After my disappointment with my previous book, I wanted my next book to be something I like. I’ve had Jackie Kessler and Caitlin Kittredge’s Black and White on my shelf for a while. I’m a sucker for superheroes (check out what I thought of Hero and Superpowers), so this would be a pretty good bet. And I liked it!

Callie Iridium Bradford and Joanie Jet Greene are teens in the superhero boarding school run by CorpCo, which controls pretty much everything to do with extrahumans, as the authors name those with superpowers. Both have a troubled background. Iridium’s father went rabid, or became a villain. Jet’s father used his shadow power to kill her mother. Many expect the two adolescents to follow in their fathers’ footsteps.

The story is told in alternating chapters, one in the present day five years after graduation followed by one from academy days. We know Iridium has gone rabid. She more or less runs a section of New Chicago as a criminal of the Robin Hood sort, but also allowing lesser criminals to base themselves in her area as well, so long as they don’t get too bloodthirsty. Jet is the face of the Squadron, CorpCo’s superhero fighting group. As the novel opens, Jet interrupts the ceremony where she’s about to receive a civic award to fight and attempt to capture Iridium in the middle of a digichip heist.

I liked the novel for a lot of reasons. First, super powers! Not a particularly wide range of them get too much ink, but quite a few do make an appearance. Second, this book passes the Bechdel test with flying colors. This is not about the boys. I can’t recall either girl’s figure getting described even. Third, it’s really fun to discover how the girls relationship came to be and fell apart as their story lines intersect in multiple places. They are both a mixture of good intentions and youthful defects. Lastly, it’s really well paced. It’s not action action action all the time, but there is movement in the story in every chapter and subsection. Nothing feels like filler at all.

A few bad things didn’t keep me from enjoying the novel. Because of it’s hard focus on adolescents (even the 20 something versions of the girls act like high schoolers) it reads like a young adult novel. That isn’t bad exactly, but not what I was expecting. Maybe a different bookstore shelves it in Y.A., but the U.W. Bookstore where I picked it up had it in regular S.F., so I had somewhat different expectations. And second, the plot is extremely obvious. The main bad guy is telegraphed from the beginning. Characters that fill other roles are as well. Not everything is clear, but the discerning reader knows who will be on which side fairly early. And lastly, the secondary characters mostly seemed to each exist only for the duration of one plot twist, so they were talking objects rather than characters.

Solidly fun with a few writing flaws that I was mostly able to ignore as I was reading.

A few other blogged discussions:

• Groovy Age of Horror (about Black and White and its sequel)
• Strange Visitor
• Preternatural Reviews

Title: Black and White
Author: Jackie Kessler, Caitlin Kittredge
Cover creator: Jamie S. Warren (designer), Juda Tverski (artist)
Series: The Icarus Project; 1
Imprint / publisher: Ballantine / Random House
Format: Paperback
Length: 452 p.
Publication date: June 2009
ISBN-13: 978-0-553-38631-8

Another Wiscon dealer room purchase. This time I bought the book at the Small Beer Press table, even though the book isn’t published by Small Beer Press. Manning the booth was David Schwartz himself, though I didn’t realize it until I came back to pick up my purchase later. I guess he got to sell his book in return for slave labor.

Superpowers was nominated for a Nebula, and deservedly so, though it didn’t win. It’s a realistic take on superheroes, focusing on the personal. In the story, having super abilities isn’t a boon. The five main characters were all richly conceived. I disagree with some reviewers who took issue with the number and quality of secondary characters. I thought they added quite a bit to the story. Unlike a lot of superhero fiction, the conflict is primarily that of self-doubt and that doubt is not caused by facing a nemesis. It’s also a pretty quick read.

Charlie and Jack invite their downstairs neighbors, fellow University of Wisconsin Madison students Caroline, Harriet and Mary Beth, to a party. The vague purpose is to get laid, but a flash of light in the sky gives all of them superpowers. The young people wake up the next morning and discover their new abilities. Charlie can hear people’s thoughts, Jack has superspeed, Mary Beth has strength, Harriet can turn invisible, and Caroline can fly.

When I was in elementary school, I used to make-believe I had super-vision. Walking to school along 3rd Avenue in what is now Shoreline, I convinced myself I could see details on 195th Street all the way from Richmond Beach Road a half mile to the south. Oh, how I wanted superhuman abilities! What could be bad about having powers?

The students in Superpowers struggle to cope, even from the beginning. In addition, to standard learning my powers difficulties, all have different ideas on what to do with them. For instance, Caroline tries to hide her flying from her fellow superfriends, even. She likes the solitude and serenity she gets floating above the Earth. She has to be dragged into the nascent crime-fighting group, the All-Stars.

The biggest issue for all of them are their secret identities. They want to maintain real lives while also being superheroes. A conspiracy is pretty hard to maintain though. People such as family members, co-workers, roommates, and a campus underground newspaper all start to figure it out. I liked following the interactions between the All-Stars and others.

The students are all pretty normal middle-class type people. That’s not too out of place for something set in Madison, Wisconsin, but it does make them all seem fairly similar. Personality-wise, they aren’t. But in terms of their situations, they feel sort of cookie-cutter. I do wish there were a little more diversity in their economic classes, or their family background, or even the languages they spoke. Several secondary characters have different backgrounds. One of my favorite interactions was between Caroline and a man she thinks is trying to kill himself. Turns out he’s José the dishwasher at the restaurant where she works and hasn’t noticed him before. Hispanic servants just blend in when you are white and self-involved like Caroline. The interactions with these characters of different backgrounds sparked the most interesting developments. I’d love to see what Schwartz could do if he made that the focus of a novel, because I think he’d do a really good job with it.

