You can call us Heroics.
A series of young adult Superhero novels by Alex Kost that follows a team of vigilantes living in a City of Adventure that might just be a little bit awful too, depending on your interpretation.
The series is set to have four books in it, with the confirmed titles so far being:
- Heroics, in which all of the main character vigilantes are teens dealing with anti-vigilante Corrupt Corporate Executives.
- Vigilance, set several years later, in which the main vigilantes are all adults and the public is starting to turn against heroes due to a Serial Killer.
- Legion, a few more years after Vigilance, in which animosity between hero teams and disappearing empowereds makes the hero community start to fall apart.
The Character Sheet can be found here.
Tropes Featured in the Series as a Whole:
- Abusive Parents: Wechsler absolutely is. Alice is as well if you consider the clones to be her children. Stephanie is at least emotionally abusive, getting worse as of Vigilance when it's revealed what she let John do to Casey.
- Rowan's mother is mentally ill, but she also is verbally, emotionally, and physically abusive towards her daughter. And the kid has clearly just been accepting it for a long, long time.
- Action Girl: Too many to list. It's a series full of female superheroes and Badass Normals.
- All Your Base Are Belong to Us: It almost burns down in Heroics, and Alice infiltrates it easily in Vigilance.
- Kid Hero: All of the Heroics heroes are between 13 and 17 years old. This changes in Vigilance when they've all grown up, though judging by the existence of their children, Legion will probably feature Kid Heroes again.
- One Person, One Power: Everyone has only one power except for Kara (who has both flight and strength). Jay has both speed and endurance, but that endurance might just be a Required Secondary Power.
Word of God states that a person can only have a power their parent actively had, and even if two parents had different powers, it's rare for both to pass down. - Shout-Out: All of the Alumni and Heroics field team members are named after comic book superheroes with similar powers. This was done on purpose in-universe.
- Casey and Stephanie Cabot are named after Casey Novak and Alex Cabot (played by Stephanie March), both of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. This was also done on purpose in-universe.
- Tess Cassidy is named after Tess Mercer (as played by Cassidy Freeman) from Smallville. Alex Kost has been adamant that similarities between the characters themselves were completely coincidental, in fact the character was created nameless and then given the name long before Kost even realized how many things they had in common.
- Superhero
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Arguably the whole point of the series, even if the good guys do still win and come out relatively unscathed in the long run.
- World of Snark
Tropes Featured in Heroics
- Adults Are Useless: Averted. The kids complain about the adult team of heroes not helping them enough, but it's pretty clear that they are still out fighting crime. Also, while not all that great at mediating the team, the adults who are a part of Heroics do both help and put effort into helping the children in their care.
- Belligerent Sexual Tension: Casey and Zach have it in spades. Vigilance shows that they were introduced by hookup before Zach became the liaison.
- Brainwashed and Crazy: What happens to anyone with a control band put on them by Wechsler and Cage. The worst part is that they're perfectly aware of the fact that they're trying to kill fellow heroes, but they can't stop themselves.
- Conveniently an Orphan: Pretty much everyone in Heroics is an orphan. All of the kids are. That's how they all ended up together.
- "It" Is Dehumanizing: Alix takes offense when Justin refers to her as 'it,' which is completely understandable especially considering the fact that he's basically accusing her of being evil simply for being a clone.
- Shipper on Deck: Literally everyone for Cass/AJ, who won't admit that they're already together.
Tropes Featured in Vigilance
- Career-Ending Injury: Both Justin and Kara suffer these during the story.
- No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Several happen throughout the book, and Jay is killed by one.
- The Reveal: Casey is John Wechsler's daughter.
- Serial Killer: The main group of bad guys is a trio of serial killers targeting people without powers.
- Shipper on Deck: Several characters try to talk Casey into admitting how much she actually cares about Zach.
Tropes Featured in Legion
- Career-Ending Injury: Rowan, who is tortured into a permanent heart injury.
- Wham Episode: The book completely resets the board by merging Heroics and the Legion.
