Superhero Month: SHERO by Jack Wallen

SHERO by Jack Wallen is a fun, breezy yet still superheroic adventure with a very different kind of hero.

Shero, the hero(ine) of Wallen's story, is an intrepid crime fighter and member of the Society of Superheroes, doing it all and then some in fabulous couture and three inch heels.  Shero is dedicated to protecting the innocent and being an exemplary leader in the SSH...until it's all turned upside down and she doesn't know who she can trust or where to turn to.  Now instead of fighting crime and keeping the citizenry safe from VILE, the group of supervillains at odds with the SSH, Shero must clear her name and figure out who in the Society has it in for her and why.

Wallen has done an admirable job of creating a colorful, over-the-top comedic take on the superhero genre and seasoned it with the tropes one would find in more traditional  adventures.  Shero is not your ordinary crime fighter; she is a transgendered superhero top to bottom and embraces herself totally and is also accepted by society.  From her custom made, Kevlar coated black dresses to her poisonous fingernail polish, there is no shame in her game!  And her compatriots are just as colorful, with their code names and awesome super powers.  There are leagues for both the heroes and villains in this story, double crosses and secret histories.  Clearly,Wallen has read more than a few comics in his day, and has turned out a new adventure here with a very clever twist.

I really appreciated that Wallen was able to try his hand at telling a superhero story, especially with a protagonist such as Shero, and keep it fun and light.  Just because there are gay characters in a story, too often  it seems that the story will wind up in the gutter, with said characters winding up in the sheets.  Wallen never takes it there and decides instead to titillate his readers, even in the scenes that involve the sensual temptress, Mephistopheles.

In fact it's with the scenes between Mephistopheles and Shero that I had a small issue with.  It's stated that she is irresistible and she and Shero do have a past from years before but I felt that with a protagonist that is unapologetically transgendered, would this be the lover that Shero would really be with?  Ultimately though, this is a superhero story, and I didn't think twice about it as the story rushed to it's climax.  Wallen leaves the door wide open for a sequel (do I smell franchise?) and I'd be more than happy to see what shenanigans Shero will get into next.

This is NOT your classic superhero adventure but something different.  Shero is a different kind of superhero indeed but still embodies what makes a person a superhero in the first place; she is honorable, forthright and true.  And most importantly, true to herself.  Pick up your copy here and you will enjoy Shero's adventures as much as I did.

Happy reading!

Superhero Month: BEAT TO A PULP: SUPERHERO edited by David Cranmer, Scott D Parker

This was my first foray into the BEAT TO A PULP (BTAP) series, edited by David Cranmer.  He initially created the BTAP e-zine as a way to present well written stories that recalled the old traditional pulp adventures and now there is also a series of books that compile even more of these same great stories.  I came across the series while exploring more pulp and noir reading, after finishing 8 Pounds by Chris Holm and I'm very glad I took the chance and got myself a copy of Beat to a Pulp: Superhero.

This volume, edited by Cranmer and Scott D.Parker doesn't just deal with the traditional "superhero"; as a matter of fact, most of the stories deal with ordinary people rising to the occasion and doing heroic things.  So while not exactly what I was expecting, given the title, the excellence of the stories was very much what I      was expecting and I found myself enjoying this anthology very much.

There are thirteen tales in this volume; I will highlight my favorites:

The collection kicks off with a firecracker of an introduction by Parker that really sets up the tone and theme of the book; you can also read it here as a teaser!

Jake Hinkson's The Long Drop places superheroes squarely inside the New York City police department.  Cooper, a NYPD officer, wakes up in a hotel room, with no memory of how he got there or why there is a severed head in the shower.  Hinson introduces a gritty, alternate reality that I'd like to see him explore further, where people with super powers have been accepted in society and builds the tension nicely as Cooper tries to unravel the mystery of who has set him up and why...

The Revenge of the Red Avenger called to mind the innocent kids from Stand By Me and The Sandlot; Billy and Carole are just a young boy and girl who are best friends and share a love of comic books.  They decide to become heroes, like the ones in  their comics, so they can find and fight crime in their neighborhood. Kevin Burton Smith packs an emotional wallop with this story, turning a tale of carefree innocence into one of tragedy with a powerful climax.

