Holy Bookworms! Superheroes Take To The Page
by Glen Weldon
It's a bird! It's a plane! It's a ... book?
NPR.org, July 3, 2008 · Quake in fear, puny humans! Spandex-clad superbeings have engineered a mass escape. From big screens and billboards, to bus ads and even bookshelves: this summer, nowhere is safe from superheroes.
Avengers, Assemble! Thematically!
Who Can Save Us Now? Brand New Superheroes and Their Amazing (Short) Stories, edited by Owen King and John McNally, paperback, 320 pages
Superhero tropes turn up in every short story of this new anthology, but its 22 authors eschew the tidy duality of hero/villain to stake out moral territory where the lines between good guys and bad fade to obscurity. As a result, Who Will Save Us Now? is a surprisingly varied read, by turns funny, creepy, melancholic and joyous.
Editors Owen King and John McNally organize the collection around timeworn conventions — the origin story, the secret identity, etc. The strongest tales focus on supporting characters long denied an inner voice: the plucky girl reporter, the faithful butler, the sidekick — even the townsfolk who spend their days ducking the flying rubble of superbrawls. A standout, Will Clarke's "The Pentecostal Home for Flying Children," about a town under siege by the teenage offspring of an alien superhero, feels at once uncanny and utterly, hauntingly real.
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