Anyhow, for a fairly small investment of time because it’s an easy read, it’s a fairly substantial story.

A few other blogged reviews:

• Seen, Read and Heard
• Andrew Wheeler at ComicMix
• Torque Control
• The Book Swede
• Electronic Cerebrectomy
• Once Upon a Bookshelf
• Calico Reaction

Title: Superpowers
Author: David J. Schwartz
Cover creator: Norm Breyfogle (illustrator) / Si Scott (title designer)
Imprint / publisher: Vintage UK
Format: Paperback
Length: 376 p.
Publication date: June 2008
ISBN-13: 978-0-099-51610-1
Subject: College students — Fiction
Subject: Heroes — Fiction

My friend Kim attended WisCon this year. WisCon is a feminist S.F. convention. As steady followers of this blog may have picked up, feminism has been a minor theme of mine this year. Kim returned from the conference with a recommendation to read Perry Moore’s Hero. Kim read it, then lent her copy to me so that she could get my opinion. At no point has Kim told me what she thought of it, I presume so that my impressions would not be tainted.

So here’s the summary. I thought this to be fun, escapist fantasy at the core. It’s not specifically a feminist work. It’s a gay male superhero coming of age novel. It’s full of teenage angst. I can’t say if it’s true to the experience of a closeted gay teen coming out since I’m straight. It does seem exaggerated, but that’s to be expected in a superhero novel, even more so in a young adult novel. Thom Creed is a likable protagonist, somewhat mixed up but personable. Overall I’d recommend it.

I bought lots of comic books as a teen. I would take the money mom gave me for the bus and buy my stash, leaving me just enough to get to and from school if I creatively cheated King County Metro. Once downtown, my time was spent at Time Travelers and Golden Age Collectibles reading the latest issues of all the Marvel series. You could find me squinting as I walked the streets, imagining that my view a quarter mile away was so much better than anyone else and I was developing super-vision. Not only did thoughts of powers give me hope from (what I thought was) a dismal life, some of the female characters were fine objects of desire. I’ve never been particularly fond of the big-bosomed Amazons that were most female superheroes. I rather preferred the quiet Kitty Pryde (though perhaps my memory of her is confused).

If I were gay, I could easily seem myself as Thom Creed in Perry Moore’s novel. Blond Uberman in a skin-tight costume would be just as enticing as Ms. Pryde was for me. Thom Creed gets to imagine Uberman to fit his fantasies exactly. The superhero is a perfect canvas.

I do wish there were some normal people in the story. I don’t mean without superpowers. I’m fine with everyone being able to do something extraordinary. I mean that every character that has any screen time is neurotic or dysfunctional. At times it feels like a bad sitcom or a Woody Allen movie.

Basic story is this: Thom Creed can heal himself. He’s just learning how to do this at the beginning of the book. He lives with his dad, the former Major Might, in disgrace after his father botched a rescue years ago. Mom disappeared, literally. She can turn invisible and left dad. Thom’s other secret is that he’s gay. Dad is homophobic, so when Thom imagines that Dad has found a beat-off picture on the family computer and it’s male, he’s done for. Before that happens, he packs his stuff and runs away. Super-villains attack his bus coincidentally, and when the League saves the day, Thom’s chance encounter with them garners him a try-out. Powers and the League and pretty much anything having to do with super-powers is a taboo subject in the Creed household. So now Thom has a third secret. Hard to battle super-villains and keep it a secret though. When will dad find out? What will happen when he does? And will it be in the middle of Thom’s fight with Dr. Octopus?

The biggest part of the story is Thom’s relationship with his father. He wants to impress Dad, and so he plays hard. He works extra jobs to supplement Dad’s income. But he’s also quite afraid of Hal Creed too. Afraid not just of not impressing Dad, but that Hal’s love is fragile. And frankly, Hal gives son Thom good reason to be afraid. While he shows up at every one of Thom’s basketball games, he tells his son nothing of his own life. And there’s no support from dad when Thom gets trashed for being a suspected homosexual. *minor spoiler* When Thom gets outed, Hal does everything short of kicking his son out of the house. Probably common for gay men when they come out. But I am a little disappointed that attaining dad’s favor and rapprochement between the two is a goal. Hal should be begging his son’s forgiveness. I read where Hal Creed was base on Perry Moore’s own father. Perhaps Moore wanted this to be similar to his own relationship. Perhaps that would have just made it cliche, to have Dad learn he was wrong by the end of the book. It seemed like Hal never gave up his homophobia, even with respect to his own son. Thom’s continued groveling before his father, while understandable, was irritating. But then, I’m not a forgive and forget type.

There are some major plot holes and logic fails in the book, but that’s to be expected whenever you’re talking about superheroes. Just exactly how does the team manage to appear in the right spot for battle right when needed? And why does the bad guy bother with all the subterfuge? However, like a superhero movie the main focus is appropriate on the fight scenes. How you get there isn’t quite as important.

The story isn’t overt with any political message. Thom Creed experiences some pretty awful homophobia in the book. There’s no moralizing though about how this is wrong. It’s just presented as the awful experience that it must be. I think the message is more subtle. Substitute a woman in for Thom Creed’s unrequited love interest and make him straight and there would be little difference between him and me. Cause there really isn’t much difference. Other than the superpowers.

Title: Hero
Author: Perry Moore
Cover creator: Chip Kidd (designer)
Imprint / publisher: Hyperion / Disney
Format: Hardcover
Length: 428 p.
Publication date: 2007
ISBN-10: 1-4231-0195-2
ISBN-13: 978-1-4231-0195-6