History Literature / JackBlank

* {{Alien Invasion}}: What the Rüstov do to every planet they come across.
* {{Aliens Speaking English}}: All the extraterrestrials speak English. The Rüstov [[BlackSpeech have their own language that barely anyone can understand]], but they can speak English just fine when it suits them.
* {{All Of The Other Reindeer}}: Jack gets this reaction from a lot of people because of his latent Rüstov infection. Many believe him to be a Rüstov spy, conspirator, or if he's not one now, will eventually become one.
* {{Alternate Universe Reed Richards Is Awesome}}: Jonas Smart invented a majority of the high-tech devices in use in Empire City. Played with as Smart apparently owns several front companies outside the Imagine Nation that put out the same toys but not the ones as advanced as the Imagine Nation's.
* {{Amnesia Missed A Spot}}: Secreteers are able to make people forget things that should remain secret, including the identities of Secreteers. Jack manages to remember Hypnova's appearance and form of transportation correctly, even though his friends disagree on those points. Hypnova believes Jack managed to keep his memory after she wiped it because his Rüstov parasite remembered, and she didn't bother to wipe his memory.
* {{And I Must Scream}}: Revile is indestructible to the point of shrugging off massive amounts of ammo and can regenerate very quickly. In order to ensure he remains down for the count after his sudden return, they shoved his body back into the Infinite Warp Core Engine on the wreck of the Rüstov mothership and kept it running so that he'd be stuck in a loop of destruction and regeneration.
* {{Androids Are People Too}}: Jack finds out that Jazen is mechanical for the first time, and calls Jazen a "robot". Jazen tells Jack he doesn't like the term "robot" and says all the mechanical people in the Imagine Nation are independent and self-programmed, and that they are called Mechas.

* {{An Offer You Cant Refuse}}: Jazen implies that the reason Jonas Smart exerts so much economic control over Machina's businesses is because he gives veiled threats that anyone who refuses would be accused of being a Rüstov conspirator.
* {{Anti Climactic Unmasking}}: Jack suspects Midknight of foul play, but Midknight assures his innocence. Jack asks Midknight to remove his mask to prove he's not a Rüstov. Midknight obliges, and his face is clean. No fuss is made over Midknight's identity.
* {{Appropriated Appelation}}: Jack never had a last name, so he'd leave a blank after his first. The name Jack _____ morphed into Jack Blank, and it stuck.
* {{Artificial Human}}: [[spoiler: Lorem Ipsum]] was created as one. She says that Smart was trying to make an entire army of people like her so he wouldn't have to rely on outside help to fill his Peacemaker ranks.
* {{Artificial Limbs}}: The Peacemaker Cyberai has one. [[spoiler: When the Rüstov Jack captured escapes from prison with one leg that Skerren cut off, he kills Cyberai and steals the leg]].
* {{Ass In Ambassador}}: Ambassador Equa of the Calculan delegation isn't particularly rude, but he is very fickle regarding whether or not his people should side with Earth. This is chalked up to alien ValuesDissonance; they make their decisions by calculating the odds and factor in many factual variables that lead them to believe siding with the Imagine Nation wouldn't be prudent because they are still fighting amongst themselves.
* {{Authority Equals Asskicking}}: The Inner Circle is made up of Empire City's most famous and most powerful heroes. [[AsskickingEqualsAuthority In most cases, this was likely the reason they were elected in the first place.]]
* {{Barbaric Bully}}: At St. Barnaby's, Rex Staples fills this role. He hunts Jack to rat him out, he stole Jack's calculator and blamed Jack when it exploded, he's bigger than average and drinks coffee. It was predicted that in the future he would become a hired hand for a criminal organization.
* {{Bavarian Fire Drill}}: Jazen successfully pulls this off to Calhoun so he can take Jack away from St. Barnaby's.
* {{Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism}}: Valorians look exactly like silver-skinned humans. However, the male Valorians can fly and shoot energy from their hands, while the female Valorians are [[RubberMan capable of stretching their shape]] and altering their consistency from leaky liquid to diamond solid.
* {{Boarding School Of Horrors}}: St. Barnaby's doubles as one of these in addition to being an {{Orphanage Of Fear}}. It's motto is "Crushing the Spirit of Childhood", it is slowly sinking into a swamp with new rooms being built on the roof, and it has an electric fence surrounding it.
* {{Body Surf}}: Rüstov need hosts to live, but they can discard bodies and infect new ones at will. This trope occurs several times in ''End Of Infinity'', especially because Rüstov nobles prize purity of hosts and will discard a host as a hand-me-down when [[PossessionBurnout the first signs of decay set in]].
* {{Bond One Liner}}: After Jack takes out a Rüstov carrier by dropping a train on them, Allegra invokes this trope. She makes a line about the Rüstov catching the train, but tells Jack to stop after he uses lame lines with the verb definition of "train".
* {{Bonding Over Missing Parents}}: Jack, Allegra and Skerren remark that the Rüstov had made them all all orphans.

