Super Stories of Heroes & Villains

by Claude Lalumière (Editor), Kim Newman (Contributor), Chris Roberson (Contributor)

George R. R. Martin’s Wild Cards rampage through unrecorded history! Mike Mignola's Hellboy battles the fiendish Nuckelavee! Can Camille Alexa's Pinktastic prevent the end of the world? Will Jonathan Lethem's Dystopianist cause the end of the world?

In these pages, you’ll find the exploits, machinations, and epic mêlées of these superpowered aliens, undead crusaders, costumed crime fighters, unholy cabals, Amazon warriors, demon hunters, cyberpunk luchadores, nefarious megalomaniacs, daredevil sidekicks, atavistic avatars, adventuring aviators, gunslinging outlaws, love-struck adversaries, and supernatural detectives.

In these twenty-eight astounding Super Stories, join larger-than-life heroes and villains in the never-ending battle of good versus evil!

Contents

Introduction: "The Return of the Super Story" by Claude Lalumière

"Übermensch!" by Kim Newman
"A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows" by Chris Roberson
"Trickster" by Steven Barnes & Tananarive Due
"They Fight Crime!" by Leah Bobet
"The Rememberer" by J. Robert Lennon
"The Nuckelavee: A Hellboy Story" by Christopher Golden & Mike Mignola
"Faces of Gemini" by A.M. Dellamonica
"Origin Story" by Kelly Link
"Burning Sky" by Rachel Pollack
"The Night Chicago Died" by James Lowder
"Novaheads" by Ernest Hogan
"Clash of Titans (A New York Romance)" by Kurt Busiek
"The Super Man and the Bugout" by Cory Doctorow
"Grandma" by Carol Emshwiller
"The Dystopianist, Thinking of His Rival, Is Interrupted by a Knock on the Door" by Jonathan Lethem
"Sex Devil" by Jack Pendarvis
"The Death Trap of Dr. Nefario" by Benjamin Rosenbaum
"Man oh Man – It's Manna Man" by George Singleton
"The Jackdaw's Last Case" by Paul Di Filippo
"The Biggest" by James Patrick Kelly
"Philip José Farmer’s Tarzan Alive: A Definitive Biography of Lord Greystoke" by Win Scott Eckert
"The Zeppelin Pulps" by Jess Nevins
"Wild Cards: Prologue & Interludes" by George R.R. Martin
"Wild Cards: Just Cause" by Carrie Vaughn
"Bluebeard and the White Buffalo: A Rangergirl Yarn" by Tim Pratt
"The Pentecostal Home for Flying Children" by Will Clarke
"Pinktastic and the End of the World" by Camille Alexa
"The Detective of Dreams" by Gene Wolfe

Genres: Anthologies, Superheroes, Fantasy, Fiction, Short Stories, Science Fiction

414 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

Montreal writer Claude Lalumière is the author of the story collections Objects of Worship , Nocturnes and Other Nocturnes , and Altre persone / Other Persons and of the mosaic works The Door to Lost Pages and Venera Dreams: A Weird Entertainment . He has edited fourteen anthologies, including two Aurora Award—nominated volumes in the Tesseracts series. His first fiction – “Bestial Acts” – appeared in Interzone in 2002, and he has since published more than 100 stories; his work has been translated into French, Italian, Polish, Spanish, Serbian, Hungarian, Romanian, Turkish, and Russian and adapted for stage, screen, audio, and comics.

Reviews

[Cathy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a weird book. Most anthologies have the purpose of convincing the reader to buy the included authors' other books and stories. They're supposed to introduce you to authors you haven't read before by including a handful of high profile authors who's stories readers feel they just must read. But this book is all reprints of previously published stories, most of which were already printed in other anthologies. So it's an anthology that's trying to get me to buy other anthologies? It's like reality TV, especially shows like The Soup. Why create something new if we can just remix what's already been done and just add a few intros to make it seem new? Cheap production at it's finest. Which wouldn't necessarily be a problem, I didn't know about that when I picked the book up from the library shelf. But fans of the (sub)genre might know, if they're reading the same handful of books and magazines that he is. I don't really know, I'm not an expert. It just seems odd.

