Letters to Checkmate #5

Thanks for taking the time to read and feedback, O. It’s always mega appreciated.

I’ve wanted to talk about the overall thematic idea behind the book for a while, but haven’t found the right place to unload about it… basically, I see this book as the superhero / superspy equivalent of Netflix’s House of Cards, a series I saw described as “stupid smart” at some point or another.

House of Cards is stupid but wants so desperately to be thought of as smart. All the characters are devious backstabbers, they’re all playing seemingly intricate games, but from the outside looking in… god, they’re all so stupid. It boils down to those hackneyed fourth wall breaking monologues we got from first Frank, and then later Claire Underwood. God they were stupid. People laying out the themes and subtext until it was so obvious it hurt, like being bashed over the head with a mallet of all things. That’s not great story telling. That’s just… reading a script in an awful faux Southern accent.

So, yeah, “stupid smart” really stood out to me. They were trying so hard, yet if you give it any amount of critical though, it’s like… oh, wow, they did what and got away with it?

How does that tie into Checkmate? Well, I’ve tried really hard to make the series as intricately woven as possible, but I know at the end of the day it’s a lot of characters just talking fast and using big words. I wanted everyone to be really cool and sexy and… spy-y… but then I realised I kept writing my way into these knotty corners, and so every issue characters sum up all the stuff I alluded to, and laid it out to other characters (and the readers).

And when you have so many disparate characters in your cast, it kind of makes sense to do so? After an adventure, one (or more) character(s) rocks up to the place where they weren’t before, then a(nother) character(s) catch them up on their own adventure, and then they part ways and I repeat that structure every issue for nine issues…

So, yes, for all my intentions, I think of Checkmate as being “stupid smart”, because after reflecting on all the plot points I’d set up in advance of writing the season finale, I realised… oh, shit, is everybody an idiot? And then I gave up on the season finale and haven’t written anything DC2-related for two months.


I made a concerted effort to make sure the structure of the Checkmate organisation as undeniably clear as obvious. There has to be a reason for four different branches of the group, rather than a strict adherence to the chess motif.

When (if) we return for Season 2 (which I have plotted, and I’ve got a great, Steve Trevor-centric, DC2-embedded arc planned for the opening), I really want to take somebody else off the board-- ala Neptune Perkins as Black King-- and have someone of the opposite gender take up the gender-specific position that was opened up.

Just because its White King and Black King doesn’t mean a man has to be in the role. But I digress… excited to see the return of Young Justice to the site, whenever you’re able.


Yes, I wanted to change things up with the way Black King structures his branch of the organisation, and with Valentina consolidating her position by preemptively absorbing all his assets into her own branch, he had to start from somewhere… so why not pay for his own private army? I was also interested in putting a spin on Lady Blackhawk’s cross-time arrival into the present, so we’ll eventually see the cause of that in the DC2. Sufficed to say, we’ve met the reason for her displacement already in the earliest issues of this book…