* {{Bratty Teenage Daughter}}: [[spoiler: For a given value of "daughter", Lorem Ipsum]] to [[spoiler: Jonas Smart]].
* {{Breath Weapon}}: Averted. Skerren asks Zhi why his dragons don't breathe fire. Zhi explains that [[OurDragonsAreDifferent that his dragons are Chinese dragons]].

* {{Chrome Champion}}: With their silver skin, all Valorians look like this.

* {{City Of Adventure}}: Empire City is this, and it is ''massive'', consisting of six wildly different boroughs in one.
* {{Clap Your Hands If You Believe}}: This is the only way to properly find and reach the Imagine Nation.
* {{Coincidental Broadcast}}: News broadcasting about a Rüstov attacking the Peacemaker Cyberai in Karateka ends up on Jack's television. It's lampshaded that Jack didn't even turn the television on but the news came up automatically.

* {{Collector Of The Strange}}: Stendeval's home looks like an overcluttered storage closet from a long-running theater company and is full of props of strange origin. Given that he's been around for 500 years, he's had plenty of time to accumulate possessions.
* {{Comic Books Are Real}}: Played with. While many of the characters featured in Jack's comics are real, Prime tells Jack that when authors and artists hear about their stories, they often embellish the stories (this is in response to Jack [[DidYouDie asking about a plotline where Prime had undergone a Rüstov infection despite being told later that it's instantly fatal]]). Jazen also mocks Jack for thinking Captain Courage is real because he's completely fictional.
* {{Composite Character}}: [[WordOfGod Matt Myklusch]] stated that Jazen was originally a human character who would disappear after Jack arrived in the Imagine Nation, and Jack would spend the rest of the book being escorted around by a robot butler-type person. The author thought that that [[TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodCharacter Jazen was being wasted]] and the robot butler was boring, so he combined the two.
* {{Cool Boat}}: The ''Vision''. Jazen tells Jack that he has to drive this ship in order to reach the Imagine Nation.

* {{Cool Ship}}: A few, including the Hyperjet Jack flies at the end of the first book, Midknight's ship ''Knightwing'' in the second, and Solomon Roka's ship at the beginning of the third.
* {{Cool Train}}: A superfight at the beginning of the second book takes place on one of these.
* {{Commuting On A Bus}}: Prime doesn't appear in ''The Secret War'' because he's out appealing to other alien races to unite with Earth against the Rüstov. It pays off in ''End of Infinity''.
* {{Corporal Punishment}}: Mrs. Theedweck carries a yardstick wherever she goes. After she's done with Jack, he thinks he wouldn't be able to sit down for a week.
* {{Corporate Sponsored Superhero}}: The Peacemakers are all sponsored by Smart Corporation.
* {{The Corruption}}: A Rüstov is a parasite, but ''End Of Infinity'' plays this very straight. Jack struggles with his body growing more and more mechanical by the minute due to a Rüstov implant, but his friends who do get caught by Rüstov are infected immediately without struggle.
* {{Cowardly Lion}}: Allegra jumps and panics at everything in the first book, and she's ashamed of this because she's a Valorian, and Valorians are supposed to know no fear but she spent her formative years alone on a refugee ship while fleeing Rüstov space, knowing nothing ''but'' fear. She gains more courage by the second book to the point where Jack takes notice [[CharacterDevelopment how much she's grown in a year]].