My bigger issue was that I didn't enjoy the editing. This should have been a fun book.The cover design sure billed it as a fun book.Usually I strongly prefer to have the information about the writer of each story before the story and not at the end of the chapter or the end of the book. I like to have a sense of who they are before I read a story. But this time it didn't work out so well. The editor introduced each author with a few comments about their story or style of writing that should have been interesting and informative. But his comments and tone frequently just rubbed me wrong. It's fine to point out the literary themes in a story, but he sounded condescending to me, like that know-it-all kid in lit class in college. It didn't sound like he had any fun editing the book or reading any of the stories. And I didn't love any of the stories. I kept slogging through because I was trying to get to those authors that I 'd heard of, and hoping to discover a couple of new ones that I'd enjoy.

Anyway, I don't expect anyone to read the detailed review, I just wrote it all so I'd remember my thoughts about the authors in the future when I read their books.

Kim Newman - Übermensche! - An interesting alternate history about what it might have been like if Superman had landed in Germany. A hero to some is a villain to others. Intellectual not action, it's all a conversation between two old enemies.

Chris Roberson - A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows - Although it wasn't actually that long, it felt long, more like a novella. I think it was because it wasn't dumbed down because it was a short story, it was still filled with a lot of detail. It definitely felt like a part of a bigger world. The Wraithe seems to be based on The Shadow but I don't know those stories well enough to say if there were a lot of clever allusions or not, other than the obvious things like him being a writer and the mask, and the fun noir tone. It was fun pulp fiction with a dry wit.

Steven Barnes & Tananarive Due - Trickster - An American finds an alien machine in Tanzania. A good sci-fi story, and I always like reading stories set internationally and especially in Africa. But I don't really see that it fits the theme. It seems odd that it was re-printed from a previous superhero anthology. Just fighting back one time doesn't make someone a superhero. He didn't try to take on an identity, he didn't have any intention that I saw of continuing to fight. The intro says it explores the mythic archetypes of the genre. He was oppressed, he fought back, he had an older teacher, I see the archetypes I guess, but not the hero. He was just a screwed up kid. The heart of the story was the teacher, that was the part that interested me, and the country. It did make me want to bump the Due books on my to-read list farther up toward the top.


Leah Bobet - They Fight Crime! - Partners have a falling out. Short, OK.


J. Robert Lennon - The Rememberer - Haunting to see this woman with such a terrible memory problem, considering my slight memory issues. It's a blessing and a curse, but I sure wouldn't want it her way.

Christopher Golden & Mike Mignola - The Nuckelavee: A Hellboy Story - Well it definitely met the villain criteria. But it was a waste of Hellboy. I was looking forward to reading my first story about him, but be was just a witness, it could have been him or anyone else in the world in his shoes and it wouldn't have mattered at all. I'm already a fan of both of authors, but this didn't do much to convince me to get into Hellboy on it's own, other than getting me to read the Wikipedia article on him and finding that interesting.

A. M. Dellamonica - Faces of Gemini - A cute action story about sisters sharing their powers and their roller coaster of emotions, more what I expected when I got the book. A kind of typical superhero story.

Kelly Link - Origin Story - Slow, long, labored, it didn't have the payoff I was hoping for. The editor reads a lot into this one, I don't see any link at all between Superman and Dorothy, the guy is speculating on on a whole list of characters, Dorothy is just one and the location is a joke. But the question about Angel/Angelus and the black leather pants was funny.

Rachel Pollack - Burning Sky - The editor thinks she's the only one who could do Wonder Woman justice. I don't know about that. It's a sexy story but it isn't positive. These Free Women tortured Julia. Pressing the tips of her breasts into champagne glasses filled with tiny sharp emeralds, among other things. I don't particularly want a story about Wonder Woman that has sexual or sexualized violence as a part of it. I'm not saying that this wasn't a decent story in some ways, but it isn't what I want for a series or movie for sure, whether or not it's true to what Amazons were supposed to have been. I'd like to see strong women who got that way without being tortured and who's loyalty and sisterhood is coerced. And the story wasn't even about the Free Women or Julia, it was about about the other character and her sexual adventures, which had nothing to do with heroes or villains and didn't fit the book at all. Pollack just shoehorned two totally separate stories together. Each has it's positive and negatives as stories, but together they make no sense to me. .

