Anyone like superheros?

I personally love superheroes. I'm a big comic book fan, but since my drawings should be considered crimes against humanity, I simply write my ideas novel style. None of my ideas have really come to fruition as much as yours has though! It sounds really fun. I wish you luck with it.

I'm not actually a comics person -- yet -- it's more because I'm not sure where to start than because I don't like them -- but I know there are superhero novels out there, and I hope to write one this year for NaNo. Mine is more of a the-dangers-of-superpowered-people-acting-like-normal-idiots kind of story, with an intensely immature heroine.

In terms of published novels: at the moment, I have Soon I Will Be Invincible on my shelf, waiting to be read. It's more of a supervillain book, so I'm told, but there it is. And an author named Jennifer Estep writes a series of superhero romance novels. (Disclaimer: I have no idea how good they are, because I haven't read them, but they sound campy in a good way, and I like that.)

I love superheroes and superhero stores. I don't write novels about them, but I would love to see some written about superheroes. I don't really enjoy comic books very much.

i've sort of begun to become interested in superheroes recently. my nano invovles a boy who suddenly gains random super powers. i thought they were funny, so i'll share them for your enjoyment:

flying
telling time without sun or moon or stars or sundial or sand timer or digital or analog clock or anything else that may help tell time.
always having cough drops in his pocket, even when he has no pockets. some explode, some simply calm throats. it’s hard to tell the difference, but it’s important to know the difference before you suck one.
ability to call a friend to his aid at any time. calls some friends out of strange situations. one may arrive in pyjamas, another may arrive in heels when needed to run fast.
incredible speed, but only when walking on his hands. must learn to walk on hands before he can make use of this skill.

that's copied direct from my notes, so excuse the shocking lack of grammar.

your superhero story sounds cool, leah. i like!

Thanks. I'm glad to hear that superhero novels have been done before. Hopefully that means I can adequately desribe the doings of superheros without the use of pictures.

And your ideas are cool too, oh irish one! I will make sure to check your Novel Excerpt once november comes around!

I'm writing one about a cyborg superhero in the vein of the japanese Kamen Rider series. Mad Science, Evil organizations, Rival Heroes, and Lobsters with Chainsaws instead of claws! Wooyah!

Nanon 07; Red Eye Coyote

thanks for the encouragment, leah! i thought it sounded kinda dumb, but if you're willing to read my excerpt, i'll be sure to post something interesting!

i'll read yours!

the_irish_one

edited to add: lobsters with chainsaws? scariness...

In the '60s and '70s, there were more than a handful of paperbacks with some of the big names (Supes, Batman, Spidey, Captain America, FF and the Avengers, at the very least). Recently, I've seen novelizations (often by the original comic scribes) of some of the big events (Crisis on Infinite Earths (Wolfman), Infinite Crisis (Johns), etc.) and noticed an Ultimates novel.

Now, I've read none of them, though I've been tempted as a wannabe comic creator with no drawing skills.

Sigh …

There are quite a few recent comic book novelizations out in addition to the ones you've mentioned. I've read some Spider-man ones and I have one about Flash that I've been meaning to get to. There's an entire Justice League series, each of them based on a character. I think that a lot of the writers do that because they can't use those characters in the comics they write. I know that Devin Grayson wrote a Batman/Green Arrow crossover featuring their adult sidekicks called Inheritance that has been called altogether creepy and wonderfully slashy beyond measure. It's probably an outlet for them to write things that could never make it into the comics for fear of lynching mobs...

I, personally, LOVE superheros! I'm a huge comic book fan, but I'd love to read a novel about them too =] I don't think that there are enough superhero novels out there, really. Good luck, your story sounds really interesting.

I adore supers! Even though I don't have many comics (*grumblerepressiveparentsmumble*), I still love reading about them and seeing scans online. A novel would be most excellent.