The femme fatale of the group, Sandra Seamans, also presents an emotional story with Moon Mad.  Molly hides from the moon at night, safely amongst the nooks and crannies of the city, because the moon brings her bad "dreams".  Then one night, Molly's memories won't be denied and she has to relive a terrible past in order to save a group of innocent girls.  Seamans made me care very much about Molly and while I guessed the ending, it was no less sad for me when the story was over.

Benoit Lelievre gives us Doberman: Third Party Law Enforcement and introduces us to a mercenary called upon by a politician to save his twin sons from a madman.  The story is just the right amount of violent and the protagonist reminded me of in some ways of Frank Castle, the Punisher.  Lelievre writes a dark story and I hope he chronicles more of the Doberman's adventures.

And finally, to round out my list of favorites, is Chad Eagleton's Somewhere Beyond the Pavement.  It is another tale of young kids finding themselves in dire circumstances and having to find the inner strength to fight.  To live.  The way Eagleton writes the story, switching from the children, to their father, to the villains and back again really creates a thrilling edge-of-your-seat story and a made it my favorite entry in the collection.

I enjoyed this collection very much and will definitely be seeking out more from the BTAP series, as well as other works from the individual authors.  It is a great collection, and each story is was highly readable; there wasn't a clunker in the bunch.  You can get Beat To A Pulp: Superhero here and when you do, plan on reading this action packed volume in just one sitting, it's that good!

Happy reading!

Superhero Month: Miscellany

Just cruising around the internet, looking for interesting views of superheroes; whether they're original, reboots or mash-ups, I thought these were pretty cool!

I came across Aaron Diaz and his blog via the ever informative io9.com.  Here is a peek of his reimagined Justice League, Legion of Doom and Batman; you can see them all here:

I also came across another blog by artist Denis Medri via Twitter; the blog is in Italian but his artwork is wonderful and needs no translation.  He has remade the cast of STAR WARS as 80s high school students and Marvel and DC heroes/villains in 70s, Western and Steampunk styles!!!  Please see more of his work here:

                                                         C3-P0 and R2-D2 as The Nerds

                       As 80s high school students: Han Solo, Chewbaca and the Millenium Falcon

                                                             A 70s inspired Punisher...

                                               A truly wicked looking steampunk Venom...

                                                                and a Western Batman

As I've said before, I'm a big fan of reinventions of such iconic characters and found myself wishing to know the stories that would accompany these images!  These are all so great and there are thousands of words here just waiting to be told!  Until they are, I shall keep perusing the web for even more great superhero art...

Happy Reading!

Superhero Month: The Art of Hector Barros

I came across this tumblr blog quite by accident and was glad to see some very cool, very interesting superhero amalgams on it.  Hector Barros asks his Facebook followers to come up with interesting pairings of DC and Marvel characters and he creates awesome pics like these:

To check out more of Hector's work or even be one of the lucky ones to get their amalgam idea made into art like this, check out his Facebook page here.

Superhero Month: SEVEN WONDERS by Adam Christopher

Adam Christopher exploded onto the scene with his debut novel Empire State, and  he is poised to make even more noise with his sophomore effort, Seven Wonders.  Seven Wonders is a big budget summer blockbuster action packed superhero movie, all of it brilliantly captured in novel form and with enough plot twists, secret identities and double crosses to satisfy even the most jaded of comic book aficionados.


Christopher sets his story in the "Shining City" of San Ventura, home to the last superhero team on earth, the Seven Wonders, who protect San Ventura and its citizens from the machinations of the last supervillian, the mysterious Cowl.  The Cowl is a criminal mastermind, with multiple powers at his disposal, and along with his sidekick Blackbird, he keeps the Seven Wonders on their toes.  We also meet Tony Prosdocimi, an average Joe who wakes up one morning to discover he himself has started to develop super powers. Christopher tells his tale through the POV of all these characters, and it moves the action along at a fast clip while illustrating the growth and changes each character goes through by the story's big climax.

Seven Wonders  greatly benefits from Christopher's knowledge of comic books; each chapter is as colorful and action packed as the panels would be if he were a comic book scribe.  The writing is concise, the pace is furious, and many of the chapters end with cliffhangers, compelling the reader to plow right along, unable to put the book down.  And the scope of the story gets bigger, keeping the reader engaged as the threat to San Ventura escalates to to a world wide call to arms to earth's other heroes, defunct and retired individuals still ready to band together and help the Seven Wonders protect the planet.

