The Superhero Literature thread

[C.T. Phipps]

I tend to like superhero novels which take the premise of superheroes as three-dimensional characters but still manage to embrace the concept of them being good people and the villains being the bad. I'm not a big fan of "Darker and Edgier" with superheroes being asshats who are possessed of a god complex or horrific Ellis-ian flaws. It's kind of what I did with Rules of Supervillainy in that I wanted to make a story which had some of the 90s antiheroes but deconstructed the idea that darker=better with a villain protagonist.

I admit, I do like things to be a LITTLE post-modern, so maybe Grant Morrison and I have at least one thing in common.

I think I like the idea when the heroes are familiar with comic books on some level. Sort of like why Walking Dead is the only zombie-related material I can stand where the heroes never saw a zombie movie.

If that makes sense.

I'm also not really a big fan of the "one origin to rule them all." Part of what I like about comic book universes like DC Comics, Marvel, and so on is that you have Iron Man in his science-gear and Thor in his magic gear and the Black Widow being a spy while Captain America is straight from an old serial. Wildcards is very good at examining its own premise but I always felt it was more a paper-thin homage to superheroes with rare exceptions being more about allegory for minorities and civil rights (much-much more so than the X-men).

I think it's why I loved Inside Straight as while I *HATE* reality television, it did a great deconstruction over what the media SAYS is a hero versus what they actually are.

So, kudos to the author.

[Calibandar]

I have Superpowers by David Schwartz, Soon I will be invincible by Grossman and Devil's Cape by Rob Rogers.
There was a phase a few years back when these books became more popular but I am surprised with how many recommendations there are for such books in this thread. It seems the subgenre has grown. I have seen Clines' Ex-Heroes books while browsing Amazon.

Did you guys know Grossman, after many years, has a new book out next month, called "Crooked"?

http://www.amazon.com/Crooked-Austin-Grossman/dp/031619851X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1434490031&sr=1-1&keywords=austin+grossman&pebp=1434490037672&perid=0NET0AMAXZF1X1QPWDEY

AWARD-WINNING NOVELIST AUSTIN GROSSMAN REIMAGINES THE COLD WAR AS AN EPIC BATTLE AGAINST THE OCCULT WAGED BY THE ULTIMATE AMERICAN ANTIHERO--RICHARD NIXON.

Richard Milhous Nixon lived one of the most improbable lives of the twentieth century. Our thirty-seventh president's political career spanned the button-down fifties, the Mad Men sixties, and the turbulent seventies. He faced down the Russians, the Chinese, and ultimately his own government. The man went from political mastermind to a national joke, sobbing in the Oval Office, leaving us with one burning question: how could he have lost it all?

Here for the first time is the tale told in his own words: the terrifying supernatural secret he stumbled upon as a young man, the truth behind the Cold War, and the truth behind the Watergate cover-up. What if our nation's worst president was actually a pivotal figure caught in a desperate struggle between ordinary life and horrors from another reality? What if the man we call our worst president was, in truth, our greatest?

In Crooked, Nixon finally reveals the secret history of modern American politics as only Austin Grossman could reimagine it. Combining Lovecraftian suspense, international intrigue, Russian honey traps, and a presidential marriage whose secrets and battles of attrition were their own heroic saga, Grossman's novel is a masterwork of alternative history, equal parts mesmerizing character study and nail-biting Faustian thriller.

[Lord of Rhinos]

You came out in 2013. Doesn't seem like it has been that long.

[C.T. Phipps]

I have Superpowers by David Schwartz, Soon I will be invincible by Grossman and Devil's Cape by Rob Rogers.

There was a phase a few years back when these books became more popular but I am surprised with how many recommendations there are for such books in this thread. It seems the subgenre has grown. I have seen Clines' Ex-Heroes books while browsing Amazon.

Did you guys know Grossman, after many years, has a new book out next month, called "Crooked"?

http://www.amazon.com/Crooked-Austin-Grossman/dp/031619851X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1434490031&sr=1-1&keywords=austin+grossman&pebp=1434490037672&perid=0NET0AMAXZF1X1QPWDEY

I think the rise of independent books has resulted in a paradigm shift to the fact smaller more daring sorts of subgenres are able to find their place nowadays. The idea of a zombie novel like World War Z was pretty daring at the time it came out and it had a pretty famous set of connections behind it. The idea of a book about superheroes versus zombies is a great deal more avante garde. However, with changes in technology and the ubiquitous nature of Amazon.com, it's now possible for people to write more or less any kind of story they want and find an audience for it if they have any talent.

We're no longer subject to the "Big Five" book companies and their tastes.

Of course, the niche nature of superheroes has been changing as well. Though, honestly, this has been going on since the 1960s. Batman and Superman were ridiculously successful movies for what people didn't think would go over well with adult audiences. You know, despite the fact that almost everyone alive had grown up with Superman and Batman as beloved childhood figures. However, movie culture has for the past three-and-a-half decades made it so almost everyone knows who these superheroes are as well as their tropes even if they've never picked up a comic book.

[john]

I don't think V.E. Schwab's Vicious has been mentioned. It's more supervillain fiction, since in her world if you get powers you also get a bit dark. Anyway, one of the supervillains is slightly more sympathetic than the other. The writings good, the plotting's fine. It's pretty entertaining.

[End of Disc One]

Funny I just noticed this thread, since I just started Ex-Heroes last night. It seems to have a lot of potential. One thing I'm impressed with is how easy it reads.

