superhero books without pictures

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acknowledged: the fortress of solitude, the amazing adventures of kavalier and clay
unacklowledged: midnight's children

other suggestions?

― tom west (thomp), Sunday, 23 May 2004 22:00 (twenty-one years ago)

(i thiiink i'm not counting outright fantasy or science fiction in my head, but go ahead if you think there are titles of particular importance)

― tom west (thomp), Sunday, 23 May 2004 22:01 (twenty-one years ago)

(and no, i'm not sure if there's any point to this or not)

― tom west (thomp), Sunday, 23 May 2004 22:02 (twenty-one years ago)

Superfolk, although I haven't read it. There's supposed to be -- or there has been recently -- a reprinting of it, but I'm not sure by whom. But every time it comes up, it's praised.

The Wild Cards series probably counts as outright science fiction.

Truth, Justice, And... is an anthology with a short story by Yrs Truly as well as others by plenty of other people.

I'll probably think of a bunch more as soon as I hit submit, although it's a surprisingly slim genre.

― Tep (ktepi), Sunday, 23 May 2004 22:15 (twenty-one years ago)

wild cards is very... unabashed.

i'm not sure kavalier and clay counts now that i actually think about it.

― tom west (thomp), Monday, 24 May 2004 01:23 (twenty-one years ago)

Yar, Super-Folks is pretty good; after reading it, you'll wind up seeing all of Alan Moore's superhero stories in a new light.

Byron Preiss's Weird Heroes anthologies are some other pretty good "superhero" books that have seen a recent reprinting.

Some of the Wild Cards stories count as superhero stories, I'd think, like Walter Jon Williams's stories featuring his Black Shadow character.

And Cory Doctorow had an amusing short story featuring Superman in his recently published anthology of short works...

― Chris F. (servoret), Monday, 24 May 2004 08:56 (twenty-one years ago)

there are Batman and X-Men novels out there, aren't there?

― DV (dirtyvicar), Monday, 24 May 2004 11:23 (twenty-one years ago)

they don't count

― tom west (thomp), Monday, 24 May 2004 12:45 (twenty-one years ago)

Gunter Grass - Tin Drum (and Dog Years a little bit, too).

― blahblah (kidcatachresis), Monday, 24 May 2004 21:24 (twenty-one years ago)

(er, i guess they fall under the 'unofficially acknowledge' rubric.)

― blahblah (kidcatachresis), Monday, 24 May 2004 21:27 (twenty-one years ago)

Amis's 'Money'

― tom west (thomp), Monday, 24 May 2004 22:47 (twenty-one years ago)

(protagonist has v useless power of composing bad middlebrow fiction inside head)

― tom west (thomp), Monday, 24 May 2004 22:48 (twenty-one years ago)

And Cory Doctorow had an amusing short story featuring Superman in his recently published anthology of short works...

...which you can download from his website here.

rec.arts.comics.creative has quite a bit of superhero fiction, too, even though it gets very few posts nowadays.

― Christine 'Green Leafy Dragon' Indigo (cindigo), Tuesday, 25 May 2004 02:13 (twenty-one years ago)

Is Fortress of Solitude any good?

Also, the Count of Monte Cristo is way more Batman than Zorro ever was.

― The Huckle-Buck (Horace Mann), Tuesday, 25 May 2004 13:52 (twenty-one years ago)

Fortess of Solitude = 70s version of The Age of Innocence = great

i thought there might be a fair few movies that fit but all i can think of is unbreakable, so possibly not

― tom west (thomp), Tuesday, 25 May 2004 15:14 (twenty-one years ago)

The Iliad.

― Jocelyn (Jocelyn), Tuesday, 25 May 2004 15:55 (twenty-one years ago)

troy also?

the lord of the rings movie perhaps made superheroes out of aragorn, gandalf, etc

― tom west (thomp), Tuesday, 25 May 2004 16:08 (twenty-one years ago)

isn't Beowulf a superhero story?

― DV (dirtyvicar), Tuesday, 25 May 2004 16:11 (twenty-one years ago)

now this is just getting silly.

― tom west (thomp), Tuesday, 25 May 2004 16:26 (twenty-one years ago)

I was thinking over lunch that the Iliad actually does not fit tom's original question, because Iliad/Beowulf/Arthur etc. stories are really ancestors of comics and mold our version of the "hero." So I was thinking too retroactively. I think.

