Superheroes for the 21st Century

by Edward Carey

September 2008

McNally Jackson in New York City hosted a book release and signing of “Who Can
Save Us Now?,” an anthology of short stories updating the superhero mythos for the 21st
century, edited by Owen King and John McNally and published by Free Press, a division
of Simon and Schuster.

Editors King and McNally were accompanied by three of

the authors to read excerpts from their stories and sign
books on August 20. The book includes original short
stories by a variety of authors, including Laura Grodstein,
Scott Snyder, and Kelly Braffet, who were in attendance,
as well as Graham Joyce, mystery writer Sean Doolittle
and Sam Weller [“The Bradbury Chronicles”]. It also
features lush illustrations by Chris Burnham, who has
done artwork for superhero comics [“X-Men: Divided We
Stand #2”].

The reading/signing was organized by events coordinator

Jessica Stockton Bagnulo, who introduced the two editors,
both of whom wrote stories which appear in the
anthology. King came up with an idea for writing a story
about a meerkat superhero while at the gym, influenced by
the television show “Meerkat Manor.”

“Let me tell you a little about the origin of this anthology . . . ‘Meerkat Manor’ is an
amazing show about the travails of this desert mongoose family in the deserts of
Zimbabwe and it occurred to me that the most precious superhero I could think of was
one based on a meerkat, because he would be so adorable and no one would take him
seriously; even though if you watch the show, you see that meerkats kick an enormous
amount of ass and they have claws and teeth, it’s actually pretty cool. As I thought about
the idea a little bit more, and I only thought about it to make my wife Kelly laugh, I
thought maybe there was something here, but I couldn’t think of a venue for a superhero
story like that, so it wasn’t really a comic book. It would be really cool if we could make
a book, so I could write my story, and I asked my friend John [McNally] if he thought
there was something there and if we could ask a bunch of writers who wouldn’t normally
associate with the genre to write stories and do something with the superhero premise,”
said King.

McNally read from his story first, “Remains of the Night,” about a butler who works for a
superhero called The Silverfish. The story centers on the butler’s off hours, hanging out
with other superhero and even supervillain servants, mostly complaining about how their
jobs suck.

(excerpt from “Remains of the Night”)

“He looks more like the villain than the good guy,” a famous talk show
host has noted, and it’s true, if only because his suit is too lifelike. I
tried telling him this once, suggesting that maybe a skintight bodysuit
with the image of a silverfish embroidered on it might be the way to go,
but he wouldn’t have any of it.
“I’m not a poseur,” he replied. “When I’m the Silverfish, that’s what
I am.”
I tried explaining to him that real silverfish, the small ones, are
known to cause psychological distress, so just imagine what people
think when they see a 250-pound one barreling toward them!
“Is that my problem?” he asked. “And what do you mean by real?”
He wagged his head and glided out of the room.
I have seen the Silverfish out of costume only a handful of times.
He’s a normal-looking fellow, unassuming, even slight of build, but
make no mistake, he’s still the Silverfish. In costume or out, he eats
glue, paper, sugar, hair, dandruff, and dirt – anything with starch in it, “In Cretaceous Seas”
anything with polysaccharides. I’d walk into his library and see him art by Chris Burnham
with a book cracked open, licking the adhesive holding the pages
together.

The excerpts that the authors read were much longer. Following McNally’s reading, King
read from his story simply entitled “The Meerkat.”

(excerpt from “The Meerkat”)

After Wade Hanes registered himself with the proper authorities, sworn an oath to use his powers
for good and to protect the innocent, submitted to a battery of drawings, measurements, and
intrusive questions, the Homeland Security official who was to act as his liaison, an elderly,
choleric woman named Doris Krimsky, took him to a steakhouse called Shuster’s on K Street . . .
When she sat forward again Doris caught the expression on the other side of the table. “Don’t
worry. They know all about our kind here. You can order whatever you want. Friskies or
whatever.”
“I’m not a cat, I’m a herpestid,” said Wade, and immediately wished that he hadn’t.
“That doesn’t impress me,” said Doris. She snapped her fingers for another gimlet. “And get
Morris here some tuna!”
Over lunch she explained that the superhero business was a lot like newscasting. You worked
your way up through bigger and bigger markets. “You pay your dues for a year or two in
Cleveland, and then you move on to Tampa. After that, Chicago, and after that, if you’re lucky,
you could be called up to the Atom League and get national exposure.”
“That doesn’t concern me really. I like it in Cleveland. I mean, it’s Cleveland – the river caught
on fire once – but you know.” Wade shrugged. “It’s home.”

