From Friday’s The Oklahoman:
By Matthew Price
Assistant Features Editor
WORD BALLOONS
Unusual superheroes populate “Who Can Save Us Now?,” a superhero prose anthology from 22 writers, including Will Clarke, Jennifer Weiner and Sam Weller.
The anthology was edited by Owen King (“We’re All in This Together”) and John McNally (“America’s Report Card”).
Heroes include the creepy Silverfish, the cuddly-but-deadly Meerkat and dozens more.
“The idea was that superheroes mean really different things to different people,” King said. “And what we hoped, and we’re very happy with the way it turned out, is that would be reflected in the narratives.”
King’s character in the anthology is the Meerkat, a television producer who gains the powers and abilities of a meerkat.
“I was on the treadmill one day, trying to think about anything other than running,” King said. The show ‘Meerkat Manor,’ which he had been watching regularly, popped into his head.
“All of a sudden I had this idea that it would be funny, and it would also present an interesting conflict, to give a character the powers of a meerkat,” he said. “Because they’re cute and cuddly looking, but if you watch the show, they’re really brutal cold-blooded killers.”
He imagined a character with meerkat abilities who would be associated with a cute animal, and wondered what that would do to the hero’s self-esteem.
“I thought it would be interesting to put a character with self-esteem issues into a city that I thought had some self-esteem issues, which was Cleveland,” he said.
King’s co-editor John McNally created the creepy hero Silverfish for the anthology.
“My interest in superheroes was limited mostly to TV as opposed to comic books, so it wasn’t a genre I felt like I knew intimately,” McNally said, adding that he read “The Dark Knight Returns” and “a few other things in the Frank Miller mode” in college.
“Place is always really important to me in my own fiction, and the first thing I thought was I write a lot about the southwest side of Chicago, which is a very blue-collar place,” McNally said. “And I thought, what if we have a superhero who’s living in kind of a small bungalow on the southwest side of Chicago?”
McNally tells the story of the Silverfish — a hero who takes his namesake seriously, going so far as to survive on hair, glue and other silverfish food. McNally’s tale is told from the point of view of the Silverfish’s butler.
“I have this butler who’s living in small quarters on the southwest side of Chicago with the Silverfish, who’s been called the ‘creepiest superhero,” McNally said. “The title, ‘The Remains of the Night,’ is a play on ‘The Remains of the Day,’ the novel by (Kazuo) Ishiguro from the point of view of the butler.”
Other stories take different points of view, as well: “Girl Reporter” by Stephanie Harrell features the point of view of the “Lois Lane” type character, while other stories feature a sidekick or fan of the superhero of the story.
Both McNally and King (son of writer Stephen King) would like for “Who Can Save Us Now?” to lead to more superhero stories.
“It’s piqued my interest in terms of wanting to do something more,” McNally said. “I felt like there was a certain freedom to that story, that I found myself just having a lot more fun with it.”
King agreed.
“My fondest dream is that this will make enough of an impression that we could do it again,” he said. “I can easily think of another set of writers that I’d love to ask, ‘What’s your superhero?’”
