Indy Comics Writer

If you like superhero comics, the odds are good you’ll like superhero fiction, too.

Superhero fiction has been around for a while. But it’s not been all that well-publicized. Here’s hoping Who Can Save us Now?, an anthology of 22 prose stories featuring a variety of new superheroes. Published by Free Press, the anthology features some amazing writers, including Elizabeth Crane, John McNally, Kelly Braffet and Richard Dooling. You can read more about the anthology here.

I’m a fan of the kind of superhero fiction presented in the book. This type of fiction looks at superheroes in a new way, giving them problems and challenges typical of any citizen of the world, super-powered or not.

If you’d like a taste of superhero fiction, visit A Thousand Faces, an online — and print — publication publishing reams of superhero fiction. A Thousand Faces is the creation of Frank Byrns, a writer himself who specializes in superhero fiction. There are plenty of stories to chose from at the site, considering that Byrns is already on his fifth issue of his creation. That’s pretty good for a genre that’s still pretty much in the fledgling stage.

And here’s some shameless self-promotion, if you search the archives at A Thousand Faces, you’ll find that Byrns has printed two of my prose stories, “Halloween in Hero Town” and “Darkness at the Edge of Town.”

Writing superhero fiction is a nice break from scripting comic stories. It’s also a good way to simply write, without having to worry about the “stage directions” you have to give artists as a comics writer.

So check out Frank’s site, and Who Can Save Us Now?, and let’s hope we see the genre of superhero fiction continue its growth spurt.

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