Tag Archives: superheroes

Fiction, Reviews

Omni’s Fall by Tom Reynolds (Series #4)

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Book cover of Omni's Fall

I understand when a cast of characters is in high school, the plot usually entails going to class, but I remember the third novel, Rise of the Circle, ending on big decisions and cosmic revelations. This novel, Omni’s Fall, begins with our hero struggling through math class.

I guess that means it’s just another Monday.

Teenaged metahuman Connor Connolly feels compelled to act, even when he doesn’t know what to do. That gets him into big trouble and threatens to end his heroic career. The authorities over him keep telling him to stand down and not draw attention to himself, while at the same his Batman-like mentor is calling him out to missions. After each feat of heroism, his metabands, the technology that makes him a superhero, look more damaged than before. Should he keep using them? As soon as he decides to rest a while, another treat or opportunity arises.

The plot and structure of the book are fun and maybe hold together, but they aren’t strong. I liked the villain and the new developments to the world. I still like the characters. But everything together didn’t work as well as I wanted it to.

It’s one thing the hero to press on when everything is telling him to play it safe. Maybe he can’t stop, because the threat will run him down or the bad guys will get away. He’s the only one will all the facts to bring justice. It’s another thing for the hero to keep risking his life because “somebody’s got to do something.” No one throws himself in front of a runaway train because somebody has to do something to stop it. Of course, when you open the possibility of being able to stop the train with your super strength, how big does that possibility have to be for you to make the jump?

With the threat of his metabands failing, Connor must confront the possibility that he may no longer be able to fight bad guys as Omni, but when that argument comes up, he gets defensive and denies all of his worries like a man denying he has colon cancer. He isn’t mature enough to have the power he has, and he isn’t mature enough to recognize his immaturity. The fear of having your power taken from you is a good theme, but this story doesn’t go deep enough to make it compelling.

Fiction, Reviews

Steelheart, a Superhero Thriller, by Brandon Sanderson

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“You’ve said it yourself—we can’t kill every Epic out there. The Reckoners are spinning in circles. The only hope we have, the only hope that humankind has, is to convince people that we can fight back. For that to happen, Steelheart has to fall by human hands.”

Ten years ago, an undefined cosmic entity called Calamity eradiated the Earth, causing some people to develop superpowers. These people were quickly labeled Epics and they began to claim territory for their own kingdoms. Some areas, in what became the Fractured States, were completely wasted as Epics fought over them, but Newcago, the city claimed by the title villain, Steelheart, was at least functioning under new management.

Epic powers range from standard (invincibility, premonition, illusion-making) to non-standard (the ability to fire a handgun without running out of ammo). Power sets and limits are discussed in detail throughout the book, as you might expect but also in a way that raises questions. More on that later.

Steelheart by Brandon Sanderson is a compelling sci-fi story. David Charleston, the young main character, witnesses the cataclysm that began Steelheart’s reign and becomes the sole survivor of the only time their invincible overlord has been injured. “I’ve seen Steelheart bleed,” he says at the beginning, and though he doesn’t know why this man who typically deflects all attacks was superficially wounded, he’s confident something in his memory will lead them to his fatal weakness.

This is the first of three books in The Reckoners series. It stands well as a single book, but with the open ending to one problem clearly to be addressed in book two (as can be seen in that book’s title), I’m eager to pick up the other books. But this one is not without problems.

I hesitate to much because maybe I’ve thought about this kind of sci-fi/fantasy too much and am in danger of complaining about reasonable choices I wouldn’t have made. For instance, Epic powers and weaknesses can be anything, and the heroes discuss how they defy scientific understanding. Thus, we have a character who can shoot a handgun indefinitely but not a rifle or any other weapon. That’s . . . silly. It reminds me of a guy in My Hero Academia who can use the lines on a street as weapons. Maybe the visual medium (manga) and the level of crazy at that point in the story makes such a power seem normal enough. It’s a long story with tons of power sets, so perhaps silly gets lost in diversity. In Steelheart, the handgun character is one of the first Epics we meet.

Plot tension and main characters are strong throughout. The conclusion is satisfactory, if somewhat forced.

Photo: Aaron Bean on Unsplash

Fiction, Reviews

Rise of the Circle by Tom Reynolds

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The threats raised in The Second Wave continue to swell in the third book of Tom Reynold’s Meta Superhero series, Rise of the Circle. Connor Connolly’s hometown, Bay View City, is under lockdown by a superpowered tactical team which had been working for The Agency until opportunity turned them into the very beings they opposed. Now, Alpha Team is forcing all other Metas out of the city upon threat of execution.

