Review: Paragons: An Anthology of Superheroes

Russell Newquist of Silver Empire was so good as to send me a review copy of Paragons: An Anthology of Superheroes which I've been enjoying very much this past week. Thirteen tales of original superheroes make up the collection, exploring the theme of heroic adventures with fantastic powers.

There’s a wide variety of length and tone here. Steve Beaulieu’s “Medusa” is a good choice to introduce the anthology, being about a 1000-word short look at a superheroine’s isolation, followed by what I think must be the longest one in the collection, Kai Wai Cheah’s “Nightstick”, an intricate novella of a dark superhero fighting to protect his city in a near-future where many people, both good guys and bad, had suddenly acquired extraordinary powers.

Morgon Newquist, who also edited the book, wrote “Blackout”, which delves into the characters of two heroes: the optimistic and candid Jameson Hirsch, and his more brooding and tormented friend, Michael Turner, in an introduction that for me harkened back to G. K. Chesterton’s stories of Father Brown and his frenemy, Flambeau. The subtitle is “A Serenity City Story,” which makes me hope to see much more of their interactions with each other—and the still-mysterious Rhiannon Argall, for whose love they are rivals.

Jon Mollison’s knack for stories of high adventure with heroes motivated by deep family love comes through again in “Like Father”. Dawn Witzke’s “Deadly Calm Returns” takes a lighter look at a superhero’s family life and had the people in the donut shop where I read it wondering, I’m sure, why that fellow kept bursting into laughter. Declan Finn’s “Weather Witch” has his trademark well-told fantasy action. It's one of the few "origin stories" in this collection, and one of the few not set in a city.

If "Nightstick" had a darkness to it that reminded me of Batman, "Someone is Aiming for You" by J. D. Cowan made me think of The Shadow (though I blush to admit I still only know that series through the Alec Baldwin movie): a dark drama between good and evil metaphysical forces. The final story in the book, "Stalina" by Sam Kepfield, tells of a Khruschev-era idealistic Russian superwoman, devoted to Truth, Justice, and the Soviet Way...like many of the stories here that seem to cry out for sequels, "Stalina" made me want to read more about her.

A lot of these stories could be turned into series, and I hope at least some of them will be. I found Paragons to be a terrific read, and I'll be looking for more.