James Lowder - The Night Chicago Died - Tristram Holt, the Corpse, the Scourge of Evil. I liked it all except the last line. Bah.

Ernest Hogan - Novaheads - The woman is addicted to nova and the guy she's with burns up at the beginning. She calls the wrestler for help. It was a good story, but I think I might have liked it better without the editor's intro again. I did find it interesting to learn that lucha noir is a genre, or a sub-genre I guess. It fits the story that Joe Lansdale wrote in Dangerous Women more than this one, this wasn't a hardboiled noir story, it was kind of funny. Well, not funny, but definitely not hardboiled. Or a mystery. I guess it was cyberpunk, as the editor claimed, in the end, in the evil multinational corporation sense, though not in the way I usually think of cyberpunk, but that's cool. Usually I really prefer to have the editor's comments and author info before stories and not after, but in this book I'm not so sure, this guy intellectualizes so much that I'm finding it very distracting.

Kurt Busiek - Clash of Titans (A New York Romance) - Astro City Vol. 1: Life in the Big City is already on my high-priority to-read list. (Just as an aside, the story in this book is from 1991. How old, or young, do you have to be to not know who Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing are without looking it up?) As for the story, I'm not sure what I think about Demonica. On the one hand, evil. On the other hand, she did create those werewolf things that ate Donald Trump. Hmmm. Good story. Believable. It was all an advertising campaign.

Cory Doctorow - Super Man and the Bugout - Very funny. When comic book and superhero fans get a little older they start asking tough questions like, how does she pay her rent and pay for all of the clothes and furniture she keeps destroying. On Buffy, she got a job at a fast food joint that made her wear really ugly uniforms. On a larger scale it's when parts of cities get destroyed instead, like in The Incredibles, with even more serious repercussions for the heroes. This story was definitely in line with the kind of thoughts many of us wonder during moments before and after we suspend our disbelief and just enjoy a good tale. Plus he was nice to his Jewish mama.

Carol Emshwiller - Grandma - Good story about generations of women, expectations and pressures from all sides, love, connection, loss.

Jonathan Lethem - The Dystopianist, Thinking of His Rival, Is Interrupted By a Knock On the Door - Too clever for me.

Jack Pendarvis - Sex Devil - Story pitch, short and silly, yet telling.

Benjamin Rosenbaum - The Death of Dr. Nefario - About a therapist to the heroes, short and fun.

George Singleton - Man Oh Man—It's Manna Man - I liked the idea of Manna Man as a hero and the issues that he would have and how he worked it out. But the story was too short to explore the idea. He meets his nemesis and then it's over. It wasn't a story, it was just sketch about an idea about a cool super power. There was barely a character there. The editor loves it, it's one of three stories that he culled from another anthology about superheroes. If you're interested, it's Who Can Save Us Now?: Brand-New Superheroes and Their Amazing (Short) Stories.

Paul Di Filippo - The Jackdaw's Last Case - I like historical fiction and alternate history, it can be really fun to look up the subjects and try to figure out what's real and what isn't and just to learn something new. So that aspect was fun. He took Kafka back to when it was nineteen and branched him off from there, so most of his adult history was made up. I found the style of the story to be very wordy and full of way too many flourishes. I think some of that may have been an attempt to copy Kafka's style but I'm just guessing from the tiny bit that I read about Kafka looking into him for this story, I haven't read his stories or Di Filippo's. On the other hand, the reviews of Di Filippo indicate that it might be his style, too, so who knows. But the style, and subject, reminds me to some degree of The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack and I did enjoy this story for many of the same reasons. I didn't like the Brod stuff, changing their meeting from university into a high school bully thing. The age change bothered me, it changed real history too much. It felt like it pushed it from an alternate history too far into a total fantasy that had those characters in it. I don't know the "rule" of the sub-genre of imagining historical celebrities as detectives, but it seems to me that it should be grounded in their actual lives, too many changes negates who they actually were entirely. And it was just way to busy and crowded a story, with too much being thrown at me. The sort of steampunk Talmudic tattoo torture device at the end was just a bit much for this Jew, put it over the top, it was a melodramatic mess. So it had good elements, things I enjoyed, but needed to be edited back a bit and would have been better if t was more consistent with history somehow. And that's that for a review longer than those I write for many books.