Connor doesn’t want to leave, because that feels like giving up, but he does for his and his brother’s safety. And also because his high school was destroyed and he needs to keep up the appearance that he’s still a 16-year-old nerd.

Without spoiling the story, I want to praise Reynold’s plotting and tension. The good part of this book is the narrative intensity that carries smoothly from the last book–high, original stakes and dangerous villains. Superman isn’t saving Lois for a third time here. The personal stakes arise naturally, and the main villains are legitimately terrifying.

But this is the weakest of the three books for a few reasons, the biggest of which is all the explanation. There’s the new school, secret Meta training, lots of new people to meet, new teenage dynamics, and too much stuff to explain. We learn a lot in this book. Did we need all of it?

Another reason I mentioned in the previous review. The narrator tends to state the obvious. I could rephrase that as the author not trusting his readers. There’s a point in which the hero needs to hide, so he ducks out and allows others to cover for him. The bad guys come in and ask if anyone else is here. The following line, as I remember it, goes, “‘We’re the only ones here,’ he lied.” It’s just one word of explanation, but really? That scene sticks out because of all that came before it.

More than the other books, this story feels propelled by the hero’s need to do something. He can’t play it safe, and he knows doing something will likely get him killed, but this is a Very Bad Situation and someone must do something. A couple of these scenes of compelled response look like the characters have read the script, which is never good.

Here’s hoping the fourth book is much better.

Fiction, Reviews

Two Books in Which Alien Armlets Give Anyone Amazing Abilities

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A review of Meta and The Second Wave by Tom Reynolds

Connor Connolly, 16, didn’t actually want to be at the party deep in the woods, because that crowd never accepted him. His only friend talks him into it, but after a couple conversations, he leaves. That puts him nearby as a murderer drags a child away to her death. He tries to intervene, gets stabbed, and wakes up a few minutes later with alien wristbands that grant enhanced abilities.

Meta bands are the source of all superpowers on Earth. No one knows where they came from, and maybe a few people know how they work. They made their first public appearance over a decade ago, but after a cataclysmic event called The Battle, the public story said they all went dead. When Connor wakes up with a new set, he realizes he can take another shot at that murderer.

In Meta, the teenaged hero narrates his story of finding power, keeping secrets, finding a mentor (a Batman-type), testing his abilities, and confronting threats. Compelled to act when he sees people in trouble, he stumbles through increasingly difficult trials before fighting a creatively powerful villain at the end. His Meta bands don’t give him just one power but a variety of them, including an ability to freeze which comes up conveniently and isn’t mentioned again. The media dub him Omni, because of his multiple abilities, and you’d think new ones would come later, but by the end of the book, you’ll have seen everything he can do. I enjoyed it as a standard origin story.

The Second Wave picks up a few months after the first book with some observations on the practicalities of superness. Many new people have Meta bands now, and many of them don’t want to do hero work. Connor continues to make a name for himself as Omni by spotting these new criminals and taking them down efficiently.

Silver Island, the prison for people who misuse their Meta bands, has been working overtime to lock them away for good. The organization that manages it uses traditional government logic to handle the volatile people they catch and the Metas they work with. Some of them would like to just execute anyone they’ve prejudged as being a Meta who has misused power. We see the same rationale at street level with armed, volunteer SWAT teams patrolling their neighborhoods, looking for criminals who have powered down. The city has become a powder keg, and the good guys may be striking matches.

In this book, some significant events happen off-stage, and when they are revealed through heated accusations, they can come across as fabrications. That was my first impression, since I had nothing with which to verify them. Having gotten into the third book now, I assume the accusations are true, but it seems a bit much to roll with it. The story we have does a good job increasing the danger of villain confrontations, so I wouldn’t call these side events a plot hole.

The biggest deficit to both books is the first-person narrative. The sixteen-year-old narrator sounds realistic, sure, by stating the obvious frequently and overexplaining. Sometimes stating the obvious is played as a joke, but in the context of so much overexplanation, it isn’t funny. But the sequel doesn’t repeat the plot points of the first, such as Kid Super makes dopey mistakes with his new powers but prevails in the end, only to return to dopey mistakes in the next book. This young man is slowly maturing.

Both Meta and The Second Wave are fun books, and I’m already into the third one.

(Photo by Scott Evans on Unsplash)

Authors, Blogs, Socials, Fiction

The Heroes of Your Imagination

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People ask on social media to share gifs of the superhero they imagine themselves to be (when they aren’t fetching coffee for the office team or replying to emails from people who hadn’t read the original email). I don’t join the sharing, because I don’t daydream in previously defined types like this.

