But superheroes don’t die. Not in comic books, not really, not for good.
We needed to establish that Wild Cards was something different, that this danger was real, that we were playing for keeps here, that even our good guys could indeed die, and die horribly.
With that in mind, early on in the going I sent out a call for “red-shirt aces” (anyone who’s ever watched the original Star Trek will get the reference), secondary characters that we could introduce in Book One and include in the Cloisters raid in Book Two, thereby setting them up to be Astronomer fodder in Book Three.
A number of my writers obliged by creating throwaway aces. One such was Steve Leigh’s Howler. Another was Kid Dinosaur, introduced by Lew Shiner in the epilogue to Volume One. The poor Howler had, I seem to recall, exactly one line of dialogue in the first two volumes, before Roulette got him into her bed in Book Three, so to this day I don’t understand how our readers could get attached to him. Kid Dinosaur was pushier, though. The little snotnose managed to force his way into several juicy scenes in Aces High—including one wherein the Turtle warned him what was going to happen if he kept trying to play with the big boys.
Is it my fault that the kid wouldn’t listen?
—George R.R. Martin
September 16, 2001
Table of Contents
Cover Image
Jokers Wild