James Patrick Kelly - The Biggest - The editor tells me that the author, used "his scholarly sciencefictional gaze on the dawn of the superheroic era, the Great Depression" to write this story. Whatever that means. It was still a good story about what a regular guy hero with not so hot powers might have gone through in the Golden Age of heroes.

Win Scott Eckert -Philip José Farmer's Tarzan Alive: A Definitive Biography of Lord Greystoke - A fun article that did what anthologies are supposed to do, introduced me to an author's books. In this case, it wasn't this author's, it was Philip José Farmer's, and those of others who've played in this shared universe, but it still made it's point very effectively. Farmer's Wold Newton family line for Tarzan was so extensive that it created a whole new writing space for fictional biography that is still being added to today. It was fun to learn a bit about how this started and grew and it definitely made me want to learn more about it, and fictional biographies in general.

Jess Nevins - The Zeppelin Pulps - This is an interesting article about the popularity and fall of the Zeppelin pulps. Really, it's a well-researched and presented article, I enjoyed it, it's a nice, short, interesting article about a small part of the history of the industry. But I still don't get the editor. I'd hardly call it an ingenious piece, as he did.

George R.R. Martin - Wild Cards: Prologue & Interludes - Fun, the third Wild Cards story I've read lately. (Funny, the most recent was in the book he just edited, Dangerous Women, now that I think about it.) Although sometimes I've thought it was odd that the editor included older stories, in this case, I think it's cool to show that the series is still going strong after all of these years. I really should finally check it out. (I ended up making a list of the books that are available anywhere in my library's consortium of 44 library systems across 12 counties. I'm still only able to get 14 of the currently 21 books in the series. But it looks like the older books are being re-released.) But the Jetboy character did confuse me, I kept getting mixed up with Top 10, Vol. 1. Not a complaint, just a comment. Especially since this was written first. (I really liked Top Ten by Alan Moore, by the way, wish there had been more of it. Gene Ha's art was brilliant too.) Anyway, having read a couple of Wild Cards stories already, it's nice to know now how it happened now, Or some of how it happened, there's always more to it with these guys,

Carrie Vaughn - Wild Cards: Just Cause - Including another Wild Cards story was a great idea, chalk one of for the editor. The series has been going on for twenty-six years, it really showed the time frame and longevity. I'm just not a big fan of Vaughn's short fiction. Mostly it was a good story that focused on the emotional and interpersonal elements and used the characters' powers as a framework for the storytelling, which seems to be the Wild Card way, from my vast experience of now having read four stories. But I initially wrote a few things about why it was either confusing or unsatisfying and then I realized that it was because this was a chapter of one of the Wild Cards books and not a story that was meant to stand alone, so Vaughn wasn't supposed to have to explain what Kate's power was, or what the TV show that they'd all been on was, it was surely something that happened earlier in the book. And I wrote that the end wasn't satisfying for a stand alone story, it felt like the close of a chapter in a book; that was what made me look at the copyright page and realize what the problem was. The story was out of it's original context in this book and the Vaughn didn't build in certain information or story elements because she didn't have to for what she was writing it for. So I apologize to Vaughn, she wrote a good story for the context it was intended for, as far as I can tell. And I take back my good call to the editor and call bad editing on this. He wanted a big name author and didn't care if the story worked for the readers. There are other Wild Card stories in anthologies that could have worked. I read two recently. I doubt they are the only ones in existence. This just wasn't a great choice,

Tim Pratt - Bluebeard and the White Buffalo: A Rangergirl Yarn - A well-balanced story with a lot of good elements. I bet the book its based on 's good.

