Who Can Save Us Now? Deconstructs Superheroes

Editors Owen King and John McNally told SCI FI Wire that their new anthology, Who Can Save Us Now?, features superhero stories by 22 writers one normally wouldn't associate with the superhero genre.

"More specifically, we asked them to consider what a superhero means in the 21st century," McNally said in an interview.

The book Who Can Save Us Now? grew out of a story idea King had been pondering. "For a while I had been kicking around a superhero story idea, but it didn't seem like a modern comic book--it was more like something from the Silver Age or a Roger Corman movie, kind of silly on the one hand but also an earnest tribute to all the comics I read as a kid," King said.

King wasn't sure what to do with this orphan of a story idea that was so different from the kind of mainstream fiction that he tends to write. "It occurred to me that it might be pretty fascinating to see what a whole roster of writers might do with the superhero premise," he said. "How would a writer with serious comedy chops, like Jennifer Weiner or George Singleton, handle the superhero challenge? How about a writer with a historical bent, like Scott Snyder--what time and place would he chose for his hero?"

Who Can Save Us Now? takes off with Stephanie Harrell's "Girl Reporter," which reverses the perspective of the typical superhero story. "Instead of taking the point of view of the hero, it takes the point of view of the damsel in distress, the hardboiled girl reporter that he's continually saving from certain death," he said. "It turns out that she's not as breathlessly smitten as we remember, and 'the Big Guy' (as she refers to her rescuer), isn't quite as all-American as we've been told. And, ultimately, Who Can Save Us Now? is more than a deconstruction of the classic superhero scenario: It's an exploration of the sorts of lies we tell ourselves to make ourselves brave."

On the other end of the spectrum is Elizabeth Crane's story, "Nate Pinckney-Alderson, Superhero," which is about a child who aspires to be a superhero. "Except, his idea of a superhero is a local grump who is publicly renowned for a single good deed and privately loathed for a thousand petty ones," King said. "Besides chronicling a very amusing mix-up, there's something honestly uplifting, and more than a little heartbreaking, about the way that Elizabeth shows how certain in heroes we all once were."

-John Joseph Adams