Usually when someone writes a novel involving a superhero, they’ve been influenced by the superheroes we all know and love: Superman, Spider-Man, and their super friends. Larger larger-than-life characters who use their superpowers for good.
But in the following email interview about his near-future science fiction superhero novel Checkmate (paperback, Kindle), author Ty Drago says his inspiration was not a powerful, larger-than-life hero with a big, cinematic history, but a smaller, more down-to-Earth character who predates them all.