Is what we are reading the interview story, as submitted to the editor? As published? As written but neither submitted nor published?

This is supposed to be the article that Todd wrote and published.

In the end, it owes more to Hunter S. Thompson riding with the Hells Angels — Gonzo Journalism, where the journalist becomes the centerpiece of the story — with a hearty dose of Tom Wolfe’s New Journalism and a dash of Truman Capote for good measure. While he was sent to do an afternoon’s interview, he’s been essentially kidnapped and had an almost unprecedented opportunity to see the inside of a supervillain’s operation, and the story he’s actually writing is that, instead of a celebrity profile.

Awesome start. It’s not quite a total deconstruction (except maybe where the car’s concerned. Nyuck, nyuck.), but it’s also not quite playing the tropes of the genre relentlessly straight. Like Astro City, with a slightly more obvious sense of humor.

Is what we are reading the interview story, as submitted to the editor? As published? As written but neither submitted nor published?

Is this intended to be an RS-style interview (1000 or so words of introduction followed by a lengthy, meticulously-edited Q&A) or a celebrity profile in the mode of that Tom Junod Esquire cover article about Angelina Jolie that Ron Rosenbaum hated so much over at Slate? There’s another article at Slate, of a few years ago, about the celebrity profile business, that might be useful. One of the classics of the genre is Gay Talese’s “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold,” in which the article builds gently upon the small fact that when Frank Sinatra had a cold, his hangers-on, servants and entourage all manifested similar symptoms, like courtiers imitating Louis XIV’s clothes.

The point being, there might be more sinister things about a supervillainess and her milieu than her coffee machine for even a reluctant reporter to apprehend. If he has never seen a superhuman, good or bad, in person, he might experience something other than anger or fear when he sees a manifestation of power: I think there’s a book by Tim Parks in which his protagonist suffers disgust and revulsion when supernatural things make themselves visible. That might make an interesting thread in a light-tempered superpeople-world parody of celebrity journalism.

(And I mean no disrespect to the author when I note that it is not exactly innovative to use coffee and tough-girl threats to reveal character. Warren Ellis and his cigarette-smoking hard men would be proud.)

Also, her name makes it seem like this is going to turn into a bdsm fetish story. When I first saw it I was like “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? Is Eric writing erotica these days?” but was pleasantly surprised that it wasn’t.

I like the tone you’ve hit here–I myself dabble in the superhero genre of literary excursions myself, and enjoy a similar tone.

Anyhow, this is pretty damned amazing. FOR SERIOUS.