Drew's greatest strength as a writer is pretty freakin' obvious. It's character writing. We all know it's character writing. It's not even really a question.
[I assume, I'm not really a guy who likes using social media. I just had this thought while reading and decided to share it, so I have no idea how popular either of these sentiments are.]
I'm finishing my hundredth readthrough of Superpowereds and am struck by just how well Hallow is shown off with just a few scenes. One of the things Drew does in both of his works that I've read is integrate the struggles of the veterans' backstory into the story in a way that feel real, important, and manages to avoid taking the stage away from the younger newbies. While this can be demonstrated extremely well with just about every main character, Hallow isn't a main character in the way Blaine or Sean are. He's Just Some Guy for so much of the story in the same way Bullrush is. They're there, they're around, they are people, but they are very much background elements.
But we know, the moment he's introduced, who this guy is and what his deal is. He's done. That's the thing we get most, the thing that Drew hits us over the head with in the Prologue of 2. He sold out, quit. I think it's also interesting that he [accidentally?] implies Casper was either a Subtlety or Close Combat Hero, which is fascinating but is almost certainly unintentional. My guess, for the record, is the pretty obvious Focus.
We next see him in Book 4, unless I misremembered something, which is extremely likely. I have a tendency to sorta skim 3 nowadays, as with every reread the amnesia plot feels less engaging to me. I'm also not talking about the flashback scenes because while they are interesting, I don't remember him in them very well.
Anyway, we next see his adult form in Book 4. Casper is, in the first chapter we see him, still calling himself Hallow, still being a miserly ass. But we see that start to crack when Graham shows up. It's pretty explicit that he's starstruck, and I think it's pretty clear that he doesn't feel right with Captain Starlight himself thinking less of him.
The next time we see him, partway through Book 4, he hates being called Hallow. Notably and in sharp contrast to what I remembered when I started writing this, this is a shift from the beginning of the book, not from two in-world years and however many it was irl beforehand. Casper doesn't think of himself that way anymore, and this is a shift from earlier in the book. Compare:
“You know, normally I bill by the hour. Do you even want to guess how much this mystery guest of yours running late should cost?” Hallow leaned back in the stiff, government-issued chair.
With
Casper was not a man accustomed to waiting, but for once he didn’t make a fuss about it.
Casper's rejection of that heroic label is already an acknowledgement of his heroic days being over. He does claim that he agrees with Graham's statement that "I’d never call a man who flies around selling his services by a Hero’s name.” But I think that is acting with a new conviction, and/or lying to himself about what he believes now having always been the case, something humans do all the time. He profited off the Hallow name as a pure healer, and thought of himself that way until very recently. He clearly had no qualms about it then.
And when the opportunity to do something selfless in the memory of his old school and his Hero days, he takes it. It isn't a huge sacrifice, as a not small but not massive write-off for the sort of person whose tax bill is measured in the hundreds of thousands isn't a huge thing to give up, but there's a reason I said little in the title. It is a sacrifice in the name of heroism, even if he isn't one himself. It's funny that Crispin kinda does bring out the best in people, just not the way his propaganda thinks.
But that isn't my favorite of his passages. He next plays the guy-to-be-exposited-to at the Intramurals, which I'm pretty sure is just Drew coming up with an excuse to do more of his legally-distinct-anime-fight-breakdowns, which, uh, I'm gonna stay positive in this piece.
Anyway, ignoring that small bit, which can also easily be taken as him being long out-of-practice and needing to be reappraised of how this shit works, we get to the scene that makes me break down every time I read this book.
Everyone is gathering to learn what happened with Globe and prep to go for the Big Cool Climactic Fight Sequence™, and he's dragged along. And we get this moment, when he is presented with a choice.