[Puppy Stark]

I've read Soon I Will Be Invincible. The style is kinda odd, but I still loved it so much. It's kind of like an Astro City story in prose. I like that there's a big nod to Narnia in it too. (I also love the trivia that the author is actually the twin brother of The Magician's Lev Grossman :P)

I have the brazilian edition of the first Wild Cards book, but I still haven't managed to finish it. In a book with so many authors, it's bound to have good and bad stories; I'd say I enjoyed about half of them, one or two are really superb, but it's been hard to struggle with the other half.

Also, do game books (Fighting Fantasy and such) count as "literature" here? I really love Appointment with FEAR, which is a superhero story also :P

[C.T. Phipps]

A lot has happened since my original post here, including the release of my own book, THE RULES OF SUPERVILLAINY. I've got to say, the fan response to it has been tremendous and I really love how much people seem to respond to it. I've got oodles of great feedback and sales have been phenomenal.

 

I do think SOON I WILL BE INVINCIBLE will remain the best and most famous of superhero prose for a long time coming, though. It set out so many genre tropes and is really an amazingly fun bit of fiction.

 

Poor Fatale and Doctor Impossible, though.

 

They're trapped in a world which is always running but never moving a step.

[MinDonner]

. (I also love the trivia that the author is actually the twin brother of The Magician's Lev Grossman :P)

Missed this, I didn't realise, that's great! Also missed the post about Austin G having a new book out, will def give that a go. Anyone else read it yet?

[farseer2]

 

* Wearing the Cape: One of my favorite examples of the series as it is bright and optimistic versus dark and depressing. Hope Corrigan a.k.a Astra has the "Flying Brick" set of superpowers chich allows her to become the most powerful one in the world overnight. She's actually interested in making the world a better place but gets the responsibility shoved on her a little TOO quickly.

 

 

I loved Wearing the Cape. Very good superhero storytelling and a lot of fun.

 

Other of my favorites in the genre is the "Renegade X" series, by Chelsea M. Campbell. Three books in the series so far. That one is a YA story, told in first person by a snarky teen who is the son of a famous supervillainess single mom and is supposed to become a supervillain himself (he hopes to enter the local supervillain university). However, he discovers a shameful family secret: his father is actually a superhero. The premise may sound a bit silly, but it's a lot of fun too.

[farseer2]

I do think SOON I WILL BE INVINCIBLE will remain the best and most famous of superhero prose for a long time coming, though. It set out so many genre trobes and is really an amazingly fun bit of fiction.

 

I haven't read that one yet, but after almost a century of superhero storytelling in comic form, does it really set out any new tropes?

[C.T. Phipps]

 

I haven't read that one yet, but after almost a century of superhero storytelling in comic form, does it really set out any new tropes?

 

Oh, it's very much the OPPOSITE of being new tropes. What Soon I will Be Invincible brings to the game is analyzing a lot of existing superhero tropes and incorporating them into literary form. I think it serves as a good template for how writers were able to get into the heads of superheroes and supervllains in a way which translates to prose form versus visual.

[MinDonner]

Only sort of on topic, but I read the new Austin Grossman book Crooked and it kind of sucked - ok, some of the writing was rather poignant like the Dr Impossible chapters in SIWBI!, but I really didn't buy the conceit of Cold War Involving Elder Gods, I don't know enough about the Nixon administration to understand all the references, and it seemed somewhat tacky and too-recent to be writing that sort of Abraham Lincoln Zombie Hunter story anyway, especially with all the commentary about the Nixon marriage and him being a spy for the Russians and whatnot. Not too impressed.

So, reread The Magicians straight after, cos still feeling a bit stoopid for not realising that the Grossman Brothers were actually brothers, despite noticing the similar Narnia themes in the two books (did it ever even occur to me that the authors had the same surname? Not even once!). Will prob have to reread SIWBI! now as well.

[Richard Writhen]

Not into superhero stuff anymore. I collected comics when I was younger tho.

 

 

 

 

 

Watchmen and Unbreakable were good tho ...

[polishgenius]

That was a totally worthwhile contribution to this thread. :P

[Richard Writhen]

Thank you. I aim to please ©

[RedEyedGhost]

Aim higher.

[Richard Writhen]

I will do that, kind sir. And respectfully ask that you do the same. ©

[C.T. Phipps]

Well, The Games of Supervillainy is coming out on October 30th and should continue Gary's adventures in a zombie-ridden Falconcrest City.

 

But, honestly, there's a lot of sequels being planned for superhero series I like about not many I've seen coming.

 

Wearing the Cape
Ex-Heroes
Confessions of a D-List supervillain

All of them have books in the pipeline I really wish I had NOW.

 

Don't you just hate that feeling?

*George R.R Martin types The Winds of Winter one letter at a time*

 

Nah, none of you know what it feels like.

 

Speaking of George, I'd like to state if anyone wants to read the [i]Wild Cards[/i] books, I recommend reading the new versions as they're really-really good and improvements over some of the originals which varied in quality tremendously. I do think, however, that they should have stuck with the cast from [i]Inside Straight[/i], though.

[MisterOJ]

I am perpetually interested in Wild Cards.

 

I read the first five or six books 20-plus years ago, but haven't read anything since. 

 

I've wanted to go back to the original series, but other than a handful of reprints of the books I already own, it seems like they're not really available - and not in ebook form, which is how I would want to read them.

 

The newer books are available as ebooks, though. So my question is: Can someone who has a general knowledge of the universe start with those? And if so, what is the best jumping on point?