Sometimes I imagine catching a falling meteor and it setting my body ablaze, and maybe that’s the signal flare from an extraterrestrial being needing my help. Or I imagine I’m the one who can talk to either large, invisible beasts or poltergeist-like forces nearby, telling them no to tear up the door I’m walking through.

Lately, I’ve taken a different tack. I’ve imagined confronting the bad guys with their full names, telling them they’re on my list, and saying no one would die here except them. If they run, because maybe they shoot at me to no effect, I follow them, like the stalking killer of a horror movie. I’m not so much a superhero in this line of thought as a force of nature, literally an agent or ambassador for the office of Death. No power to use or abuse; only select authority dispassionately exercised.

That sounds like a boring character or a side character at best. But thinking on those lines got me thinking of the flipside, of someone who can heal anything. I’ve imagined putting a hand on the back of someone’s neck and getting an expanding, somewhat undefined sense of their nerves, tissues, and organs, recognizing broken parts or dead cells, and restoring them to life. Sometimes it hurts the healer, sometimes the patient. Sometimes emotional pain rushes out causing both to weep.

There may be a story with a character like that, but more likely it’s fruitless imagination.

Batman: Tim Burton’s Batman was released June 23, 1989. Michael Keaton donned the cowl in that film and again in the sequel, Batman Returns. He and Burton would have returned for a third film, but the studio didn’t like the results of the second well enough to allow it. Now that Keaton is Batman again in the recently released The Flash, Jesse Schedeen tells us what Burton had intended to do in a third film and what the DC Comics series Batman ’89 does to fill in the story.

BTW, it was Keaton who gave us the line, “I’m Batman,” when he was scripted to say, “I am the night,” according to All the Right Movies on Twitter.

Super Movies: What are the best superhero movies, in your opinion? ScreenRant has the original Superman with Christopher Reeve and Blade with Wesley Snipe at the top of their list.

Novels: Superhero novels aren’t big sellers, from what I can tell. I’ve heard writers say the boom in movie sales hasn’t translated into book sales. I heard another writer recommend against any new writer attempting to sell a superhero novel. FWIW, here’s a list of superhero novels that aren’t graphic novels.

Americans: Nabokov on “The Simplicity and Kindness of Americans” and insightful barbers.

Favorite Books: No doubt, you were asking yourself just the other day what would be Umberto Eco’s favorite books. His son, Stephano, provides few titles, including “one of the most beautiful in the world,” Francesco Colonna’s Hypnerotomachia Poliphili

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

Non-fiction, Religion, Uncategorized

‘The Hyperions’ Movie, And Can We Just All Get Along?

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We watched a new superhero comedy/drama called “The Hyperions” over the holiday. It’s the story of a super-enabled family that has broken up, because though they talk about being family, they have been managed more like a business team. Two of the original team members are young adults now, and they want their powers back.

The trailer leaves the impression the movie is pretty darn funny, but it doesn’t quite bring the laughs. It’s funny, just not that funny. Instead it leans into Vista Mandulbaum’s anger against her inventor/showman father, Professor Ruckus Mandulbaum, who seems to have wounded her and damaged the whole team only after she rebels and leaves. That makes this more a feel-good family drama with superhero comedy thrown in.

Cary Elwes carries the story as the absent-minded, perpetually frumpy Professor Mandulbaum. Penelope Mitchell Vista, the first of the Hyperions, conveys most of the story’s emotional weight, and everyone else is fine.

I chaffed most when the characters couldn’t talk honestly with each because of issues. One of my daughters thought the story could have shown us happy family moments in order to help us care about their pain more. Most of the violence is muted and sometimes light-hearted. It’s not really a superhero story. It’s a family-business story about superheros, and overall I enjoyed it.

What else to do we have?

Western Civilization: Susannah Black Roberts responds to an argument in Stephen Wolfe’s book on Christian Nationalism. He says no one seeks the well-being of everyone around; he only seeks that for himself and his own kind. The idea that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness applies to all mankind is not sound. We only seek that for those in our own ethnicity. To support this thesis, Roberts writes, Wolfe cherry picks from a wide range of author in the western tradition. And then she quotes Chesterton.

Once England: Here’s a photo of a map of England showing the monasteries dissolved by King Henry VIII.

Streaming TV: Ted Kluck says The Handmaid’s Tale could be good hate-watching, if you like shows on the preachy-preachy side.

