I guess you can call me somewhat intellectually lazy as I haven’t read a book without word balloons in at least a year. The last book book I read was Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I don’t even remember what I read before that. So it was with great personal surprise that I happened upon a book that so entirely engrossed me that I finished it in less than a week.
Edited by Owen King and John McNally, Who Can Save Us Now: Brand-New Superheros and Their Amazing (Short) Stories is an anthology of twenty-two stories that examine the superhero mythos from a modern perspective. Some of the heroes are recognizable to us comic fans like the super powered Big Guy or the urban crime fighting Avenger. Others have abilities we’ve never seen in comics like the man who has never had to use the bathroom in his entire life or the woman who gets emails from her dead ex-boyfriend.
My favorite stories are the ones featuring people with unusual or seemingly useless abilities. These are the types of stories that rarely make it to the comic page or movie screen but prove to be just as compelling. The book is divided into five sections. The Most Unlikely Beginnings features origin stories. The Beast Within has stories superheroes that are more than human. A Shadowy Figure collects stories of the unintended and sometimes dark consequences of super powers. Behind the Mask focuses on the personal stories of superheroes. And Super Ordinary relates stories of seemingly ordinary people with less than extraordinary abilities.
I enjoyed all of them quite a bit but I tried to pick out my favorite from each section. Here goes.
- Sam Weller’s The Quick Stop 5 tells the tale of a hapless crew of gas station convenience store workers who gain super powers from the items they hold in their hands when they inhale biodiesel fumes from a tanker spill.
- In Will Clarke’s The Pentecostal Home for Flying Children, the elderly Pauline Pritchard opens her home to orphaned flying babies, orphaned offspring of the alien Redbird and most of the local young women in town.
- Scott Snyder’s The Thirteenth Egg relates the sad tale of Everett’s return home from World War II forever scarred with dark markings that seem to burn uncontrollably when he gets emotional.
- The Sisters of St. Misery by Lauren Gorodstein features Marie a who cannot speak but has an uncanny understanding of every human language ever created.
- Bad Karma Girl Wins at Bingo by Kelly Braffet is about Cassie who brings good luck to those around her only to have bad luck herself.
Chris Burnham’s chapter illustrations are beautiful. And though his work is new to me, he’s done comic work for Marvel, Dark Horse, Moonstone, and Image. Going to have to look him up next time I’m at the shop.
I highly recommend Who Can Save Us Now for all you comic book and sci fi geeks out there. The collected stories give us quirky and alternative looks at what it means to be a superhero and what superheroes mean to us regular humans. You can head over to the website to read the winning entry in their online competition for user submitted stories. You can also purchase the book online or probably find it in the local mega book pavilion of commerce.
[Via Who Can Save Us Now]
Share This
Add AZM to your Facebook
Follow AZM on Twitter
