Now Get Your Cape On!

Marvel just recently announced major re-thinks of two of its major characters.

Captain America is now black… and The Mighty Thor is now a woman!

Why am I not impressed? Because I conceived of a black patriotic hero, and a hammer-wielding superheroine first, a year prior, in fact. Here's proof.

My youth is where my heart is, and a big part of my youth was consumed by comic books. I drew comics. I read them. I was very particular concerning which story arcs I accepted. No, I never bought into the premise of multiple-titles, each with a different reality. That was a sign of poor writing, and "creatives" who couldn't formulate.

Now in the second decade of the 21st Century, where Superheroes are the current generation's Shakespeare (you may quote me), I find myself at personal odds with an industry I once loyally supported with the hard-earned funds of a youth that I now consider partially misspent – on most of those pulp-paper abominations.

Superheroes are the perfect balance between art and mind-rot. Treasure and trash. They may deserve preservation, but not worship.

Having created leagues of my own original super-folk – none of which saw publication before – I sat down with my creative cap on one last time, and put forth a whole new batch of them.

Only these were not based on the old conceptual glue, like justice, strength and purity, but on current societal lean-to's – money, technology, religion, gender identity. Heroes that embodied disparate cultural factions, forced to work together for a common cause, when the most powerful – influential – of them turns evil (or was perhaps evil all along, and suddenly unabashed about his real purpose).

You want diverse heroes? We got them! We got your straight hero, your gay hero, your Christian, Jewish, Muslim and Atheist heroes… your Technology-based heroes and Ethereally-based heroes… you're going to wind up rooting for somebody here!

Some of them are thematically informed by the classic comic book icons, certainly, but you'll see quickly that their actual symbolism goes much deeper. A serious fable, told with as much sincerity as any yarn about people with absurdly impossible powers can be. And yes, with stifled giggles along the way.

I think you'll want – need – to read:

OUTSUPERED, OR, I SAVED THE WORLD AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS CAPE

Available in paperback, or e-book, as per usual, it's the odd-ball entry among the more mundane superhero fiction on your bookshelf!

Written with all the cliffhanging excitement that an aging comic book geek can channel, it even has a fairly decent plot to offer – with a post-modern edge, and a moral by the final page. Would you expect anything less from a bunch of costumed do-gooders?

And in keeping with the current trends, a sequel may be in the works. We'll see.

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By the way, "Outsupered" is one of the few book titles one can type into most search engines and find no other competing books whatsoever – so don't tell me you couldn't find it. It's available from many online booksellers, in addition to Amazon.