Adam Christopher has written a big love letter to the Golden and Silver Ages of comics with Seven Wonders.  His affection for the medium is evident, and he's taken that tried and true template and created something new that celebrates all the classic comic book tropes while also being a new and exciting entrant in the superhero genre.  It is truly just as exciting and daring as the other superhero blockbusters that preceded it this summer; it has the edge of your seat action of The Avengers, plus the chilling mystery of The Dark Knight Rises.

I firmly believe that Christopher has written the standard against which other superhero novels will be held  and is himself now coming into his own super-author powers.  Seven Wonders is a big, colorful joy to read and it shows that it was also a joy to write.  The author's love for the genre is stamped on each page and he has even left room for a sequel (or better yet, sequels!) as any good superhero adventurer should.  YES, believe all the hype, run to your favorite bookstore or click your favorite link and buy this book!  (Better yet, let me help!  BAM!  KA-POW!)  It just may be the most fun you're going to have this summer!

Superhero Month: Interview with ADAM CHRISTOPHER

If you read this blog enough, you will remember that I am a big Adam Christopher "fanboy".  His Twitter feed is both informative and entertaining and the wells of his knowledge of comic books/superheroes run deep.  And on top of all this, he is a brilliant writer!  His steampunk novella The Devil In Chains is a dark, Victorian-esque adventure and his debut novel Empire State was one of my favorite reads of 2011 (read review here).

Now today, he and Angry Robot are unleashing Seven Wonders upon the world, a big budget summer blockbuster movie in book form!  It is an action packed read and to help celebrate its release, Adam has kindly agreed to answer a few questions about the book, share the origin of his love of comics and give us a glimpse of what's in store for him in the future!


#1) Today is the release day of your second novel SEVEN WONDERS, an action packed superhero adventure; congratulations!  Where did your inspiration come from for the book?  How far back does your affection for comics and superheroes go?

Adam Christopher: Seven Wonders came from an idea that I'd been kicking around for ages, ever since I'd really started to get into superhero comics.  This idea forms the central concept of the book-although I can't reveal what it is, as it's a little spoilerific!  That tends to be how I write-I have an idea, maybe just a single concept or sometimes a cool scene, one that bounces around in my head for quite a while before it feels like it's ready to be written.

But certainly Seven Wonders was inspired by my love of superhero comics.  Oddly enough, I never read comics as a kid and only started when I was about 25!  I did have an issue of Batman, an issue of Iron Man, and one of those Marvel character encyclopedia things that my dad bought me from a corner store en route to our regular Christmas vacation, sometime in the mid-1980s, and I remember being more interested in the encyclopedia-which was more text based, with biographies and statistics for all these wonderful and weird characters-than in the comics.

About ten years later, a friend of mine in high school was a big fan of 2000AD, and he used to read them at the back of the class, under his desk.  I remember enjoying the issues he loaned me at lunchtimes, but then time passed and I guess our interests moved on.  Around 2003 I was in a bookstore and saw the latest issue of 2000AD, and on a whim decided to pick it up.  It was every bit as good as I remembered, so I quickly subscribed.  After reading it for about a year, I ventured into my local bookstore, spurred on by the memories of those Batman and Iron Man comics I used to have, and grabbed a few random issues across both the Marvel and DC universes.  And I was hooked-even more so than with 2000AD, there was something about superheroes that really attracted me, like someone flicking a switch in my head.  And I've been reading ever since-probably more DC than Marvel, but superhero comics in general are my favorite form of literature.

#2) For me, both SEVEN WONDERS and EMPIRE STATE are very visual books; they're written in such a way that I couldn't help but picture all the action happening right in front of me, on my mind's IMAX screen!  Do you storyboard or sketch out scenes or characters as you're writing?

AC: Only in my head-I'm somewhere between a full outliner and a "pantster", working to a skeleton that is more like a list of events and scenes that need to happen from beginning to end.  I find that my characters tend to take on a life of their own (when things are going well anyway!) and do unexpected things, so trying to stick to a rigid outline doesn't work for me.  Likewise I don't spend too much time constructing character backstories or biographies, unless it is relevant to the story.

