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Note: This was current as of September 2006. It’s changed a lot and I should have replaced it long ago.

Story’s Long-Term Direction

So instead of doing 40-50 chapters, I’m thinking of doing a just a few short stories, each focusing on a different character in 6-10,000 words. In order, they would probably be…

1. Lash (The Best Investigator in the World)
   • This story sets up that there are superheroes, that the OSI/Social Justice League hate each other and introduces Hunter. Lash himself is not particularly important to the story, but he’s a good way to introduce the world.
2. Dr. Mallow (DARC Continent or Heart of DARCness, haven’t decided which)
   • I love Mallow, the story’s main villain (although that mostly emerges after DARC Continent). I’d put his story first, but it doesn’t do as good a job of establishing the premise as Lash’s story, which puts superheroes front-and-center.
3. Gunnery Sgt. “Oliver Ryan” in… Unarmed and Dangerous (?)
   
   • I haven’t even begun writing this one. I think that the main thrust of this story is how Oliver tries to come to grips with his mission to protect Rusty, even though it means that he will never be a real Marine. I hope I can figure out a way to end it better and more poignantly than him saving the day with an assault rifle. In the context of the entire novel, Unarmed mostly serves to fill out why Hunter/Ryan are there. They have more of an impact on the Catastrophe plot-line.
4. Tommy Thompkins, The First Draft of History
   • This will be short because TT gets two chapters. James Fox becomes Catastrophe and Thompkins attempts to report the incident in a horribly flawed way. He loses the story in a freak accident (Catastrophe’s power activates unintentionally).
5. An incompetent accountant and the Belgian investigator in The Sound of Musack, which strikes me for no particularly understandable reason.
   • The accountant is probably the main character here, but the Belgian matters later. The accountant has to save himself or get black-listed for letting Mallow steal an outlandish amount of money from his firm. He calls in a Belgian investigator to learn what happened.
6. Paingod OR one of his lieutenants in One Nation Under Paingod.
   • This section focuses mainly on the loveless alliance between the Syndicate (a Paingod front) and Mallow’s organization. As far as supervillains go, Paingod is a bit more traditional (campy, over-the-top, unsympathetic, etc). The story ends with Mallow betraying Paingod.
7. Hunter in Aliens, Marines and Predators
   • This is probably too far to even speculate about. The important point is that it, like the other stories, leads back to Mallow’s doorstep in some way.
8. James Fox in The Master of Disaster
   • The novel is ultimately about him. This chapter will mainly be him captured and his eventual victory over his captors. Actually, I haven’t decided whether he will succeed, or even if he will survive if he does.
9. Tommy Thompkins again in The Second Draft of History or Final Edition
   
   • TT’s last chapter ended in total defeat. He lost the story, he was a complete failure, his dad is dead and he’s got no job. He failed because he was a clueless coward. In this chapter, we see something–probably reminders of his father, but it’s hard to speculate right now– that propels him to throw everything into this story. He has a chance to escape when the bad guys come for Catastrophe, but actually lets himself be taken to finish the job. He sees the final fight, the climactic showdown, everything. He gets a chance to publish an epic account of the battle, the one sure to win him millions and a Pulitzer. His climax comes when he drops his camera, forcing him to pick between actually being there when it all goes down and recovering the action shots he already took. He decides to be there and writes a character-study instead of the hot action piece. No one buys it, but we’re still kinda happy for him because he accomplished something.

Short-Term Direction

This is the super-short description of the chapters I have conceived so far. I plan to eventually color-code the chapters, but it’s not working so far.

This whole chapter-by-chapter list isn’t juicing me right now. So I’ll try to describe what I have envisioned for the near-term on a character basis.

Oliver Ryan

• After he gets assigned to what will almost certainly be his last active-duty assignment with the Marine Corps, he gets frustrated and tries to do something to feel useful. So he goes undercover at Pemetex, a vaguely evil corporation (sounds familiar but it won’t be). He needs a job to maintain a cover, anyway.
• One of the people he works with is Dr. Fox, a horrendously prickly person. When security funds get cut at the lab, Oliver jumps at the chance to take on an extra assignment. Nothing too serious, he thinks, just a psychological profile he’s wholly unqualified to give. He doesn’t know that he’s ACTUALLY being used to make the scenario of Dr. Fox’s eminent “suicide” plausible.

