Locations
Most of the stories in the Wild Cards novels are set in or around Manhattan. As the original point of release for the Wild Card virus, Manhattan contains the largest and oldest community of those infected. In particular, many stories deal with the neighborhood known as Jokertown. This is based on the real world neighborhood of the Bowery and is populated mainly by Jokers. In the years after the release of the virus, the neighborhood had provided cheap housing to those who had found their lives disrupted by their mutations. The neighborhood has a rough reputation through most of the series, due to the economic marginality and physically imposing nature of many of the residents. The economic enterprises of the neighborhood tend to run towards night clubs and strip clubs with some catering to those who seek unusual performances by Jokers. For much of the twentieth century, slumming in Jokertown was a popular activity among more adventuresome Nats. However, the neighborhood also has more legitimate landmarks such as the Jokertown Clinic, a museum to Wild Card history, and the Church of Jesus Christ Joker, a Catholic splinter sect which worships a hermaphroditic Joker version of Jesus. Many of the residents of Jokertown have eschewed their birth names and instead are known by nicknames related to their deformity. A notable exception was Xavier Desmond, a local club owner and civic leader known as the "Mayor of Jokertown." For a long time many neighborhood residents opted to wear masks, ostensibly to cover up deformities, but also to allow a greater degree of anonymity for them.
Another prominent Manhattan location in the early books was the restaurant "Aces High." Catering to the trend in "Wild Card Chic" that began in the 70s, Aces High was run by the gravity controlling ace Hiram Worchester, known as "Fatman." From the 1970s through the late 1980s the restaurant, located in the Empire State Building, was a popular destination for the more publicity conscious aces. The Empire State Building would be the occasional target of a giant ape who would escape from the Central Park Zoo every few years and climb the building ala King Kong. The ape, who had first appeared in the wake of the Northeast Blackout of 1965 was revealed in the 1980s to be a movie obsessed shape shifter who had suffered a nervous breakdown.
In the early 1990s, a group of politically radical Jokers, dissatisfied with the culture of Jokertown, set up their own society on Ellis Island, which had remained abandoned in the Wild Cards timeline. Renaming the island The Rox, the community was led by a massively overweight and massively powerful teenage Joker named Bloat. They welcomed outcast Wild Carders to the island and ultimately drew the ire of the government through their alliance with a group of body swapping criminals known as the Jumpers, and through their attempts to expand to other islands in New York Harbor (which included at one point a vulgar defacing of the Statue of Liberty).
While the novels mainly focus on the New York Metropolitan Area they did occasionally journey outside the US. In particular the late 1980s saw an official congressional fact finding mission made up of various politicians and notable Wild Carders who traveled to various other countries to observe the treatment of Wild Carders there. Most notable were perhaps Egypt, where several Jokers who took the form of ancient Egyptian Gods had begun to bring back the ancient religion, and Central America, where two ace brothers were leading a Wild Card revolution.
In the mid 1990s a revolution overthrew the government of Vietnam with the help of the American ace Mark Meadows. The new revolutionary government welcomed Wild Carders, particularly Jokers, to their country and elected one of Meadow's multiple identities as President.
The 21st century has seen the rise of a renewed Caliphate in the Middle East, ruled by an ace called The Nur. Simultaneously a Marxist nation, the People's Paradise of Africa, has come to control much of Central and Western Africa.
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