Under the Cape: An Anthology of Superhero Romance, Rachel Kenley (ed.), Riverdale Avenue Books, 2020, 320 pp., $17. http://www.riverdaleavebooks.com
From the Amazon description: Super speed, incredible strength, the ability to fly, throw fire, read minds or change forms. What superpower would you choose if you could? Would you be the hero or the villain? And how would it affect your relationships? From heat levels mild to wild, these authors explore the universal truths of love and romance and the happy endings we all desire.The challenge of connection, secrets, and the murky line between good and evil are explored in this collection of 11 original romances by:
-Kim Strattford – Flying Fast, Falling Hard (M/F)
-E.D. Gonzalez – Where There’s Smoke (M/M)
-Naomi Hinchen – The Trust Paradox (M/F)
-Elizabeth Schechter – Time for No Mercy (F/F)
-David Valentin -No Words Needed (M/M)
-Stella B. James – Swiftly In Love (M/F)
-Julie Behrens – Supergay (F/F)
-Christopher Peruzzi -The Little Push (M/F)
-Louisa Bacio – Foolproof (F/F)
-Rachel Kenley – Just Be Yourself (M/F)
-Austin Worley – Love, Law and the Whippoorwill (F/F)
When I was a kid in the 1970s, I really wanted superhero prose, but there wasn't much to be had - a couple of Batman tv series tie-ins done in the '60s, some Superman movie novels by Elliot S! Maggin, and a short-lived line of Marvel novels. The main way to get longer super-heroic stories was to read the pulps that were being reprinted at the time - the Avenger, Doc Savage (with covers by James Bama) and The Shadow (covers by Steranko), but these pulp heroes weren't quite the same as the later comic book heroes. The desire for longer stories, which lasted more than 15 minutes to read, and could give more backstory than a comic, was strong for me.
Now, Marvel and DC have regularly published novels about their characters, and many other people have written stories about generic heroes. In fact, Washington's Tom King got his start that way with his 2012 novel A Once Crowded Sky.
The stories are generally competent, although none of them particularly stood out for me. I just enjoyed them as a light fiction read. The heroes' powers and names are often secondary to the plot, as expected, and there's plenty of hero-villain cross-romance, also as expected.
This anthology is probably a bit of a hodgepodge as far as finding an audience, due to its laudable attempt at diversity. As you can see above, the tales vary between hetero- and homosexual, with 5 hetero, 4 lesbian and 2 male stories. The stories are further divided into "sweet" (no sex) and "heat" (explicit sex). I have no idea how romance audiences select their books, but there might not be enough specific content here for anyone but the devoted superhero fan.
Speaking of the devoted superhero fan, Peruzzi's The Little Push does a deep dive into comics fandom and the ending is almost certainly incomprehensible to anyone who doesn't map his Mistress Marvella and Captain Photon onto Shazam-powered Mary Marvel (Fawcett / DC Comics) and Captain Marvel (the original Marvel Comics version). Both of those characters ended up with a superhero form bonded to a human form.
In conclusion, I enjoyed this book for what it was. Other reader's mileage will certainly vary. I appreciate the publisher's agent providing a free copy for me to review.
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