Thomas Jefferson: World News Group’s book of the year is Thomas Kidd’s Thomas Jefferson: A Biography of Spirit and Flesh. “In this biography, Kidd shows us an original thinker attempting to cobble together his own brand of spirituality. Jefferson held unorthodox views long before he wrote the Declaration of Independence, but he wasn’t a Deist who saw God as an uninvolved Creator. He believed in God’s providence, but he saw that providence at work in America’s founding rather than in the saving of souls or the creation of the Church.”

Fiction

Superpower Upends She-Hulk’s Career – Isn’t That Fun?

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We tell superhero stories in a variety of ways. The lone gunslinger fighting rebels and outlaws, hiding his identity to avoid the repercussions. The agent/family man who was targeted but not killed and now brings his particular set of skills back to the field to punish evildoers. The burger maid who delivers warm burgers and fries to your table or car just after you pay for them. Actual heroes walk among us in the stories we tell each other before the boss joins the video conference.

And superhero stories probably have room to play around, find some diversity, and do fun things. Fandom talked to some people in the new show She-Hulk: Attorney at Law about motivations and what’s going to happen. Does this sound like superhero fun to you?

“One of the biggest themes of this first season is about acceptance, because I think it’s very unrealistic to expect a normal average everyday person to suddenly out of the blue get imbued with superpowers that they didn’t ask for [and just embrace it].”

“So much of her identity is based on her career. . . . So the idea of being handed something that changes her life and blows up all her plans is not appealing to her.”

“Suddenly she’s thrust into this whole other identity and people sort of look to her for all the expectations that you put on a superhero. But she really has a full life outside of it.”

People getting superpowers, like, out of the blue, powers they didn’t ask for? You mean, people like Spiderman, Daredevil, Jessica Jones, and even the Hulk himself? Many others have come back from the dead or from fatal injury with powers greater than the average bear, so they should qualify as not asking for power. And many villains have been caught in accidents that only amplified their twisted desires and turned them into presidents of home-owners associations. So stories of unsolicited power leading to a few bumps in the road, yeah, we know a few.

This show appears to be a long But Actually to Uncle Ben’s well-known advice.

Fiction, Reviews

What If Almost Everyone Had Super Abilities Except You?

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One of my daughters has become interested in select manga and anime, and she’s gotten me reading a series of superhero fantasy called My Hero Academia. It may be the number one manga series currently being published. The next book to be released in English is Vol 30, so it’s got legs. Having read the first 10 volumes, each collecting six issues, I’ll vouch for it. It’s top-notch. Author Kohei Horikoshi said he had hoped to get through 10 volumes, and there he was at #10 running serious, long-term story arcs and fans eating it up.

In this world, almost everyone has extraordinary abilities, special powers, or, as Horikoshi calls it, quirks: creating specific elements (I wonder if anyone can brew coffee or tea out of thin air), strength, speed, talking to animals. One of the top 5 heroes can manipulate any organic fiber at will, so garden-variety burglars could find their clothes suddenly binding them to the spot. Of course, most people don’t have superhero-level quirks and others have demented skills that perhaps encourage them to pursue the darkness. The greatest super, the symbol of peace in the world, is called All Might. He beats down bad guys with a smile.

The focus of the story is on Izuku Midoriya, a fifteen-year-old boy who had aspired to be a hero ever since he could think straight. He longed to be a force for good in the world, but he had no quirk. In the first book, Midoriya’s friend, who is something of a jerk and has a powerful quirk, is attacked by a rampaging monster. While everyone else stands by debating how to engage, Midoriya rushes in with little more than a drive to save his friend. This act of heroism provokes All Might to bequeath his power to this boy, and consequently enabling him to try out for admittance to U.A. High school. He has to pass the entrance exam and practical trials, which he does more by strength of character than body.

Horikoshi knows how to write this type of fantasy. His characters are individuals with faceted strengths and weaknesses. They compete with and against each other as students do, trying to gain first place recognition in various areas, and since these are supers-in-training, their competitions involve giant robots, saving mock hostages, and how did those villains get in here?

Horikoshi respects his characters, giving them space to stand out as the story permits, and his main character, Midoriya, has such a natural hero’s heart, he uses him to provoke the others in moving ways. I got teary eyed during the sporting event in which the students of two classes paired up to defeat each other. Midoriya couldn’t just try to outsmart his opponent, a kid named Todoroki who has a difficult relationship with his father. Midoriya kept counseling him during their match, encouraging him to find his own spark and not define himself by his father. The moment Todoroki is pushed over the edge, saved from himself as one of the onlookers put it, is marvelous.

There are a few drawbacks, such as off-color jokes and a couple minor characters, but so far, the writing and artwork have been strong. It’s admirable work.

