Friday with the Indie Superheroes
It’s not what you think.
I mean a completely different kind of “indie.” Which is to say, not comics at all.
Writing last week’s Superman-in-prose column reminded me that there’s a whole list of superheroes who’ve ONLY ever appeared in prose; though many of them had comics creators working on them. This week, just for the hell of it, I thought we’d look at a few of those.
You’ve probably heard of at least some of them if you’re enough of a comics/superhero fan to be hanging out at a website like this one, but I’m betting we might turn up a couple you missed.
For example, most of you are probably familiar with Larry Niven’s hilarious essay, “Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex.” (If not, you’ll find it here.) But I wonder how many of you saw this collection that it appeared in?
Superheroes was an anthology edited by Michel Parry for Britain’s Sphere Books in 1978. In addition to the Niven essay, there was also Robert Bloch’s delightful “Stupourman,” John Keel’s “Satyr-Man,” Stephen Hitchcock’s “Captain Amazing,” and a bunch of other entries from notable SF writers like Norman Spinrad, George Alec Effinger, and Don Glut. The stories range from hilarious to deeply disturbing, though a satirical tone predominates.
Another anthology by the same name from John Varley came out stateside almost twenty years later, in 1995.
