“Mischief” by Elaine Lee in Chicks with Capes, edited by Lori Gentile and Karen O’Brien, published by Moonstone.
OK, this blog series is about Elaine Lee’s comics, and this isn’t a comic book. Instead it’s an anthology of short stories about super-heroes. But I’ve bought it, so I might as well read it.
Oh, it’s a whole series of books… I had no idea.
So Lee’s contribution is a 20-page thing about a super-hero called Mischief.
“The thing he was driving looked like the box her car came in.” Her car came in a box? Do cars come in boxes? My car didn’t come in a box. Did her car come in a cardboard box? Does the thing he’s driving look like cardboard?
WHAAAAT
Oh, perhaps she’s thinking of a container, and the thing he’s driving is a square metal thing?
CHECK
Mischief is an odd name for a hero, but here we get the explanation.
So, as you may surmise, this isn’t a Deep And Serious story, which is fine by me.
Hm… how does his exercise bike feel, anyway?
Oh, right.
I’m just saying there are some lines here that don’t quite… It’s a choppy read: We get a framing story (in a car), and a flashback to a super-hero fight, but most of the energy is taken up with a couples counselling session. It’s quite funny, but it’s a lot for 20 pages.
And it would be totally out of line for me to point out some copy-editing issues. I mean, I don’t even read my own blog posts, so they are teh grammer mistak.
It’s an amusing story (complete with revenge power fantasy), but just when I was getting used to the writing style, it’s over.