I love superheroes and comics both and actually did my Nano last year about superheroes. It was from the perspective of a very sarcastic and cynical ex-sidekick and having to save his old super from a mysterious organization. I liked writing it alot but was so busy I've never gotten a chance to finish it

Just to throw this out there, the novel "Soon I will become invincible" is a fun story told from the super villain mad scientist point of view. Great fun, reasonably well done, and definitely a superhero novel.

my friend told me yesterday about a novel called "it's superman", but i don't know anything else about it.

------------
SF 07: Wind Machine (complete)
Nano 06: Finders Key-pers (winner)
Nano 05: Dixie Strange and the Infinite Staircase
Nano 04: World of Lies (winner) (complete)
Nano 03: Lockdown (winner)

i really like comics so i guess yeah i like superheros comes with the territory, green lanterns the best by far hahaha

Hi, How Are You?

I like superheros! I'm also trying my hand at writing a superhero novel, but with a few twists. Hopefully, it'll turn out... entertaining. *grins*

I found this forum through the Other Genre forum. This must be the place for superhero novelists, at least according to what I've read so far.

I have never written about supers nor do I read comic books. However, I have enjoyed several superhero movies. I like the mysteriousness of how superheroes came to be and how they deal with their supernatural abilities. Usually, their super powers are the result of accidents, but not always, at least from what I've seen.

What I wrote in the Other Genre forum was that my main character will be an average Joe turned superhero. His superhuman powers came as a result of an accident, or stupidity on his part. He thought it was a temporary thing, but realized it wasn't going away. It became his everyday reality, using it for good and taking on bad guys, of course, but especially a supervillain. He experiences undue stress as a result of the changes to his body and mind.

To escape from his new stressful reality, he pursues a career that most of us would think of as an exotic form of entertainment. It is his stress release, but turns out to be, coincidentally, another stage in which to encounter his supervillain enemy.

His reality is our fantasy and his fantasy is what we would see as reality. I think I could make it work. Now all I need is time. Hopefully, November will be the time I need to get a good jump on this story.

What do you think?

Smarker

I'll be honest and say I jumped down a little bit to respond to the first comment on here. I was just wondering if the reason for the names you have listed is because they appear to be the first ones (supers) ever or what?

If we ARE the future of the world, then what comes after us?

I just love superheroes to death; so yes, I watch Heroes on NBC.

I wrote a whole novel- 75,000 odd words- this year centering on superheroes. I had a giant, black guy reminiscent of the Hulk as the main character, a blind emo girl who was psychic and could see through other people's eyes, a blonde chick with telekinetic abilities, an invisible girl who was really shy but came to terms with herself by the end, and a typical "flying with super strength" dude added in for classic cliche-ness.

Superhero stories are awesome, but you need to be able to make your characters unique and un-cliched. For more typical powers, give the character something about them that sets them apart- like making the psychic chick blind.

The most important part about writing a superhero story is to know when to call it quits for power ability. In other words, don't make your telekinetic person so powerful they can destroy the world like in X-men 3- lousy movie. The first X-men movies were good because they knew how to limit powers, the first being better than the second.

Anyway, good luck.

(\ /) The Bunny
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Remember, to fear death is to limit life.

I fully agree about limited power abilities. The most powerful of my seven Septriones is Acid, who can form two-foot blades made of acid sticking out from his fists. None of the other six could kill anyone with their powers.

I know flying is a really common power. (I'm sure it would be the most fun to play with.) But I tried to make Eagle not cliche. His arms turn into wings, meaning he can fly. That would look different because he cannot use his arms and his wings at the same time.

I made one thing really unique in my superhero novel. The setting. I've read about several supers in New York and some in made up cities (Gotham and Metropolis). I finally decided to place my seven supers in the capitol city of HAWAII. As far as I know, no other superheros or supervillians lived in Hawaii. (If you do know of some, tell me.)

I'm writing a superhero novel too! Whoohoo!

It also happens to be a war story.

I'm toying with the idea of a soldier fighting in a conflict a few years down the road (nothing currently ongoing...) slowly discovering that she (yeah, I'm also covering women in the military) has powers. It always kind of bothered me that we don't see more superheroes joining the armed forces. Except for Captain America of course. Just seems like a natural step to take for me honestly.