― Jocelyn (Jocelyn), Tuesday, 25 May 2004 17:07 (twenty-one years ago)

yeah: I think I've seen a couple essays which make the link from myth-heroes to super-heroes in a kind of boring and legitemising way: so I'm mostly concerned with what I'm calling "unacknowledged", although Midnight's Children remains the only one I can really think of that actually fits: stories which aren't thought of as superhero stories that prooooobably can't exist without the notion already being there

― tom west (thomp), Tuesday, 25 May 2004 17:55 (twenty-one years ago)

my syntax is really going down the shitter lately.

I finished Midnight's Children today and it's totally the third or fourth best superhero story I've ever read -

― tom west (thomp), Tuesday, 25 May 2004 17:56 (twenty-one years ago)

I don't know Midnight's Children, so I'm going to mention Unbreakable.

― The Huckle-Buck (Horace Mann), Tuesday, 25 May 2004 17:57 (twenty-one years ago)

I've never thought about Midnight's Children that way, but it's so OTM.

― Jocelyn (Jocelyn), Tuesday, 25 May 2004 20:15 (twenty-one years ago)

I can't believe ILC is making me want to read a novel again.

― Leee's a Simpson (Leee), Tuesday, 25 May 2004 20:39 (twenty-one years ago)

(i thiiink i'm not counting outright fantasy or science fiction in my head, but go ahead if you think there are titles of particular importance)

is there any way in which a book with superheroes or superhero equivalents could not be a work of fantasy or science fiction?

― DV (dirtyvicar), Wednesday, 26 May 2004 16:23 (twenty-one years ago)

But would it be marketed as genre fiction, I think is the key factor here.

― The Huckle-Buck (Horace Mann), Wednesday, 26 May 2004 16:51 (twenty-one years ago)

I can't believe ILC is making me want to read a novel again.

You should try it Lee, not reading comics is the new hip thing.

― Jordan (Jordan), Wednesday, 26 May 2004 17:02 (twenty-one years ago)

i don't know about whether they could be non-fantasy etc but i'm not letting it bother me.

one fantasy thing i thought about is zelazny's 'nine princes in amber', in which there is a sort of proto-wolverine but in slow motion scene of the main character waiting in a darkened room for his eyes to grow back. for three years.

― tom west (thomp), Wednesday, 26 May 2004 17:04 (twenty-one years ago)

Leeee, don't listen to Jordan - reading books will be passe come mid-June. Just hold out.

― David R. (popshots75`), Wednesday, 26 May 2004 17:56 (twenty-one years ago)

But would it be marketed as genre fiction, I think is the key factor here.

I'm not interested in how books are marketed.

― DV (dirtyvicar), Wednesday, 26 May 2004 18:30 (twenty-one years ago)

That's all genre really is, though, a shelf on a bookstore.

― Tep (ktepi), Wednesday, 26 May 2004 18:31 (twenty-one years ago)

By the self-definitions of the respective areas, though, most superhero stories are neither fantasy nor science fiction -- fantasy's is hazier, but comes down to "magic and/or epic," really (for one reason or another, superhero stories are rarely epic); science fiction needs science to be involved, made-up or otherwise, and "yellow sun make Kal-El strong" is no more science than "the Force is strong in this one" is.

(Even the self-definitions are marketing designations, in that they come up and are discussed in order to determine who is eligible for awards.)

― Tep (ktepi), Wednesday, 26 May 2004 18:38 (twenty-one years ago)

It's a stretch, but Nicholson Baker's The Fermata deals with a guy with the ability to pause time. He doesn't use the ability for heroics, though -- mostly to secretly undress women and to write erotic stories.

― Josh Davis (josh_anomaly), Wednesday, 26 May 2004 19:17 (twenty-one years ago)

that's exactly what i'm looking for!

― tom west (thomp), Wednesday, 26 May 2004 19:33 (twenty-one years ago)

It even has, essentially, the secret identity element that I considered so key to the definition of a superhero story, when this was my academic bread and butter. (It isn't that I disagree now so much as that I don't care.) There isn't a dual identity, but Baker's protagonist does what he does without people knowing it, and he even has the revealing-one's-secret-to-one's-SO scene. (As well as pseudomagical trigger to activate powers, a la "no evil shall escape my shazam, beware Cei-U's 3X2(9YZ)4A.")

― Tep (ktepi), Wednesday, 26 May 2004 19:40 (twenty-one years ago)

Tep, did you just quote the Speed Formula?!?!?

― David R. (popshots75`), Wednesday, 26 May 2004 20:20 (twenty-one years ago)

Yeah, but I had to google it :)

(I am now typing at the speed of sound.)

― Tep (ktepi), Wednesday, 26 May 2004 20:23 (twenty-one years ago)

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