Will Clarke - The Pentecostal Home for Flying Children - The name was better than the story. Another one the editor got from the other superhero anthology. It was OK. Another real-life, what happens to the not-so-super heroes and their offspring story,

Camille Alexa - Pinktastic and the End of the World - Very comic book-like in its angst, and showed some nice levels to what a semi-realisitic picture of heroes and villains living in the real world would look like. It worked well in balance with the rest of the stories.

Gene Wolfe - The Detective of Dreams - This was supposed to be a classic story from 1980 to anchor the end of book.But I found all of the ____ disguising the names of the people involved to be very distracting, as though these people were so important and the detective was soooo very discrete, the readers just couldn't be in on who they were. It was supposed to be cool but it was just hard to read. And Christian symbolism is beyond me, I'm sure it was much more fascinating and revelatory to other people. I think the editor just couldn't resist using the exit line for the book of, "Dear people, dream on."

[autumn · Rating 2 out of 5]

i doubt there's any multi-author anthology that really deserves more than 3.5 stars, as it's usually a pretty mixed bag, but this one in particular is a real stinker. every inch of the book's design screams "FUN! ACTION! BAM! FUN! SUPERHERO! WHAPPOW!" but many of the stories skew intellectual, and at least a full third of the 28 stories were literally not about superheroes at all (even if i'm being generous about the definition of 'superhero'). it would be difficult to find an anthology that's less consistent and less on-theme. i gave it an extra star for the inclusion of a few stories i did really love (in order of appearance): Origin Story by Kelly Link, Clash of Titans (A New York Romance) by Kurt Busiek, and Man Oh Man - It's Manna Man by George Singleton. (honorable mention to Faces of Gemini by A. M. Dellamonica, The Super Man & the Bugout by Cory Doctorow, and The Pentecostal Home for Flying Children by Will Clarke)
(reviews of each story in the update links)

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoy superhero prose. More accurately, I enjoy some superhero prose, and a few of these stories are the kind I enjoy.

The usual unevenness of any multi-author anthology applies, both in how much I enjoyed the stories and how well they are edited, and some of the stories only fit within the theme by stretching the definition a long way (also common for anthologies). This particular anthology suffers from another issue, too: in some, there are a lot of references within the stories either to the particular story's pulp origins and the associated characters, or else to a shared universe with many other stories and characters in it, and in both cases, since I'm not familiar with the names, they're just a list of names. For me, this detracts from the story rather than adding to it.

The main problem, though, is one that means I always have to pick my superhero prose carefully: a generally dark, gritty, cynical and depressing tone, common in the genre but very much not to my taste.

A lot of the stories are well done, but I didn't often like what they were doing. The three stars reflects my personal taste, not the writing quality.

There is an odd quirk in the layout: some, but by no means all, of the opening quotation marks have a space inserted after them.

"A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows," Chris Roberson: a neo-pulp story in the traditional style, if with modern attitudes to immigration and sex. Well done, though it does have a couple of homonym errors ("principle" for "principal", "lead" for "led").

"Trickster," Steven Barnes and Tananarive Due: this is the first of several stories in the collection which stretches the definition of "superhero". I usually enjoy trickster tales, but this particular one wasn't as tricksterish as some, and was more of a postapocalyptic tragedy (something I don't enjoy). A couple of apostrophe issues detract from the general competence of the writing.

"They Fight Crime!," Leah Bobet: A bit of a tendency to tell, and a tone of detached tragedy, so again, not my favourite thing.

"The Rememberer," J. Robert Lennon: Also in a mode of detached telling, which is an interesting choice for the story of someone who remembers everything and experiences the emotions powerfully, eventually helping others to do the same. Rather lovely, despite the tragedy, and despite again stretching the "superhero" definition a bit.

