By Julie Sara Porter
Bookworm Reviews
Spoilers: The only way that Jen Finelli's Becoming Hero could become any more meta and fourth wall breaking is if Skye, the super hero protagonist, popped out of the pages and had words with the Reader.
Becoming Hero is an affectionate tribute to comic book heroes and their creators. It gently mocks and sometimes openly criticizes the genre and its many tropes. Finelli's writing takes aim at origin stories, romantic subplots, betrayals from allies, archvillains, replacement characters, women in the fridge stories, darker approaches, sequels, fans who become writers, and fans falling in love with the characters. Heck, this book is so meta that it mocks critics of comic books while criticizing them itself.
The book is actually two stories in one. The first is that of Skye, a young superhero, who can create lightning. His adventures feature him facing robots, aliens, criminal masterminds, and the rest of his veritable Rogue's Gallery.
While saving the world, he also faces many personal issues found in the usual comic subplots. He finds love with Natasha, a fellow superhero who can create thunder, only to lose her during a mission that ends badly. During another mission, he falls in love with Ming, a mysterious woman who turns out to be a criminal mastermind's equally cunning daughter. He also has to contend with the betrayal from a former friend and finding love again with a new female character.
Besides the story of Skye, we are also introduced to the story of Jace, a young comic book nerd. Jace lives in our universe (I assume, who knows) in which superheroes only exist in comic books. While facing a bully, Jace is saved by Caleb, a stranger. The two share a mutual interest in comic books and science fiction films. (Jace even admits that his full name is Jacen Solo Howard. His father named him after Han Solo and Princess Leia's oldest son in the Star Wars Expanded Universe/Legends franchise).
However, Jace notices that Caleb acts strange whenever they mention the Skye comic book series. During a TV interview with Greg Amadeus, a writer for the Skye comic books, Caleb calls Amadeus a murderer. He gets into a heated argument over the character with two guys who run the local comic book store. Come to think of it, Caleb bares a strong resemblance to Skye and acts like him too. Could he be-?
Meanwhile, Greg Amadeus and one of Skye's illustrators are mysteriously killed. Someone has a huge problem with the Skye franchise but who?
Becoming Hero is a lot of fun with its many asides and references to the superhero genre that even the most casual fan will get. There are plenty of clever jokes such as Jace's revelation that his name is spelled like Han Solo's Expanded Universe son and not like the second Robin, Jason Todd. ("The son of a rogue instead of the rogue son," Caleb adds.)
The Annie Chen illustrations are part of the fun. Occasionally, Skye's adventures are illustrated in comic book form with the typical dialogue balloons,colorful costumes, and side panels. The visual experience serves as a great addition to the written experience by acting as a counterpoint and commentary to the rest of the book. During one climactic fight between a colleague and an enemy of Skye's, the enemy mocks the colleague for being a plot device. Incensed, the colleague delivers a death blow to her assailant but not before she declares that the enemy is nothing more than a splash panel.
During the Jace plot, characters comment on events that later appear as plot points in Skye's storyline. A fellow student and Feminist goes into a rant about the "Woman in the Fridge" trope, the controversial stories in which the superhero's love interests are killed for no reason except to give the hero more depth and conflict. This happens a few chapters before, you guessed it, Skye's girlfriend is killed in a darker and edgier storyline.
Jace and Caleb spend a lot of time dancing around each other, unsure if they can trust one another and believing that one will betray the other. While this is happening to Jace, Skye's close friend becomes consumed by his hatred to destroy people with unusual powers and abilities and seeks to kill them in a way that not only becomes a detriment to Skye's world, but Jace's as well.
The characters question as the bizarre events in Skye's world are echoed in Jace's world. Heroes and villains battle each other and people reveal that they have abilities to a very confused public. Jace himself has a hard time keeping up with the ongoing weirdness. In one passage, he is surprised and annoyed that a wormhole is a target for Skye's enemies. A wormhole is considered a science fiction cliche, often used for space, time, and interdimensional travel. ("That's like radiation," Jace moans.)
Besides being humorous, Becoming Hero raises some interesting points between creators, characters, and their fans and Readers. Are authors responsible for their creations? When a storyline or sequel raises controversy, is it the author's fault or is it the fan's for wanting something different or the same and then complaining when they get it? Does an author owe it to the character or fans to add new elements to the story to keep it fresh and interesting or to do the same old thing over and over?
These points come up mostly in the conversations between the current authors and illustrator of Skye and their murderer to be. Each creator almost uses Skye as some sort of wish fulfilment in their lives. One wanted to put Skye on a darker path. Another was more interested in the sexual side of the story by drawing buxom women in tight outfits. Still another developed such a crush on Skye, that she wrote his comics just so someday she hoped to meet him. Skye represents different things to them, so they put him through these conflicts to convey their own desires and the fans's needs, such as killing off an unpopular character, but don't take Skye's needs into consideration. It becomes a surprise when the characters they write for start striking back at those who write and draw their suffering.
Many of the characters in the Skye series question their fate once they enter Jace's world. Tigris, a minor villain in the Skye comics, agonizes that he doesn't have a motive or backstory. He isn't even remembered much by Readers. When he enters Jace's world, he longs to gain prominence and be recognized. In a clever moment that shows the difference between the comic book and the real world, a fight between Skye and Tigris in Jace's world results in much death and destruction. Jace even sees a young girl watching the fight and is traumatized by the bloodshed and violence. That is something that never occurs to villains and heroes in comics, that their encounters may cause trouble for the bystanders.
Another character that is upset about her fate is Jackie, the aforementioned unpopular character. She speaks for The Scrappys, The Cousin Olivers, the Jar Jar Binkses, the Replacement Love Interests: Characters that are usually added later and whose very presence annoys fans. Jackie reminds Jace, and the Readers, that they deserve to be recognized too. Someone put their heart and soul into their creation and that they should be allowed to have their moments to shine just like everyone else.
Skye himself dislikes many of the things that the authors put him through. He hates finding love and friendship only to lose it over and over again. When he questions his actions, motivations, and losses to the authors, he is almost like a penitent question their fate in front of God. Jace recognizes that anger within himself as he wants to rail at his own creators: God for taking his mother away when she died of cancer and his police officer father for ignoring him.
Becoming Hero is similar to Eileen Favorite's The Heroines and Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next Series where characters break from their confining storylines and allow themselves to develop into new characters with their own motives and actions, independent of what is forced upon them by their creators. Instead they take charge of their own storylines.
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