James Fox/Catastrophe

• He is a miserable bitch. There’s no way around it. He is horribly full of himself and it doesn’t help that he is brilliant. This sense of entitlement and self-perfection draw him into conflict with his bosses at the lab. They’re only showing him a piece of the puzzle and he wants to see the whole thing (because he figures he’s obviously the best scientist on the project).
• He does a lot of unauthorized snooping, but he isn’t quite as clever as he thinks he is. He gets uppity and Mallow decides that he has to be killed as soon as his part is finished. When he starts hacking the computer files, Mallow decides he needs to die immediately. Unbeknownst to Mallow, Fox HAS completed his part, so the vat of acid Mallow pushes him into is actually operational Fast-Acting Chemical Mutagen.
• The FACM transforms Dr. Fox into a vaguely horrific thing. I’m still working with the mental image of a cartoonish character. From there, his path could go several ways, some of which are complementary.. This is still very tentative.

1. Fox’s story is ultimately about becoming a fuller human as Catastrophe than he ever was before (he undergoes internal transformation).
2. Fox’s story is ultimately about him caring about the people around him enough to try to save them by becoming a superhero (essentially another external transformation). This is a pretty cliche take for a story that already has superheroes, I think.
3. Fox’s story is ultimately about bringing Mallow to justice and destroying the remainder of the FACM.
4. Fox’s story is ultimately about seeing Mallow’s vision through. This is, ahem, extremely uncliche but would make the story horrifically dark.

Tommy Thompson

• TT is a failing journalist who loses his excellent luck when the Catastrophe story falls in his lap. He is repeatedly compared to his father and always found wanting.
• He will probably end up somewhat steering the Catastrophe story angle. At least as I wrote TT’s first chapter, I envisioned that the novel itself is a character study of Catastrophe. Not sure if I’ll go that direction, but it sounded good at the time.
• In the end, he will probably get a chance to follow in his father’s footsteps, either as as an excellent journalist or a vastly successful one. I anticipate that he will write a masterpiece character profile of Catastrophe but no one will buy it. But the New York Post will do a piece on the final fight scene and it will sell enormously well and win the Pulitzer. Since I hate endings that are sappy, this bittersweet one appeals to me a bit more. Everyone makes choices…

Dr. Mallow

• My goal for Mallow is he will be a terrifyingly humane villain. Everything about him except his goal should be sympathetic.
  • He’s an AIDS researcher tremendously moved by the suffering of the people in a Congolese village he tried to cure. He fails miserably with conventional medicine and it doesn’t shatter him, exactly, but he comes away with an unusual diagnosis of what the problem is.
  • Specifically, he thinks that the human form is itself the problem. Weakness, pain, sickness, suffering… all of these stem from an imperfect immune system and nervous system, etc. So he goes about developing FACM, a chemical that will eventually be able to transform humans into “higher” beings.
  • If Catastrophe drives the novel’s moral character, it’s likely that the conflict between him and Mallow about the value of humanness will be the heart of the piece. (Of course, there’ll be battle and investigating… purely idea-based thrillers don’t work).
• He cooperates with the Syndicate people, a vast criminal enterprise, but it’s clear that he doesn’t like them or what they stand for. They want power and money and material things that make for, among other things, disappointing villains. Mallow wants an end to suffering and a beginning to perfection. And he’s willing to destroy humanity to get it.

The Syndicate

• As mentioned above, a very conventional criminal enterprise. Vast, international, with access to enough super-powered criminals to keep the story interesting and plausible.
• Ultimately, they will probably not play a particularly significant role towards the end.

The Belgian

• When the people at Pemetex figure out they’ve been played, they call in the Belgian to figure out what happened. She’s ruthless and, frankly, not very sexy (why is it that EVERY woman in comic books is a bombshell? Well. The Belgian just looks bombed). She has a very aggressive form of investigation.

Lash

• Based largely on the character described in “The Best Investigator in the World” (a piece at one point named “Whipped”).
• He starts looking into the going-ons at Pemetex but is ultimately killed.
• He mainly serves as a macguffin (an object some of the characters care about a lot more than the readers). His death draws Hunter more directly into the Catastrophe-Mallow conflict.

Hunter

• Not sure. I hope Rusty is more than a Macguffin.
• I anticipate that Ryan may call him in as soon as the plant explodes or perhaps when Mallow kills Lash.
• Very perceptual form of investigation, like a national counterterrorism investigation
  • Imagine counterterrorism like a vast jigsaw puzzle with millions of pieces, of which you’ll actually use a few thousand. You don’t know what the puzzle is shaped like until it’s too late. The pieces are moving and the puzzle is three-dimensional. It would take some kind of twisted genius to make the associations necessary to puzzle together an emerging problem. Enter Hunter, stage right.

1. Prologue.
2. Oliver tries to comfort Rusty with the story of segregation, “Capes and Masks.”

WHAT FOLLOWS IS VERY DATED. READ AT RISK OF HUGE CONFUSION.

3. Oliver Ryan is a security guard. He’s at lunch with Ron and holds brief conversation with Fox.
4. Mallow personally talks to Oliver about Fox’s mental state. Mallow comes off as really friendly and engaged with his workers. The subtle, ominous subtext is that Mallow noticed who was talking with who at lunch. He waxes benevolent about the importance of what they’re doing. Sunscreen? Tens of thousands of people die every year to skin cancer and they’re on the verge of creating permanent sunscreen.
5. Oliver has a meeting scheduled with Fox. Fox shows up at his desk real early, trying to get it out of the way quickly. Oliver is late (Rusty problems). In the time that Fox is there but Oliver is not, there is a call from a Marine buddy, who has been blackmailed into encouraging Jay to sign up for a foreign exchange student. Fox mentions the call to Jay, which greatly upsets him… he’s been found out! Jay asks if he can reschedule the appointment and Fox gets all snarky—you’ve already wasted my time, etc. [NOTE: The call has been taken out entirely. The main reason I had it was to get Oliver to accept Rahul as a foreign exchange student… but I’ve removed Rahul from the story, so I don’t need the call.]
6. Jay gets call back from Marine buddy. Jay is quite explicit that he be called “Jay, Jay O’Ryan” (he knows that the phones aren’t necessarily secure). How did you find this number? He doesn’t say. Marine makes the pitch on a foreign-exchange student, not referring directly to the unusual step of calling him after he went inactive. Jay is initially reluctant, but the buddy has some combination of desperation and need in his voice. He assumes that he’s being paid to make the sale. Marine only seems loose when he asks why he quit. The stress got to me, couldn’t continue to ship out for a year at a time and make training work. He’s looking at a photo of him hugging Rusty.
7. Jay comes home. He brainstorms the ways that the Marine might have tracked him. He is listed, though under a false name. He even created a fake wife. He’s really edgy and uptight when he comes in. Rusty sees he’s upset and assumes it’s his fault. Even though it partially is, Jay lets him off.
8. Fox has a conversation with the project leader about the psychological profile. Mallow blames Fox for not showing up, even though that’s precisely not the case. Fox points this out and the project leader twists his actions as pointing towards a suicide. Fox then bitches about having it, and then the leader waxes benevolent and says that the company’s policies and insurance policies require it. Even if he DID need a psych evaluation, why would you have a freaking security guard do it? Leader points out that Fox’s relations with peers in the scientific community are somewhat frosty. We thought it might be easier to work with someone if you didn’t have to establish yourself as smarter. We just want you to be happy, he says. Fox tells him that his research is almost done and that, no, he won’t share his Nobel Prize with him. If the project leader were even remotely qualified to engineer the final component, he would have done it himself.
9. Fox gets upset by another setback on the project. He makes another call to Lindley about getting the vehicle information but is stonewalled again. Fox decides that the time to act is now. He goes snooping around but only gets some communications that don’t mean all that much to him. Finally, he gets a bit of the vehicle information he was looking for. With those shreds of information, he concludes that the project has been failing thus far because it would require a vast supply of FACM for each dose. On a hunch, he prepares the vat but doesn’t tell anyone. He figures that he’ll tell Mallow at the meeting (he is getting pretty tired, after all… it’s late).
10. Mallow discusses with Lindley some of the problems that have befallen the project… especially Fox. They’ve already had to cut back on security because they don’t know how much longer they’ll have to go before the formula is ready for sale. He’s getting seriously stressed out.
11. Mallow meets with Fox to discuss his concerns. Well, that’s what Fox thinks. Mallow intends to kill Fox but he ends up throwing him in the vat that Fox had just prepared. There are enormous explosions. Mallow escapes, but Fox gets transformed into Catastrophe. (See his profile for more). Jay finds the body.

Purpose:

• TT will primarily serve to develop Catastrophe’s character. I feel that Hunter (as he currently stands) can only do so much because I want Hunter and Cat to be combatative.
• Additionally, TT can serve to demonstrate what society thinks about the bizarre Catastrophe in a way Hunter, an extraterrestrial, cannot.

