Now Hiring
Now Hiring
is an 80s crime-thriller set in an alternate world where aliens made human contact in antiquity.
At the crossroads of danger and opportunity, two strangers forge a bloody pact built on control and brutality—Maks, a struggling alien refugee, and Aisel , kingpin of the criminal underworld. Nothing good follows.
Now Hiring contains examples of the following tropes:
- Action Girl: Aisel, a criminal kingpin whose hands are as red as her suit.
- Big, Thin, Short Trio: Maks and his partners in crime, Sheep and Woods.
- Casually Powerful Giant: Maks's punches knock teeth loose and he catches punches and tosses people down like little dolls. He also can just rip whatever you may have out of your hands if he needs you to stop hitting him.
- Criminal Found Family: Over time, Maks starts to find a place of semi-belonging among the partners in crime he was initially so keen to distrust thanks to his status as an outcast.
- Disposable Vagrant: Crow recognizes Maks's desperate situation and hires him as a courier of dubious deliveries in one of Maks's many rock bottoms. Crow might not know that Maks is on the knife's edge of eviction from a literal shed in the back of someone else's property, but he knows desparation when he sees it.
- He Who Fights Monsters: Although Now Hiring is in its first few chapters, the trajectory of the plot is explained in the first page with Maks as a narrator: "I became what I hate. But maybe there's still time."
- I Did What I Had to Do: Aisel, Simeon, and Maks alike make permanent decisions as a result of their less-than-legal circumstances.
- Lady Looks Like a Dude: Aisel, the Lady in a Power Suit, has a short haircut and a penchant for overalls and suit ties.
- Language Barrier: Maks is stumbling through the hoops of learning english with the help of his tutor, Kio.
- "Not So Different" Remark: Late in the employ of Aisel, she tells Maks that she and him are very alike. Both monsters who just make the best of what they are.
- Power at a Price: The Amka perform a skill called 'matter pulling', which Maks cannot perform without enduring some nasty side-effects.
- Protagonist Journey to Villain: Now Hiring's opening page presents the story as Maks's tale of how he "became a monster". Even without the first page spelling it out for the reader, all the discrimination and desperate circumstances Maks faces and the criminal career he's landed in dress his future as one that is fashionably doomed.
- Redemption Quest: As stated in the introduction page, Maks says he's become a monster, "but maybe there's still time."
- Space Elves: The Amka race are gigantic pointy-eared beings capable of an ability called 'matter pulling' which is packaged like an innate, magical power.
- Team Dad: Woods is depicted giving Maks mentoring feedback and holding Sheep (generally) accountable.
- The Mafia: Now Hiring follows the machinations of the fictional Veinard mob empire and its downfall.
- Too Desperate to Be Picky: When Maks first gets his job as a courier for Crow, Crow holds his obviously desperate situation over his head to pressure him into obeisance.
- Trashy True Crime: Late-game, Kio dips into being the voyeur of some of the results of Maks' actions and is later questioned by the FBI for her assumed guilt by association.
- Trauma Conga Line: Maks. Born during a civil war to an alien race whose homeworld had been destroyed, rejected by his father due to his "failures", and subjected to discrimination and abuse throughout his life. Even the weather hates Maks, whose alien physiology reacts to water like it's battery acid.
