I often get inspired by TV shows. The visual aspect of it really helps me spin off ideas in my head when I start to commit a story to paper. Charmed inspired the Under the Moon series. Nashville inspired A Christmas Reunion. Arrow inspired this book.
Growing up, I was never into comic books. I knew the basic stories of Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, and the rest, but the comics themselves didn’t interest me. My brother and I used to watch all the animated superhero shows before we got on the bus in the morning, but that was it. (Years later, when I actually read the iconic comics like Batman: Year One, I realized that the cartoons were not that far off from the original comics. So I guess I had my taste back then.)
I knew that if I was going to write a superhero book, I needed to do it right. That’s why I did some research by reading the comics, watching the TV shows and movies, and really trying to determine what happened in each medium to produce an awesome product.
A couple things I discovered:
- The title character always had an origin story, even if it was revealed later.
- The superhero always had an impossible mission to fulfill (Batman’s mission to rid the city of Gotham of corruption, Spider-Man’s mission to clean up the streets of NYC).
- There was always something tragic tied to the mission.
Another important aspect was that these stories took place in an urban environment. Often fictional (at least in the DC Comics universe), these cities played an important role in the superhero’s world. Plus, in a fictional world, you can really make your own rules to challenge your characters.
Since I love looking at maps, I set out to make my own fictional city. Using several different poster boards taped together, I spread it across my dining room table and got to work. It made me think of the different aspects that make up a city. Its culture, history, pitfalls, successes. What started as a couple pencil lines on paper developed into a full-fledged city.
I wasn’t sure if I wanted to completely dive into the world of super powers. Another show that inspired this series was The Flash, but I found I didn’t enjoy it as much as other superhero shows because it seemed everyone had super powers. What makes the superhero so special if everyone has powers like that?
So I created a different kind of villain. Drawing from the Batman comics, I created an organized crime family. This took even more research into how crime families work: how they make money, how they avoid arrest, what sort of pressure is felt by each person of the family.
It was a lot of fun (and work!) putting all of these pieces together. Actually, the first six chapters were written without an outline, way back when I was writing the first draft of The Full Moon in the fall of 2014. I set Fuse: Origin aside (then called The Shocker) to work on the Under the Moon series and then picked it back up two years later in the fall of 2016. This time, though, I outlined the rest of the book, which took on a completely different direction than where I thought it was going.
Fuse: Origin was a fun book to write. It’s a whole new set of characters to play with. A fresh slate. And, as you can probably guess from the title, it’s just the beginning.