Look! Up In the Sky!

I'm pleased to announce today that the MONSTER anthology (seriously, this thing is gargantuan) Superhero Monster Hunter: The Good Fight is now live on Amazon from the fine folks at Emby Press! Right now, you can feast your eyes on the digital copy, with a hard copy soon on the horizon.

An original pic of Light Sphere I drew back in '97, I think

My short story "Red Fog" is included in this mammoth text, featuring my own superhero creation Light Sphere. I've spoken about Light Sphere and his creation before on this very blog, but I created the character way back in junior high in the early '90s when the X-Men were really cooking. Seriously, the comics were back in vogue and there was the new FOX cartoon (which totally blew my mind). "Mutants" were all the rage and I jumped in with my own variation on the concept, but I wanted something with a bit of a twist. In Light Sphere, I created a character whose greatest strength was his greatest weakness--he had the ability to blast energy from his hands, but to do so without wearing these special mechanized gauntlets, he'd fry his arms to crispy husks. It's a severe limitation and, I thought, would make for an interesting predicament. Or, at least I did when I was thirteen.

I wrote and drew (re: traced) two whole issues of Light Sphere back in ninth grade or so, in the back of my classrooms while I was supposed to be learning something. Then, after that, Light Sphere got stuffed in a shelf and forgotten until about 2012 when I resurrected him, gave him a fresh polish, and included him in my multidimensional cosmic horror romp Rift Jump. He showed up to duke it out with my main protagonist in that book (another comic book character I created later in high school--Michael Morrison) and, like any good superhero yarn, the two slugged it out before becoming friends and allies.

Since then, I've had fun crafting new stories for Light Sphere. Late last year he tangled with a very strange lycanthrope in Lion's Share Press' anthology Metahumans vs Robots. Most recently, Light Sphere made a return in my brand new novel Rift Jump II: Sara's Song!

Needless to say, the guy's making the rounds and it's been a real blast playing with this character after so long and telling his stories after all these years. As for "Red Fog" in particular, it is my homage to the classic Batman/Dracula series of graphic novels: Red Rain, Bloodstorm, and Crimson Mist. Those things were a revelation to me when I was a teenager, combining Gothic horror and the noble plight of the superhero. I hope I've done that style of story justice, as well as adding my own spin on the material.

Check out Light Sphere battling vampire hordes in "Red Fog" collected in the pages of Superhero Monster Hunter: The Good Fight! And now I leave you with this: