Before there was WATCHMEN , there was SUPERFOLKS.... David Brinkley used to be a hero, the greatest the world had ever seen--until he retired, got married, moved to the suburbs, and packed on a few extra pounds. Now all the heroes are dead or missing, and his beloved New York is on the edge of chaos. It's up to Brinkley to come to the rescue, but he's in the midst of a serious mid-life crisis--his superpowers are failing him. At long last this classic satire that inspired comic books like Watchmen and Miracleman is back in print. It's a hilarious thriller that digs deep into the American psyche. “What if you were a superhero going through a mid-life crisis? Your tights are in a bunch. You've lost your hair. Your powers have a mind of their own... You'll never look at superheroes the same way again!” ―Stan Lee, comic legend and creator of Spiderman, X-Men, and The Fantastic Four “What Robert Mayer has done, and done with real aplomb, is carry off a smart satire and a very funny novel while at the same time caring enough about his characters that the reader's investment is respected and paid dividends. Without being derivative, it reminds me of early Vonnegut--Vonnegut through Cat's Cradle--as well as the first couple of the Hitchhiker's Guide. It's always satisfying when an influential but neglected work--in any genre, in any field--is "rediscovered" and given its proper credit.” ―Tom de Haven, author of Funny Papers, Derby Dugan's Depression Funnies, and Dugan Under Ground “ Superfolks is an irreverent look behind the mask of superheroes wrapped up in a cutting lampoon of late 70's attitudes.” ―Paul Dini, writer and producer of Batman: The Animated Series “ Superfolks was the book that showed me you could do more with superheroes than adolescent power fantasies. Without Superfolks I doubt there'd have been an Astro City.” ―Kurt Busiek, Multiple Eisner Award-Winning Creator of Astro City “...sharp, funny, and ultimately moving, with a plot that could be the R-rated version of the current hit movie The Incredibles... a cult novel that inspired a generation of comic book writers and anticipated books like The Fortress of Solitude and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. ” ― Kirkus “Infectiously funny.” ― Los Angeles Magazine “It is gorgeous. It is splendid. It is funny as hell... He writes like an angel.” ― Newsday Robert Mayer is the award-winning author of In the Name of Emmett Till: How the Children of the Mississippi Freedom Struggle Showed Us Tomorrow and When the Children Marched: The Birmingham Civil Rights Movement. He has written for Cobblestone Magazine , Social Education, Magazine of History, and The Social Studies. Mayer was a teacher for forty-one years and won the Christian R. and Mary F. Lindback Foundation Award for Distinguished Teaching in 2009. Now retired, he continues to co-teach a course entitled “The Civil Rights Movement and the Moral Life”, as well as tutor eighth graders at a local middle school. Mayer has been an active presence at conferences, speaking at the National Council for the Social Studies and the American Educational Research Association annual conferences, as well as regional conferences. Superfolks By Robert Mayer St. Martin's Griffin Copyright © 2005 Robert Mayer All right reserved. ISBN: 9780312339920 BEFORE THERE WAS WATCHMEN, there was SUPERFOLKS. BEFORE THE INCREDIBLES, there was SUPERFOLKS. BEFORE DICK CHENEY, there was SUPERFOLKS. Introduction I’d been writing comics for money for more than ten years when I first heard about this mythical, inspirational ‘Superfolks’ book but none of the local stores knew what I was talking about when I went looking for the damned, elusive thing. In the end, someone finally palmed me a battered US paperback edition, with a cover painting of a morose, chubby man in spandex. There he was, slumped by a miserable yellow table light, as if all wonder, all hope and joy had been leached from his useless life. It didn’t look like much but I’d heard good things and the idea of a prose writer tackling superhero comic ‘themes’ in a semi-serious manner was enough of a novelty for me to give it a go. Behind the unpromising pulp facade, I was happy to uncover some of the aboriginal roots nourishing the 80s ‘adult’ superhero comic boom. I’ve always enjoyed tracking the developing fashions and styles of comic book writing and art across our branching tree of influences and progenitors, and in ‘Superfolks’ I’d found a barely-acknowledged contribution to the vivid and explosive evolution of the ‘mature’ superhero story which characterised the 80s and 90s. Here too, by extension, can be found one of the throbbing taproots of the latest vogue for black-humoured, violent and controversial cape dramas. In his bittersweet portrayal of the middle-aged Captain Mantra, with that half-remembered magic word always hovering somewhere on the tip of his tongue, I could see that Mayer had prefigured the