicago or Los Angeles. If Magnetron had been a regional hero, living in Bozeman, Montana before relocating to Louisville and debuting as Major Magnet, it might escape all but the most diehard superhero watchers.
And now, in what truly has to be one of life's great ironies, Carmen finds herself on the other side of the mask, as a superhero. (Carmen, of course, thinks that it is just karma.) If she hasn't already, she will eventually realize that like Woodward and Bernstein before her, she has inspired some other young journalist, who will want to follow in Carmen's footsteps. Maybe even by uncovering the identity of the newest member of The Fearless Five.
Before she finally decides to become a superhero, Carmen has an encounter with Swifte, Bigtime's answer to The Flash. She tries to downplay her recently-acquired powers as martial arts skills, and Swifte plays along. But during their brief conversation, Swifte lets Carmen know that The Fearless Five have let the rest of Bigtime's superhero community know who really was responsible for Tornado's death. They were also told how Carmen had rescued The Fearless Five from The Terrible Triad. When Karma Girl made her first appearance as a member of the Fearless Five, it would seem almost certain that Swifte would know who she really was. But who else in Bigtime's superhero community knows?
And there is one other thing that none of The Fearless Five seems to have realized. When Carmen decided on a costume design, she settled for a silver costume -- the same color as Tornado's costume. Did she choose the color, even unconsciously, as a form of penance? It's particularly interesting to note that Fiera, who not only designed the costume, but was also engaged to Tornado, has not made the connection.
Of course, this may just be a case of karma working in strange ways . . .
-30-