There has been something of a boom era for superhero-oriented prose ever since Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (2000) both gave the genre legitimacy and established its commercial potential. Since then, books like Austin Grossman’s Soon I Will Be Invincible and Minister Faust’s From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain have also showed promise for the long-form, picture-free format to tell innovative superhero stories with the substance of the best of other genre fiction.
Given the proliferation and success of superhero-themed novels, books like Who Can Save Us Now?, a hefty anthology of 22 short stories, were probably inevitable. The authors represent a range of approaches toward and abilities with the genre. Some are clearly talented writers who simply aren’t adept at writing about superheroes and their milieus. The overall experience is like grading an advanced composition class assignment, with several unqualified successes, mostly solid efforts from capable writers, and a few that will squeak by with a C.
Rather than trying to convey traditional comic book action, most of the stories, wisely, concentrate on the inner lives of the heroes and those around them, like the best character study comics (Astro City and Marvels, for instance). A number of the stories, in fact, are redolent of the tone and sophisticated subjects of some contemporary comics. “The Meerkat,” by anthology co-editor Owen King, could have been an X-Men story from Marvel’s defunct Epic mature reader imprint. With its goth overtones and the “frail, black bundle” of the title character, J. Robert Lennon's “The Rememberer” reads as if it could be a try-out for Vertigo, DC’s mature reader line. Not to suggest they are derivative, but this familiarity should make a number of these stories appealing to the same audience that made some mature comic titles so successful.
In the best stories of Who Can Save Us..., the superpowers may not be entirely plausible, but their consequences are real and, often, tragic. The book’s most harrowing story, Scott Snyder's “The Thirteenth Egg,” looks at the mental and physical toll of wielding atomic-spawned powers (a superhero staple) and how those powers might come to play in adult sexual competition. “The Pentecostal Home for Flying Children,” by Will Clarke, deals comically and tragically with the drawbacks of enhanced abilities, for everyone involved, especially the literal red-headed (half-alien) stepchildren cursed with them.
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