"The Nuckelavee: A Hellboy Story," Christopher Golden and Mike Mignola: What Hellboy gets right is the compelling noir feel of an outsider trying to do good and fight his own cynicism, placed in a setting of richly imagined myth. This story has all those elements, so it worked for me. Very much the shape of a 1930s Weird Tale, too, in which someone horribly gets what they deserve. Is Hellboy a superhero? Again, if you push the definition. Unfortunately, features a comma splice.

"Faces of Gemini," A. M. Dellamonica: More definitely a superhero this time, part of a super team. The story is mainly about the family dynamic between two sisters, with the supers stuff almost background, dire though it is. Homonym: "hoard" for "horde".

"Origin Story," Kelly Link: Link is known for a type of story I have very little time for, in which alienated people get battered by gritty tragedy for a while, unable or unwilling to do anything effective about it, until the story stops. This is one of those. She is a talented writer, but I don't enjoy her work.

"Burning Sky," Rachel Pollack: What Amazons might really be like. Not safe, not nice, is the short version. There are two stories intercut here, a first-person one about a BDSM sexual awakening, and a third-person one about a photographer who discovers an Amazon conspiracy, and they remain separate throughout - presumably throwing thematic light on each other. Overly literary for my taste, and thin on the superhero theme.

"The Night Chicago Died," James Lowder: Very dark noir with a horrifying ending which totally matches the tone up to that point.

"Novaheads," Ernest Hogan: Cyberpunk. Drug-addled, alienated, and cynical, all the things I like least in cyberpunk. Several minor editing glitches.

"Clash of Titans (A New York Romance)," Kurt Busiek: Maximally cynical, narrated in the voice of a New York advertising man who is completely unconcerned about the number of his fellow citizens being horribly killed in superhero fights, except insofar as this affects his chances of getting an apartment in the city so he doesn't have to commute.

"The Super Man and the Bugout," Cory Doctorow: If Superman had been raised, as one of his creators was, by a Canadian Jewish mother, and had to deal with Canadian bureaucracy. A little more hopeful and positive than average for the collection. "Proscribed" for "prescribed".

You know what? I'm not going to review every story after all. There are too many, and very few I like. I'll mention a couple of others.

"Sex Devil," Jack Pendarvis: A pitch-perfect pitch, supposedly by a teenage boy, for a new superhero who is transparently the boy's adolescent revenge/sex fantasy. Only someone who can write very well could pull off this beautiful imitation of someone who writes badly.

"Man Oh Man--It's Manna Man," George Singleton: A superhero with psychic powers makes televangelists urge their congregations to donate to actual worthy causes, instead of to them.

"The Jackdaw's Last Case," Paul Di Filippo: Franz Kafka immigrates to America and becomes a masked vigilante. A happier ending than you might expect.

"The Biggest," James Patrick Kelly: I normally like Kelly's beautifully crafted stories, but the sad pointlessness of the main character's life and death in this one are too much.

"Just Cause," Carrie Vaughn: I'm a big fan of Vaughn, and this was one of the more successful stories in the book for me. Very much about how hard it is to be a superhero, even one who retains some idealism.

"The Pentecostal Home for Flying Children," Will Clarke: Yes, of course the Pentecostal lady, though good-hearted, is ineffective in raising most of the children to even be civilised, let alone good people. There is, at least, one exception. What there isn't is a definite ending. "Bows" for "boughs" and "Cane" for "Cain".

"The Detective of Dreams," Gene Wolfe: Finally, a Gene Wolfe story I actually understand, and more or less like, though I know most people will dislike it because, unusually, it lets Wolfe's Catholicism out into the open. Done in a flawless 19th-century style.

So, to summarise the collection: not my thing, but certainly someone's, and done with skill, though far from flawlessly.

[Lissibith · Rating 3 out of 5]

A mixed bag of a book.

First, if fanfic is a turnoff for you, be warned there are two stories in here which are basically fanfic, one with the serial numbers filed off and one which relied on the serial numbers to make its point. Maybe it's weird of me, but if I want fanfic, I'll wander the internet. I expect more creativity from a book I paid for.