* {{Distressed Dude}}: Jazen for most of ''End of Infinity''. Jack also in the same book on two separate occasions.
* {{Divide And Conquer}}: This is the Rüstov's primary battle strategy. They use psychological tactics to cause unrest and division among the people of the planets they intend to conquer before they move in so [[DividedWeFall the people there are too busy fighting among each other to unite against the Rüstov]]. This strategy is so effective that it easily won them most of the battles of their infinite war.
* {{Doorstop Baby}}: Jack appeared at St. Barnaby's sitting in a cradle with "Jack" written on the handle. There was no last name provided, so after his name came nothing leading to his adopting the name Blank.
* {{Dragon Rider}}: In the second and third books, Zhi Long is able to control seven mystical Chinese dragons and allows his friends to ride them.
* {{Drama Preserving Handicap}}: In ''End Of Infinity'', Jack can still use his powers to great effect, but the influence of his parasite actively prevents him from using his technopath sensing on Rüstov directly. Once this limit is removed, it instantly becomes a StoryBreakerPower.
* {{Drives Like Crazy}}: Jack is a very reckless driver who has a tendency to bob, weave, and crash into things and shrug it off. Luck, stellar safety engineering, and PlotArmor usually means that he and his passengers tend to survive without injury.

* {{Eccentric Mentor}}: Stendeval, who uses CrypticConversation, always believes in lateral thinking and emphasizes personal learning experiences and coming to one's own conclusions. FigureItOutYourself is his primary response to most of Jack's questions.
* {{Electronic Speech Impediment}}: Jack notices that Jazen has a tendency to twitch and stall in the middle of his actions. Jazen is ashamed and assures that he never glitches. [[spoiler: The "glitches" Jazen experiences are signals that he had contracted a Rüstov spyware virus and was broadcasting all the things he saw and heard right back to them without his knowledge]].
* {{Emancipated Child}}: Jack never gets officially "emancipated" in the text, but in ''The Secret War'', it's outright stated that he's been living alone and supporting himself for a year at the age of ''thirteen''. In ''The Accidental Hero'' he's in the care of Emissary Jazen Knight, but Jazen is not his official legal guardian; he's only acting as host to Jack while he settles in after immigrating to the Imagine Nation. It makes one wonder when the legal age is in the Imagine Nation, given that Skerren was adopted by Hovarth after the death of his parents and Allegra was claimed as a ward of the Valorian Guard.

* {{Homeless Hero}}/{{An Odd Place To Sleep}}: Lorem Ipsum's "home" is a bed within the staff barracks of an abandoned prison buried deep underground.

* {{Hyperspace Is A Scary Place}}: In ''End of Infinity'', Roka's spaceship is damaged in an escape from Rüstov space. Jack uses his technopathic powers to drive the ship through hyperspace ''manually'', noting that a split-second false step could end their journey very quickly.
* {{Identity Amnesia}}: [[spoiler: Solomon Roka was once Solomon Noteworthy, brother of Clarkston Noteworthy and black sheep of the Noteworthy family. He had fallen in love with the Secreteer Tabula Rasa, and this relationship was frowned upon so the other Secreteers made Roka forget who he was. But he never forgot about Rasa no matter how many times they tried]].
* {{Immune To Bullets}}: Smart's War Hawks fire many rounds to attack Jack, but his friends Jazen, Allegra and Blue manage to form a protective shield around him because the three of them can shrug them off.
* {{In The Hood}}: Jack tries this at the end of ''The Secret War'' after trying to obscure his identity with a baseball cap didn't go so well at the beginning of the book. No one bothers him when he wears the hoodie, but it's equally likely that it's because there are much more important conflicts going on that require attention than a local celebrity.
* {{Inept Aptitude Test}}: Jack is less than impressed when his result on the Potential Mapping Test telling him he's only suited to become a toilet brush cleaner. He even wonders if such a career exists because most people just throw old toilet brushes out.
* {{Instant Expert}}: Jack's technopathic powers allow him to simply talk to any machine about how to work it, and he can use it like a pro in seconds.

