Superhero prose fiction is a stealth genre in my mind. Over the years there have been a number of book, most famously probably the Wild Cards series, that is mentioned on fantasy and science fiction review sites, but which are part of their own tradition. This isn’t me trying to argue about creating another genre, rather that there are a couple of works that constitute their own branch of fiction and yet nobody looks at it like that.
Probably part to this situation is the fact that even when a writer isn’t doing tie-ins, most prose superhero fiction references Marvel or DC characters. Take for instance Stackpoles IHY..ID, which has a superman and batman analogue (and in a clever twists also an evil batman analogue and in a further twists there’s something going on with the batman analogue). Puma, I think, was a reference to DC’s Wildcat.
It’s hard to argue for superhero prose fiction as its own thing, when it constantly reminds you of its roots in comics. At times these books feel more like an extension of superhero comics, than their own thing. And in a way that’s okay with me, even a good thing. It’s a great starting position, where you can easily communicate the tropes of the genre to everyone who ever saw a superhero movie or read the comics. But the novels have something to offer that few comics do. More complex characterization than is the norm in most superhero comics and characters that are allowed to age and grow. All the stuff that is easier done in prose fiction and without the limitations of an ever-growing continuity.
Stackpole’s novel is a good example for the advantages of prose fiction. The setup with a retiring hero coming back to the city of his hero years (capital city), the thing that superheroing has developed into over the years, it’s a take that feels pretty different from anything you can read in comics. Not really fresh, for that there are too much conventions of the genre stacked upon each other. At times there’s a satiric element to it, but thankfully Stackpole plays the entire story straight and even the overly satirical elements (peanut butter) have their place. The story never really goes to places you don’t expect it to, but as a well-told story in the superhero genre is far above most of the material published in comic form (and since I do like superhero comics, I don’t mean that remark in a degatory way, just that Stackpole’s story is really excellent).