However, now that I think about it, I tend to visualise things with a comic book sort of structure in my head.  When I was writing, I tested some early chapters with an SF writers' group in Manchester, and I was surprised (pleasantly so!) when a couple of them said that the book felt like a graphic novel in prose form, saying that it was very easy to visualise the action, like reading a comic.  So it seemed that I was doing something right, even if it wasn't intentional-I was just trying to write the book as I saw it unfold in my mind!

The visual aspect of the story is even more important for something like Seven Wonders, because it's a superhero story (much more so than Empire State), and superheroes began in comics and are hugely successful as Hollywood blockbusters-both visual forms of storytelling.  Translating that aspect into successful prose is vital.

#3) Back in 2010 for io9.com, you wrote an article called "Superhero Fiction: The Next Big Thing?" that suggested signs were pointing to superhero fiction making a resurgence.  It's almost two years later; where do you think the genre is now?

AC: I think superhero fiction, like most trends, comes and goes, but at the moment I think we're entering a new resurgence of the genre.  There have been a stack of recent books-novels like Prepare To Die! by Paul Tobin and Turbulence by Samit Basu-so Seven Wonders has come along at a good time.  I hope there will be more, too because superheroes are really more popular than ever, thanks mostly to Hollywood.

#4)  For all the other Adam Christopher fanboys out there: what's next for you?  I'm personally very excited about HANG WIRE, which is set in my dream hometown of San Francisco and of course, the sequel to EMPIRE STATE, THE AGE ATOMIC...what else is coming down the pipeline?

AC: I'm almost done with the first draft of The Age Atomic, which is a lot of fun and has also turned into something of a monster-150,000 words and still going!  But that'll come down in the rewrite, I'm sure.  That's out in May 2013 and then Hang Wire is out a year later.  I'm looking forward to Hang Wire, which for once doesn't have any superheroes in it, being more of an urban fantasy with ancient gods and hidden powers (and sentient circuses) although it's a long way off!

Also in 2014, my first novel from Tor is coming out.  It's a dark space opera called Shadow's Call, and is set on a distant space station, bathed in toxic radiation from a nearby star, where a washed up Fleet commander must battle a sentient mechanical spider race and its sinister allies with the help of a long-dead Cosmonaut and a sexy but troubled asteroid miner.  I have my agent to thank for the blurb-I'm tempted to ask Tor if they'll make a "sexy but troubled" line of t-shirts as promotional merchandise!  Shadow's Call is a little different-it's more obviously science fiction, although it still has a lot of weirdness in it.  It's basically a ghost story set in space, set on a haunted space station-MR James writes 2001: A Space Oddyssey, maybe!

I've got a couple of other things in the pipeline, including my first foray into another medium.  But you'll have to wait until later in the year before I'm allowed to talk about that!

And finally, #5) Who are your dream director/dream stars of the SEVEN WONDERS blockbuster movie?!  :)

AC: Actually, Seven Wonders would be really interesting as a big budget superhero movie, because I can't think of many that are not based on existing superhero properties from Marvel or DC!  For director, I think that Joss Whedon has shown with The Avengers that he can handle an ensemble superteam with flair-that film is what I hope Seven Wonders is as well, in novel form.

Casting is tricky, as there are a lot of characters.  When I write, I tend to cast actors in the parts, so I can't help but see them as the characters now-Detective Sam Millar is Emily Rose, Joe Milano a cross between Idris Alba and Jon Huertas.  Tony has to be Milo Ventimiglia and maybe Liv Tyler as Jeannie.

For the Seven Wonders themselves-tricky!  Henry Czerny as Aurora, Erica Durance as Bluebell, Malcom-Jamal Warner as Linear (aged up!), Brian Blessed as Hephaestus, Christa B. Allen as The Dragon Star, Patricia Velasquez as Sand Cat.  SMART is difficult, seeing as it's a big honking robot...but perhaps Kevin Conroy could do the voice!

The Cowl, oddly enough, I see working well with Nathan Fillion in the role.

Hey, you said I could dream, right? 

Thank you so much, Adam for talking with me and I just know SEVEN WONDERS is going to enjoy great success!