* {{Legendary In The Sequel}}: Jack starts out as a nobody [[HeroWithBadPublicity with bad publicity]], but in the second book he's a beloved celebrity. He becomes a much more polarizing figure in the third.

* {{No Paper Future}}: Smart Paper, HardLight sheets with all the functionality of a computer, have made paper obsolete. However, Stendeval still sends paper letters, and Jack keeps all his notes on mechanics inside paper notebooks. When his friend Trea calls him out on the inefficiency of using real paper when she has to leaf through every single page, Jack stands by his decision because he doesn't want to use any Smart products. He also wishes he could rip up Smart News when it displays slanders against him but since it's printed on a hologram it can only be deleted, not torn.
* {{No Waterproofing In The Future}}: Wading through a river causes all the inventions Jack packs in his bag to short out and become worthless.
* {{Not The Fall That Kills You}}: [[spoiler: Jazen falls off the top floor of Smart Tower at the end of the first book]].
* {{Obstructive Bureaucrat}}: The Imagine Nation's borders are not officially closed, but Jazen laments that so few new people arrive that they don't even staff the immigration line. By the time someone does come to assist Jack, he acts a lot like this.
* {{Older Than They Look}}: Stendeval is centuries old (see Really700YearsOld below), but looks like he's in the prime of his life.

* {{Outside Ride}}: To hitch onto Hypnova's airship without being noticed, Allegra grabs the side of the ship, forms into a pocket and has Jack and Skerren ride with her.

* {{Virus Misnomer}}: A Rüstov infection is regularly referred to as a "virus". It's actually a PuppeteerParasite that burrows inside a person and [[TheCorruption slowly transforms the host]] [[UnwillingRoboticisation into a walking pile of rusted scrap metal shaped like the host]] and isn't a virus at all. The only part that vaguely resembles a virus is that it manifests in the form of tiny nanites before the decay sets in.

** {{Ki Attacks}}: Many from Karateka.

* {{Absurdly Spacious Sewer}}: The drainage tunnels under Lowtown are sufficiently large enough to comfortably hold at least six people in one place. They're also lined with lead so X-rays can't penetrate them.
* {{Accidental Hero}}: It's the title of the first book, and an accurate description of what Jack did in the first chapter. He's considered a hero for beating Revile the Undying, when all he did was blow up a school generator when he panicked and Revile got caught in the blast. He didn't even know he was a technopath at the time.
* {{Achievement Test Of Destiny}}: Jonas Smart puts a lot of pride in his Total Personality Test, which has questions for everything and anything one could think of and lasts four hours long. He goes berserk when Jack takes the test and his test result is incomplete.
* {{The Alcatraz}}: Securimax prison in Lowtown (the nickname for the seedier underside of Hightown) is a prison that doesn't even have a single door leading in or out. Entry and exit is only allowed by using a phase resonance frequency code; you have to be wearing a machine that corresponds to this to allow you to phase through the wall. This code changes every minute.

* {{One Of Us}}: Both Jack and the author are this, both being lovers of comic books.

* [[ProjectedMan Projected Woman]]: Virtua is an AI stored within a BigLabyrinthineBuilding that serves as her data center, and she has an image caster named Projo who projects images of her avatar; an attractive woman.

* [[APupilOfMineUntilHeTurnedToEvil A Pupil of Mine Until She Turned to Evil]]: Midknight states that Lorem Ipsum was once a student of the School of Thought and worked alongside him until she had dropped out because her father wanted to take full control of her training. Lorem is not "evil", but she is introduced as an accessory to a crime and working against the heroes.