Fiction, Reviews

Secret Wars, by Jonathan Hickman

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What would you do with omnipotence? What would you do if the universe had collapsed around you, everyone and everything had died, and you were now the omnipotent being who could put something back together again?

That’s the question in the final collection of issues in Jonathan Hickman’s lengthy story of Avengers, Illuminati, alien doomsdays, and multiversal collapse. (Finally, the end! See all previous posts by searching for Jonathan Hickman or other tags to this post.)

Secret Wars and Doctor Doom

At the end of Time Runs Out, the Illuminati team run out of options and devised a lifeboat that they hoped would save enough people to restart the human race, if that chance ever presented itself because they weren’t equipped to recreate anything. The man who was equipped for the task was the Fantastic Four’s arch-rival Victor von Doom. You could say he was in the right place at the right time.

With the help of Doctor Strange and The Molecule Man (who were with him at the aforementioned right time), he pulled together as many fragments of the multiverse as he could or wanted to into a small, planetary reality lamely called Battleworld. What I read in this Secret Wars collection is the metanarrative that holds many other stories together. I had thought to say the world wasn’t filled with battle and you could hardly call what happens here a secret war, much less wars, but I didn’t read the many other issues tied to this this set. Who knows what madness ran around in its diapers over there?

But here Doom, having reconstructed bits and pieces of Earth and the known universe, reigns as a god. He seems to have gotten everything he’s always wanted–worship, unbridled power, and Susan Richards, his enemy’s wife. But after a few years, scientists discover a lifeboat ship and Thanos and his crew are onboard.

The story works, and I’m glad it’s over. The only unsatisfying part of the conclusion for me is the complete avoidance of the rebirth and reconciliation of Captain America and Iron Man. Since so much time was spent on them in the third act, I thought Hickman would bring them into the fourth act. But the story shifted to the Fantastic Four characters, which was compelling on its own, and the inclusion of two Spidermen added a nice spice.

Fiction, Reviews

Avengers: Time Runs Out series, by Jonathan HIckman

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Great! Walk away! It doesn’t matter. You’ll be back.

But make sure when you do come back–because you need me–that it’s on your knees. Both of you! Repentant!

Because I can’t save any of you, unless you realize that you need saving! And that I’m the only one on this entire planet who can do it!

Avengers, Time Runs Out

In my last post on this apocalyptic Avengers series, Captain America went on a series of time jumps that appeared to clarify his moral compass. “I rescue the helpless. I raise up the hopeless.” That’s what he said. That’s what Captain America said.

And someone said to him that Tony Stark had caused a universal load of trouble for everyone and needs to be stopped.

The next set of issues, Avengers: Time Runs Out, Volume One, the story picks up eight months later, so yeah, a few gaps in the story would be fine. But why does Steve Rogers look thirty or forty years older and appear to have handed the mantle of Captain America to Sam Wilson (who is seen more on the character list page than any panel)? How did Thor lose his arm and what is this about being unworthy to wield Mjölnir? Did Bruce Banner take his own multiverse trip and bring back an alternate version of himself? As a casual comics reader, this is off-putting (there are other off-putting things I won’t mention).

The story told over this four volume collection doesn’t follow a linear pattern, which is mostly good. When you have so many characters doing so many things, it’s normal to tell the story slant with some flashbacks and revelations from conversations you didn’t see the first run through the timeline. Threats are reexamined and mysteries explored by characters revisiting what they understand and seeing it in new light. Hickman has an interesting, spralling story here.

But Steve Rogers is labeled the good man and life; Tony Stark is labeled the monster, death. And Rogers spends 90% of his time hunting his former friends and wanting to beat an apology out of Stark for lying about the end of the world. Stark is blamed for corrupting all reality and lying to the other Avengers that they had a chance to save Earth. “You knew we were all going to die!” Rogers charges him. “Say it! You lied about that and everything.” At one point, Rogers says that bringing the Illuminati team to justice was more important than anything else, completely forgetting that they would need to act when another planetary incursion comes. A little later he accused them of doing nothing over the last eight months to save the planet.

Of course, they had been knocking out various impossible things every day before taking an early lunch. That and running from their friends.

The story doesn’t run out at the end of Time Runs Out, Volume Four. No, sir. It just keeps going. Which is good in one sense, because the heroes had run out of options and everything actually dies. But I was left asking where was the man would not entertain necessary evils, who was committed to saving as many people as he could? When they learned of great cosmic destroyers–Rabum Alal, the Ivory Kings, the Mapmakers, and the Black Priests–how could they set that aside to blame everything on Tony Stark?