Thinking that she is going to have a fiarly traditional mix of powers, strength, some speed (not Flash speed), and some kind of limited invulnerability (maybe not so limited, I don't know how that's going to fall out yet). Her powers are going to come and go as she learns how to develop and use them, all the while this conflict is raging around her. I want this to be gritty and personal, because for my money the best superhero stories aren't about people with amazing powers, but people with amazing problems to overcome.

Our heroine's problem just happens to be three other supers who have decided to model themselves after the four horsemen of the apocolypse. They're looking for their fourth and have involved themselves in the war looking for her.

Carnage ensues.

I imagine that the three villains are going to have powers suitable to their adopted identities as Death, Disease and Famine (Those are three of the horsemen right? I know one of them is War...), but they will be used to their powers and will know how to use them.

This is shaping up to be a lot of fun!

Yours sounds really cool! (And yeah, you've got the Four Horsemen right, although I had to remember why I was remembering Pollution instead of Pestilence. I learned everything I know about the New Testament from the Weekly World News and Good Omens.) I should probably do more worldbuilding, but in my superhero!world, there are a lot of supers who served in the armed forces; after major wars there tends to be an upswing in supervillains as supers come back to civilization with severe shellshock.

(Which raises another question; how is everybody dealing with how these powers exist and how the world is different? At the moment I'm kind of meh about my handwavy "well science works differently!" and I'm trying to work out how the Cold War would have played out in a world where radiation might actually give you superpowers.)

Personally, I'm not going to explain it. I'd rather leave it as an unknown at this point. Something may come to me while I'm writing though but if I do I'd like to stay away from radiation and/or government experimentation. "Just 'cause," seems fine for now! =)

And yeah, Good Omens rocks.

I love superheroes to death, and one of the ideas I'm toying with this year does, in fact, involve them. Sadly, every time I try to flesh the story out... I discover that this one idea keeps treading along the vein of the TV show Heroes. While I'm a hardcore fan of the show, I keep feeling guilty that my idea feels so similar to the show's premise ( people discovering they have superpowers ) and become discouraged from using it.

So I suppose I need a fair bit of help to resolve this issue! :(

Well, Tetra, the the problems associated with people discovering they have powers is not something unique to Heroes. The best X-men stories were about people having trouble coping with their newfound abilities and then fighting to maintain their humanity or letting go an realizing that is who they are. Write a story about people and the differences will shine through.

I'm going to write about superhumans...I don't think many of them would like to be called heros...something happens and changes some people, and the story will be about that...about what will happen to the world that is thrown into chaos...

anyway, i was afraid too, that it's overdone on tv/movies/comic books and that it wouldn't translate well into novel format. Then i realized that IVE never made a tv show/movie/comic book, so it'll be fresh from me...hopefully a new perspective.

Another superhero fan here! This'll be my first time writing a story involving them--odd, really, considering what a total comics geek I am--and I've already had SO much fun thinking up the powers and Evil Organizations. :)

I understand what you're saying, and I agree with you 100%. It's just that my biggest fear is that I'm flat-out ripping something off; in this case, it would be Heroes. But I'm beginning to take the necessary steps to do as you say: write a story about people.

>] One of my likely novel-possibilities for NaNo this year is a story about a group of superVILLAINS. I think it's going to be a lot of fun. Super-folks are NOT confined to comic books, that's for sure.

:D Hurrah for super-people stories!

-Daizey

Superfolk often work best in Comics because comics have the advantage of being able to show, visually, exactly what they're doing which often takes longer in writing, plus the genre allows for a little more suspension of disbelief than Novels tend to do (or perhaps that just me).

I'm writing about superfolks. At University. So not only do they have to save the world (well, more save the people that got them into this mes to begin with) they have essay deadlines as well.

I'm describing it to friends as a cross between brideshead revisited, Half Life and X-men. God, i hope it reads well. :)