* {{Phoneaholic Teenager}}: When Lorem Ipsum first appears in ''The Secret War'', she's using her phone to text her friends rather than supporting the supercriminals she's tagging along with. The next time she's seen, she's using her phone as an MP3 player and could care less about what Jack's problems.
* {{Plot Mandated Friendship Failure}}: Jack loses the confidence of his friends Skerren and Allegra when he [[spoiler: lets Lorem Ipsum in on a secret plan and doesn't tell the others; Lorem was previously an enemy and Skerren and Allegra are his closest confidants. It gets worse when the plan backfires and Lorem betrays Jack anyway]]. Skerren [[WhatTheHellHero chews him out for doing this]]. Allegra is also mad enough that she tries to throw away the communicator watch Jack made for her, but hesitates.

The second book, ''The Secret War'', takes place a year after the first. Jack Blank has [[YouHave48Hours five days]] to develop a cure code before a looming Rüstov threat engulfs Empire City.

* {{You Gotta Have Blue Hair}}: Lorem Ipsum's hair is purple.
* {{You Have 48 Hours}}: The second book has rogue Secreteer Obscuro issue a warning that the Rüstov will attack and that Empire City will be doomed in exactly five days.

* {{Everyone Is A Super}}: Not necessarily ''everybody'' in the Imagine Nation, but all people who live there are considered extraordinary in at least one way, not necessarily due to being BadassNormal or {{Badass}} at all. That being said, a large portion of the population is super.

* {{Stop Helping Me}}: In-Universe example. On Jack's first trip into Machina, he is stopped by a holographic help agent named Shortcut more than once. He's already being guided by Jazen, and neither of them need Shortcut so they always decline. After the third declination, Shortcut gets offended and doesn't bother them again.

** {{Implausible Fencing Powers}}/{{Absurdly Sharp Blade}}: Skerren's dual-swords can cut through pretty much anything if he wants them to. But they can't cut if his heart isn't in cutting it.

* {{Moses In The Bullrushes}}: Allegra's origin story compares very closely to ''Franchise/{{Superman}}''. Her race usually fights to the death, but her mother chose to be taken captive because she was pregnant with Allegra at the time, and fought hard to ensure her baby daughter could get on a refugee ship away from Rüstov space. It was many years before Allegra finally arrived on Earth and was subsequently adopted by the remnants of the Valorian Guard.

* {{Authority Equals Asskicking}}: The Inner Circle is made up of Empire City's most famous and most powerful heroes.
** {{Asskicking Equals Authority}}: In most cases, this was likely the reason they were elected in the first place.

* {{Five Man Band}}: Among the Inner Circle:
** TheHero: Prime
** TheLancer: Chi
** TheBigGuy: Hovarth
** TheSmartGuy: Jonas Smart
** TheHeart: Virtua
** SixthRanger: Stendeval. Legend was technically the Seventh Ranger before his death.
* The School of Thought also works this way.
** TheHero: Jack.
** TheLancer: Skerren.
** TheHeart: Allegra.
** {{The Big Guy}}/{{The Smart Guy}}: Trea.
** {{Kid Appeal Character}}: Zhi, but he can stand on his own.
** {{Sixth Ranger}}/{{Dark Chick}}: Lorem Ipsum.

* {{Guilt Free Extermination War}}: Not entirely. While the Rüstov are declared unanimously as enemies by many alien species and the Rüstov themselves have declared war on all non-Rüstov races as stops in their intergalactic feast, Jack does feel some guilt fighting them because he knows around every Rüstov soldier is an innocent infected host body like himself.
* {{Hannibal Lecture}}: The Magus gives one of these addressed to all the people of the Imagine Nation, telling them to surrender because there is no use in wasting their lives fighting, so they should just devote them to a worthier cause as Rüstov hosts.
** {{Shut Up Hannibal}}: Jack responds in kind when the Magus reiterates his lecture a second time after they refused to listen the first time. He says that the Rüstov have thirty seconds to withdraw from Earth or he would come in rampaging and destroy them all.