Now the stories themselves, some I loved, some I enjoyed and immediately forgot, and some had me flipping pages in an effort to get to the next tale. So I'm not going to go story by story and offer my thoughts, since that would take longer than I really want to spend on this one.

I really enjoyed the Hellboy story (which, being by Mignola, is NOT fanfic!) even though I wasn't really sure why it was a Hellboy story - it felt like you could have put any number of characters in his role and the story would not have appreciably changed. But the mood was great and I liked the ending.

Faces of Gemeni might have been my favorite part of the book. It felt just like reading a superhero comic, whereas so many prose superhero stories try to distinguish their style and divorce somewhat from that base. I really felt for the characters and would love more about them and their world.

Manna-Man was hilarious and really sweet at the same time, and The Biggest was a little more comical and a little tragic but still enjoyable.

The book ended strong, as Carrie Vaughn's "Just Cause" set a pace and dragged me happily along. The Rangergirl short made me want to read more of her exploits because I love the aesthetic of a western and this one captured it perfectly. The Pentecostal Home for Flying Children was weird, but weird in a good, quirky way and was the only one in the collection I reread. And Pinktastic and the End of the World was another strong entry that I just really enjoyed.

Overall, it might be worth checking out if you're really into superheroes, but I understand a lot of these stories have appeared in other collections previously, and there's not enough strong and unique here for me to urge you out to buy it.

[Laura · Rating 2 out of 5]

Way more of a slog than an anthology about superheroes and super villains should have been.

[Alan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Despite giving this three stars, I remain conflicted in my feelings about this collection. Excluding the Wild Cards series, as I have said before, I tend to eschew super hero fiction in prose. There were two good anthologies that I have read over the years where I broke that "rule", and this is the third. I picked it up during my last trip to Borderlands Books in San Francisco (yes, a free plug).

A significant factor in my decision to pick this up was that some of the contributing writers could be called among the more literary science fiction writers (Gene Wolfe and Paul Di Filippo as examples). To be honest I found Wolfe's short almost unintelligible (or I'm pretty stupid when I'm pushing to the end of a book and the clocking is inching towards midnight). Di Filippo's had an interesting premise (Kafka becomes an avenger of evil at night), but was flat in parts (re: character development).

Any anthology is going to have ups and downs, is just seems like the downs were pretty deep here.

There are good stories. Some of the extras George R.R. Martin added to the early volumes of the Wild Cards books when they were republished are here. Tim Pratt's Rangergirl was very enjoyable, and I wanted more of that world and characters. Win Scott Eckert and Jess Nevins contributed nice. pieces.

But, if my criteria for keeping a book remains would I re-read it, this is still a close call to keep or donate.

[M Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 rounded up to 4

A collection of super-hero stories; not all spandex. In fact, as much in the pulpy noir of the Shadow and his ilk.

Collections of anthologies around a common theme may become over-similar, less likely to thrill with the discovery of the new, I think. But some, and this collection is one, have a diversity of authorial intent and style that continue to surprise. Wolfe, Link and Martin turn in especially strong stories as one might expect given their gifts. But most who like fantastic stories will find two or three others that speak to them.

Not recommended for those who don't like fiction about super-heroes for obvious reasons.

[Casey Bennett · Rating 4 out of 5]

A couple of cool and fun inventive takes on the superhero/supervillain genre, not surprisingly by writers such as Kelly Link and Jonathan Lethem, aa well as comic book writer Kurt Busiek.

