I don't read a ton of fiction, but I took The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay on vacation a while ago. It's about a pair of cousins trying to market a superhero comic in New York City during and after World War II, and there's all these great passages about how they kept having to change the protagonist's powers up and down to make the stories work. After the main character has punched out Hitler... well, they still need to sell the line (and the radio show, and...), so they start inventing bigger and more ridiculous Nazi villains for their hero, who starts out as a magician/escape artist with a James Bond kind of flair.... and eventually is picking up tanks and throwing them at Nazi robots.... and then his powers come back down when the authors want to tell a different kind of story (which would be over in 2 pages if the hero could just crush everything in his path), etc. All sorts of discussion about what makes a "good" hero, what your hero can and can't do, etc.

I don't know much about the history of comic books in general, but Chabon makes it work for non-fans. Quick pace, lots of great local detail, and a great job of capturing the feel of old-timey radio shows, etc. Fun read.


valguarnera@carrionfields.com