* [[HauledBeforeASenateSubCommittee Hauled Before The Inner Circle]]: Jazen gets Smart to call a meeting of the Inner Circle as a delaying tactic to save Jack. Being infected by a Rüstov parasite means Jack technically has no rights and Smart was ready and willing to execute and dissect Jack right then and there, so Jazen suggests bringing Jack in to discuss his rights and fate.

* {{StableTimeLoop}}: Double-subverted. [[spoiler: Revile attempts to kill Jack as a child so Jack never gets the chance to become Revile. Going back in time to kill Jack the first time puts special attention on Jack so he was sent away and protected as he grew up. Revile's second attempt to kill Jack called more attention to the boy, which brought him back to the Imagine Nation and nominated for training in the School of Thought. Revile's last-ditch attempt to stop Jack from realizing his future is to stop the Rüstov from kidnapping him and taking him to Rüst for processing, but since [[RetGone Revile doesn't disappear]], he only believes that only delayed the future rather than preventing outright. Eventually, Jack does succumb to his Rüstov infection, but he doesn't stay Revile long enough to commit the millenia of atrocities Revile feels guilty for, and through the future Revile's help he actually manages to defeat the Rüstov and has his human body restored, effectively meaning the time loop was broken and somehow Revile exists even though he isn't chronologically supposed to]].

* {{You Cant Fight Fate}}: The Rüstov subscribe to the ideology that every battle in their infinite war is a form of manifest destiny: no matter how hard their targets fight, the Rüstov will always win, and they use this as a psychological tactic to demoralize opponents.

* {{Achievement Test Of Destiny}}: Jonas Smart puts a lot of pride in his Total Personality Test, which has questions for everything and anything one could think of and lasts four hours long. He goes beserk when Jack takes the test and his test result is incomplete.

* Jack's opposition in ''End of Infinity'' insist that he do this to prevent a BadFuture, and he'd be remembered honorably. Jack vehemently chooses to TakeAThirdOption if he can figure out how.

* {{LukeIMightBeYourFather}}: As a strategy to sow discord and gain points, Jonas Smart declares that Clarkston Noteworthy is Jack's father. Noteworthy proceeds to declare that while he did lose a son that would have been Jack's age during the first Rüstov invasion, he tells Jonas ThatThingIsNotMyChild. Jack decides that even if he doesn't know Smart's telling the truth or not, he refuses to think of Noteworthy as his father. [[spoiler: The truth is much more complicated. Noteworthy isn't Jack's father, but Jack's father's brother, meaning they are technically related by blood if not directly. Jack's actual father didn't even know that he was Noteworthy's brother or that he had a son]].

* {{Evil Eye}}/{{Eye Scream}}: The first sign of a Rüstov infection. A dark ring forms around the right eye coupled with a line down the cheek. Also qualifies as a RedRightHand. Many find it notable that while Jack tests positive for an infection, he doesn't show these signs at all.

Jack is an orphan raised in the most depressing, repressive orphanage on the New Jersey turnpike known as St. Barnaby's Home For The Hopeless, Abandoned, Forgotten and Lost. One of the few things that make his existence there bearable is his comic book collection, which he keeps a secret. One day, an aggressive Robo-Zombie from one of his comics rises up to kill him. Jack defeats this robot, only to find another strange visitor: an Emissary who will take him to a secret country that serves as a refuge for the extraordinary: the Imagine Nation. A love-letter to [[SuperHero superhero comics]] and high-impact action flicks, it may seem clichéd at a first glance, though it manages to have good humor and surprisingly well constructed plot twists.

Jack is an orphan raised in the most depressing, repressive orphanage on the New Jersey turnpike known as St. Barnaby's. One of the few things that make his existence there bearable is his comic book collection, which he keeps a secret. One day, an aggressive Robo-Zombie from one of his comics rises up to kill him. Jack defeats this robot, only to find another strange visitor: an Emissary who will take him to a secret country that serves as a refuge for the extraordinary: the Imagine Nation. A love-letter to [[SuperHero superhero comics]], it may seem clichéd at a first glance, though it manages to have good humor and surprisingly well constructed plot twists.