[Steven Morton · Rating 3 out of 5]

It took me 10 months but I finally finished this anthology (read a lot of books along with this one). I have read three other superhero anthologies and I have to say this one ranks last in my opinion. For every story I loved (like Kim Newman's Ubermensch!) there was one that I just hated (like Kelly Link's Origin Story). So the book, in its entirety was flat. But there are others that were enjoyable; A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows by Chris Roberson (which I read in an earlier anthology), Faces of Gemini by A.M. Dellamonica, The Night Chicago Died by James Lowder, the Jackdaw's Last Case and Clash of Titans (A New York Romance) by Kurt Busiek which read like one of his issues of Astro City but this was before that book so this was a treat). But like I said then there were ones that just made put down the book for awhile; Novaheads by Ernest Hogan, The Dytopianist, Thinking of His Rival Is Interrupted by A Knock on The Door by Jonathan Lethem (I might not have been smart enough to really appreciate that one), Burning Sky by Rachel Pollack and The Detective of Dreams by Gene Wolfe. The rest, like The Superman and The Bugout by Cory Doctorow were interesting takes on long established characters (Superman as a government stooge) but were not at the same level as Ubermensch! But if you like some literary flair with your superheroes this book is for you.

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall I enjoyed this collection. It started off great with Ubermensch by Kim Newman. Still one of my favorites. However, As I moved thru the collection many of the heroes/villains were derivative. That can be okay if there is some new take, and some did a good job at keeping my interest. Of course, some authors did the exact opposite by trying to hard to reinterpret an archetype, while getting their own personal views wedged in that it was painful. My favorite stories in the order they appear in the book are as follows:
Ubermench-Kim Newman
They Fight Crime-Leah Bobet
The Rememberer-J. Robert Lennon
The Nuckelavee: A Hellboy story-Christopher Golden and Mike Mignola
Clash of the Titans-Kurt Busiek
The Super Man and the Bugout-Cory Doctorow
The Jackdaw's Last Case-Paul Di Filippo
The Biggest-James Patrick Kelly
Philip Jose Farmer's Tarzan Alive:A Definitive Biography of Lord Greystoke (I can't believe I didn't know about all this before)-Win Scott Eckert
Wild Cards: Just Cause-Carrie Vaughn
The Pentecostal Home for Flying Children-Will Clarke
Pinktastic and the end of the World-Camille Alexa (this story is worth it if for no other reason than the image of superheroes having organic gardens, villains being goth and emo artists, and all of them running into each other at Home Depot.

[Stephen Dorneman · Rating 3 out of 5]

An uneven collection of comic book and pulp hero influenced short stories, with too many written in imitation pulp or faux historical styles, and a number that would be classified as experimental fiction if they appeared elsewhere. The best works here are two selections from George R. R. Martin's WILD CARDS series, and Carol Emshwiller's "Grandma." As an alternative, I'd suggest reading the similar collection MASKED (Lou Anders, editor) before picking this one up.

[Eric · Rating 3 out of 5]

Any compilation that boasts efforts by Jonathan Lethem, Kelly Link, Gene Wolfe, and George R.R. Martin is bound to turn heads. And, as expected, the stories here are all first-rate. But the pool for superhero prose is shallow and many of these stories have appeared in similar collections over the years. And that, I'm afraid, mutes some of the book's thunder.

[Pogue · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wish that in the star rating system there was one for MEH! I love reading short story collections, I can find new authors that way, find something to read that I never thought I would like. I slogged through this book. None of the stories in here appealed to me. They were well written, well though out just not for me.

[Nicole V. · Rating 3 out of 5]

The opening story ("Ubermensch!" by Kim Newman) got me really excited, but ultimately I wasn't as into it as I'd hoped. That first story and the two Wild Cards pieces were the highlights for me. Otherwise it was just all right.

[Tommy Carlson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection of sorta-superhero stories left me feeling meh. Some of the better ones I had read before in other collections. Others were very far afield, too far to keep me interested.

[Saint Lart · Rating 1 out of 5]

Less than one star. Reading this made me think about being an editor of a series. Meaning even an idiot like me could find better. One of the few books I actually regret paying for.

[Tripp · Rating 3 out of 5]

A pretty mixed bag, some good ones and plenty of middling ones. These stories range over the decades which makes me think there are not many good superhero stories outside of the comic space.

[Trish]

The main reason for wanting to read this is "The Rememberer", which the TV show Unforgettable is supposed to be based on.

[Emily · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked a few of the stories, but mostly, I kind of bored myself through it. Will check out more of the wild cards anthologies, though.