Traits

• An eager journalist
• Insecure and desperate to prove himself.
  • His father, Tom Tompkins Sr., became a titan of journalism after he taped the “Battle for Monster Mile”, a Chicago showdown between Hunter and an 150-feet kraken thing that became known as Squidzilla.
  • His father isn’t nasty about it, but he is markedly not proud of his son.
• A few years out of journalism school, Jr. still has no big stories to his name. He’s still on a high-profile beat for the St. Louis Deadline, which has led many to accuse the Deadline of nepotism.
• He’s brought into the story because Catastrophe causes Hunter (and everyone else) to have horrible luck. Hunter is attempting to hide his true identity and Tom Tompkins Jr. is likely to realize who he really is (he’s a journalist looking for superheroes and he is well-versed with the Battle of Monster Mile). Also, Jr. is desperate for the story that will make him. If he DOES get some enormous scoop, he would be very inclined to run with it even if doing so were irresponsible.
• He hates his name. (God, wouldn’t you hate the name Tom Tompkins, Jr.?) He also hates being called Junior, but even his given name is a reminder of what he hasn’t achieved.
• Very curious and inquisitive. This trait, which I assume is pretty much universal to journalists, will help place him in dangerous situations that call for a superhero. That probably works out to his advantage, too.
• Unconsciously judgmental (Catastrophe)
• Fairly distrusted by his immediate editor, who has been burned by his lackluster performance before. The boss can’t get rid of him because the senior managers are sure that he will amount to something… eventually.
• Not particularly compassionate. He sees a story unfolding in front of him, not real people facing real losses. For example, he suggests the headline “CHEMICAL CATASTROPHE” for his article describing the “accident” that causes Fox to become Catastrophe. He later dubs him Catastrophe– “it’s got punch. I like it.”

Language

• Pretty standard.   College-educated diction, but it won’t be loaded with, say, scientific or military jargon.
• Tendency to ask probing questions.

Super-powers

• Absolutely none. He isn’t even an above-average journalist.
• Catastrophe’s powers have dropped a potentially earth-shattering story in his lap, if he can see it. I suppose you might say that he has super-good luck, at least as long as Catastrophe’s powers don’t turn on him…
  • You think you have solid, indisputable photographic evidence of something real newsworthy but inherently implausible, something like a government agent turning out to be a crocodile or alien. But then it turns out that your camera has no film, your digital camera has a dead battery, and that your trustworthy assistant and corraborating witness is actually a Hezbollah operative.

POLS 30060

Class: DeBartolo 131 (9:30-10:45)

Professor Kommers (Law School- Office 318)

Requirements, Porcedures, and Counseling

1. Examinations: Each student is required to take a mid-term and final examination. Each exam has an objective and essay component. The objective part is designed to test your breadth of knowledge, the second your critical and analytical ability. Exams are based mostly on material covered in class lectures and discussions. Class attendance is therefore important.
2. The teacher will lecture for about the first hour of class and then the teaching assistants will take over. They will organize these brief sessions for discussion purposes. The discussion sessions will be designed to encourage students to reflect upon and resolve particular issues in the light of the case or cases covered in the lectures.
3. Grading and Attendance: each student will have four grades at the semester’s end, represented by the essay and objective examinations mentioned above. The lowest of the four grades will be dropped for purposes of calculating the final grade. In addition, students will have the option of writing a paper, the nature of which is described later. If you submit this, and your grade on the paper is higher than your average grade for the semester, you will receive the next highest grade as your final grade. Unless otherwise excused, however, any student who misses more than THREE classes throughout the semester will be afforded none of these advantages. His or her grade will be based solely on the average of all the grades received on the objective and essay exams.
4. Office hours and teaching assistants: teaching assistants are J.R. and D. M. Teacher’s office hours are from 1-2:30 on Mondays and Tuesdays or by appointment in 318 Law School.

Course schedule/work

All readings are in American Constitutional Law unless otherwise noted.

1. August 22: 1-7, 1053-55
2. August 24: 31-52, 1035-46 (Apps. A and B)
3. August 29: 11-29, 61-84
4. August 31: Get ready for Marbury film and discussion
5. Sept. 5: 87-108
   • We’ll look at the remaining cases in chapter 3, especially Dred Scott and other opinions seeking to define the so-called political question doctrine (Luther, Baker, and Nixon). You might also want to look at Bush v. Gore.
6. Sept. 7: 109-128, 133-138, 143-153, 156-169
7. Sept. 12: 171-194, 196-211
8. Sept. 14: 211-230
9. Sept. 19: 231-261, 273-280
10. Sept. 21: 267-273, 284-287, 294-297, 299-304, 317-322
11. Sept. 26: 287-294 (need different title)
12. Sept. 28: 304-316, 322-339, 348-358
13. Oct. 3: MIDTERM
14. Oct. 5: 431-465, 1051 (Appendix D)
15. Oct. 10: 465-487, 494-499
16. Oct. 12: 501-522, 532-546
17. Oct. 24: 553-595
18. Oct. 26: 595-626
19. Oct. 31: 640-677
20. Nov. 2: 887-919, 935-940
21. Nov. 7: 919-935
22. Nov. 9: 945-968
23. Nov. 14: 969-998, 1001-1018
24. Nov. 16
25. Nov. 21: 679-726
26. Nov. 28: 726-759
27. Nov. 30: 759-772
28. Dec. 5: 773-801, 804-808, 841-851, 862-865, 873-879