Kelly Braffet approached the mic to read from her short story, “Bad Karma Girl Wins at
Bingo.”
“Anybody who knows me knows it’s semi-autobiographical, because I’m the clumsiest
human being on the planet,” said Braffet. Her tale follows a female superhero with rotten
luck for herself, but not for others, and the search for her biological father.

(excerpt from “Bad Karma Girl Wins at Bingo”)

The only person for whom Cass wasn’t lucky was her mother, Elmira. The story of Cass’s life
as it had been related to her, from her spermatozoal days to the present, was as follows: Her
mother had been a professional ballet dancer – corps, not principal, although Elmira always swore
that it would have only been a matter of time. One night, on a whim, she accepted a date with the
delivery boy who brought her costume from the dry cleaner. After a plate of spaghetti and two
bottles of wine, she slept with him.
(“Why?” the younger Cass always asked at this point in the story, hoping against hope that this
time her mother would say, “Because he had lovely eyes,” or “Because he was so kind,” or even
“Because I was so lonely,” because that at least would have made Cass feel like there was at least
one thing in the course of her life that had a reason to happen. But instead, what Elmira always
said was, “Damned if I know. Biggest goddamned mistake I ever made.”)
And, since the life of a professional ballet dancer requires a level of overexercise and
undereating that often leads to irregular menstrual rhythms, Elmira didn’t think anything of it
when she missed two cycles in a row. By the time she missed the third and fourth cycles, and
began to get suspicious, it was too late to do anything about the embryo growing in her lithe
dancer’s body. Elmira had been n the pill, she would tell Cass; taken it every day like clockwork.
And even though the little leaflet that came inside the package said that it was ninety-nine-point-
nine-nine percent effective, Elmira had been the point-oh-one-one percent ineffective, and what
was worse – as she also told Cass – that failure had come when she was with the one guy she
couldn’t have cared less about ever seeing again. The least handsome guy, the least glamorous
guy, the least acceptable guy. The guy she wanted most to forget.
Except that now she couldn’t.
“And that, my little bad-luck charm,” Elmira would say, “is why your mommy is a
telemarketer.”

from “The Pentecostal Home for Flying Children,” art by Chris Burnham
Scott Snyder, an avowed comics’ fan, read from his story “The Thirteenth Egg,” which
Braffet pointed out has nothing to do with an egg. It centers on a 19-year old who has just
returned home from World War II in 1946.

(excerpt from “The Thirteenth Egg”)

“Are you sure you’re all right, honey?” said his mother.
Everett presented a smile. “I’m great.”
“You don’t have to be great, yet,” said his father. “You’ve been home a month. You can be
anything you want.”
“Okay.”
“Evvy,” said his mother, “if you’re feeling up to it, we have something we want to show you.”
“Right now?” said Everett.
“No, next week,” said his father. “Yes, now. How are your marks?”
“Still there.”
“Are you using your ointment?” said his mother.
He told her he was. Everett could feel himself coming back; the sensation was like being
poured slowly into his own body, his feet and legs taking on weight, his chest filling.
“Well, we’ll just have to wait and see on that one,” said his father. “Now put on some clothes.”
“Right,” said Everett. “Will do.” He went to close the door, but his father blocked it with his
foot.
“No more locks.”
“At least for now, okay?” said his mother.
“Okeydokey,” said Everett, gently closing the door.

from “The Thirteenth Egg,” art by Chris Burnham

Lauren Grodstein finished up with an excerpt from her story, “The Sisters of St. Mercy,”
about a woman named Marie who can understand and read any language, but is a mute,
so cannot speak those languages. Her excerpt centered on “the backstory, where you find
out how it all began,” she said.

(excerpt from “The Sisters of St. Mercy”)

 In fact, it was not until I was five years old that my maternal grandmother, making her
quadrennial visit from her home in northern Quebec, mentioned to my mother that perhaps there
was something medically odd about me, that I wasn’t just quiet, but that perhaps, internally, all
was not exactly as one might hope.
“Odd?” my mother said. They were speaking in their husky, clangy Quebecois French, the
language my parents relied on when they didn’t want their children to understand them.
“Hasn’t it occurred to you that Marie never says a word?”
“She’s just quiet,” my mother said. If I remember correctly, she was busy scrubbing lunch
dishes. Only she, my grandmother, and I were in the kitchen.
“Marie,” my grand-mere said, crooking a gnarled finger in my direction. “Come here and sit
on my lap.”
My mother’s back was turned; I did as I was instructed.
“Now tell me, Marie,” said my grand-mere, “do you know how to speak?”
I nodded.
“Then say something to me. Say anything.”
I opened my mouth . I wanted to please her very much, this baggy old lady who brought us
maple candy and hand-knit sweaters. I tried to push noise, any noise, from my throat, but nothing
came.
“Maman,” said my mother, still scrubbing dishes. “You must speak in English to Marie. She
doesn’t understand French.”
“But of course she does. You understand French, don’t you, mon coeur? See? She’s nodding!”
“She’s nodding because she knows we’re talking about her. There’s no way she could
understand French. She’s heard maybe twenty words in her life.”
What foolishness from my poor mother! I understood French the way I understood the sound
of my own name. I looked from my grandmother again. I nodded furiously.

from “The Rememberer,” art by Chris Burnham

After the readings, the group took questions from the audience. The first asked about
“any great, weird superhero ideas that ended up on the cutting room floor.”
“There was Ottoman, which was like an ottoman. We decided not to, but maybe
someday,” said McNally.