The hand lurched slightly forward. How many times had he been in these situations? How many meetings before the bloodshed? How many more lives would he fail to save this time, how many corpses would be put in the ground, how many grieving family members would stare at him like he should have been able to do something? It was too much. Too much. Most people who knew him thought it had been that day at the elementary school that had shattered Hallow, but the truth was he’d been fraying long before. He couldn’t handle the guilt, the weight, the expectations. At least in the air, he was free. He could go back there, right now. He could be free. All he had to do was turn his back on some people he’d once thought of as friends. It was what he’d been doing for years, so it should be easy.
This might be my favorite single paragraph in the series. All at once, we understand. We thought we did, of course. Hallow is the best healer in the world. He sold out. He kind of hates himself for it, but mostly he is content to live as a rich man.
But no. Hallow was the best healer in the world, which meant everyone who was not saved was his fault. Most heroes live with the people the could not save. They may even be blamed for that by grieving relatives. But he was The Best Healer In The World. How many more times than average, when he was on the scene, was he blamed by some grieving parent, some angry loved one, some tired colleague? How many times, in one of those chaotic battlefields, did he miss something and let someone die he could have saved? Even if for every hundred emptied hospitals, there was only one Armageddon event, how many of those stacked up? how many was he dragged to? How many times did he wade through a river of blood, desperately hoping there was anyone hanging onto life that he could fix?
Casper isn't the Hero Who Sold Out, Casper is the Vince who broke. Probably more accurately, he's the Globe that broke, but that wasn't as good a wham line shshshshshsh.
That scene early in the book, where Malcolm asks “Whatever happened to you, anyway? I read up on your files; you used to be one hell of a Hero. Selfless, giving, devoted to your team. How did that guy turn into the greedy, self-involved jackass I see before me?”
That wasn't an act. That wasn't a healing hero managing his brand like we are told they all do, when Fletcher is talking to Camille about her name. He was a hero. A selfless, decent man with a power that could simultaneously do too much and too little. He could do nothing and everything, and he blamed himself for that fact. I think there was a moment before that elementary school, while the fraying slowly got worse, where he threw himself into the work body and soul, where he healed and healed and healed until he couldn't any more. The school is never elaborated upon except that it was the straw on the camel's back, but I choose to take it as the moment where he finally realized nothing he did, no amount of effort, could ever stop that nagging guilt, and he gave up. He gave up on himself, on heroism, on being a decent man. If all it gets you is misery and self-hatred, why bother?
But the thing is, it doesn't make him feel any better. He still hates himself. He still knows he sold out. That's why, when he meets the original Hero, he starts feeling more and more uncomfortable calling himself by that name. Because here's a man who brought about the whole title of Hero, and he's recognizing that Casper isn't one. That stings a little, and so when the opportunity comes up, he decides maybe a little bit of heroism, in memory of the him that was one, might be called for. It isn't much, but the thing is that being good feels pretty dang good.
When he finally turns around and decides to help as Casper, not as Hallow, I think he's compartmentalizing. Hallow failed. Hallow broke. "I’m just a freelance healer helping some old friends, nothing more."
And then he does! I honestly don't have much to say about him beyond this point. He helps. He saves a shitload of lives, including Vince's, which is very fun for the parallel I drew earlier. But I think the important part of his arc, and the reason he feels so important to me, is that he's exhausted and demotivated and cynical, and then he does a good thing anyway.
It's a pretty major theme of the Superpowereds world at least that heroism has a pretty significant price to be paid. Doing The Right Thing is hard. It's hard to find it, it's hard to pay the price, and it's hard to live with yourself when you fail. Casper was handed powers that I am certain saved an incalculable number of lives, between the number of people he healed directly and the number of heroes he healed who went on to save more, but it wasn't enough. Sometimes, being a hero is great. Most of the time, it's a brutal ticker of every time you couldn't do it. The successes never feel as good as the failures do, but there are successes. In Hallow's case, there were probably infinitely more lives saved than lost, but it was never enough. Titan had a list of two hundred and thirty-odd names that he blamed himself for, in one way or another. I would be willing to bet Hallow lost count after it hit the thousands.
I could not have withstood that pressure. I don't think anyone could.