The next question asked about the contributors experience with superhero comics.
“It was about half and half. I think the idea was to bring in people who didn’t have any
preconceived ideas about superheroes, that weren’t so influenced by comic books, but
certainly I read a bunch of comic books as a kid, Scott read a lot of comic books,” said
King.

Braffet added, “I have read a lot of comic books in my time, but they happen not to be of
the superhero variety, but of the geeky college kid variety; a lot of Sandman, a lot of
Jhonen Vasquez, stuff like that, which I think informs my story. When Owen read mine,
he said it was like a Daniel Clowes, that it was more of a Ghost World comic book than a
Superman comic.”

“I still read comics,” said Snyder, which prompted King to talk about going to the comic
store with him.

“Going to a comic book store with Scott is really harrowing, because he has to engage
with the very possessive . . . you all know Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons. That guy
is real and he’s at every comic book store in America. And when you go to a comic book
store with Scott, Scott has to engage him and ask him what the comic books to buy are
and the guy sternly leads him through the store. ‘Buy this, buy this,’” said King.

Snyder said he wanted to be a comic book writer right up until his senior year of college.

Another question focused on the humorous nature of the stories read and whether the
serious subject matter cause the authors to tackle these subjects in a humorous fashion.

Braffet answered for her husband King, knowing how he wanted to tackle the subject
matter.

“What he wanted to come out was how much he loved the genre, but also how much he
was aware of the genre’s failings and the areas at which one could poke at it a little bit.
But, the most successful stories in the book are successful stories in their own right, that
they’re not about things people can do, but they’re actual stories with an actual set of
emotions and heart behind them,” said Braffet.

McNally said, “When Owen first brought the idea to me, my first ideas were really
earnest in approaching the subject matter and those didn’t work for me, because that’s not
my sensibility. And I thought, because I grew up on the Southwest side of Chicago . . .
what if a superhero lived on the Southwest side of Chicago? Who would he be and what
would he do? He wouldn’t get the attention of a superhero from, like, the north side of
Chicago. In Chicago, there’s a real North side/South side sensibility and I really thought
about what a South side superhero would be and I just thought the comic sensibility was a
natural for that.”
Braffet added, “There are a lot of stories that come from an ironic bent, but then there are
lots of other stories that are heartfelt and serious, like Scott’s for instance, which is
actually one of the most amazing pieces of anti-war writing that I’ve seen in a long time.”

“I was about to say that Scott’s story of the exploding man is not as hilarious as it may
sound. One of the things, we asked a bunch of people who, this was outside of their
comfort zone and they almost all said yes. So many people were willing to take the risk,”
said King.

Another questioner asked, “What was it like writing this genre in a medium where you
didn’t have to keep it PG, which traditionally it has been?”

“I guess I never thought of it that way. It was almost liberating to me that the comics I
liked were always those kinds of comics. I grew up reading superhero comics and I
wanted to be a comic book writer up until college . . . and you know, Frank Miller, The
Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen, Sandman . . . Even when I was a kid and reading
comics like Spiderman, which seemed to be PG, I feel like a lot of the time the emotional
palette is so light and dark that it’s really not quite as PG as it seems. The stories deal
with serious issues even though the guy might be dressed like an octopus, or Spiderman,
and the anxieties that the character feels, the desires and fears that the character feels are
very relatable, especially as a teenager. I guess the things that were labeled PG as a kid,
seemed really advanced at the time,” said Snyder.

The last question asked about the tradition of superheroes in literature and whether the
editors looked at that.

“No, we didn’t,” said McNally, “there was an anthology published maybe fifteen or
twenty years ago, that’s by sci-fi writers writing superhero stories. That was the closest
one I could find to our book, but because it’s sci-fi writers, it’s quite a bit different from
what we were trying to do. Once we were published, we were contacted by websites that
had just superhero fiction. I didn’t even know there was such a website. It’s kind of new
to this medium. It’s not natural to this medium. It was a whole group of writers that this
was outside their experience . . . literary writers, Sean Doolittle a mystery writer, and Sam
Weller, who wrote Ray Bradbury’s autobiography.”