Hey all!  Blog@ begins serializing So Super Duper today!

So Super Duper by Brian Andersen: An Intro by J. Caleb Mozzocco

If you’ve been reading superhero comics for very long, chances are you’ve read some pretty gay stuff. But I’m pretty confident you’ve never read anything quite as gay as So Super Duper, writer/artist Brian Andersen’s ongoing adventures of Psyche, the least useful member of the premier super-team The Amazin’naughts.

Psyche’s an empath, which gives him the ability to read the emotions of others, allowing him to helpfully point to, say, a giant monster in the process of destroying the city and say, “Hey, that giant monster is totally evil!”

Psyche prances and he minces about; he squees and he squeals. His wrists are limp, his boots are light. He eschews a superhero cape in favor of a scarf. In short, he’s the most flaming superhero since Johnny Storm.

But is he actually gay? Like, a homosexual gay? Like, guy who likes guys instead of gals gay? He certainly fits all the stereotypes, and his co-workers all seem to think he is, but both he and his best gal pal, who secretly longs for him, are completely oblivious.

While that may be the central conflict of Andersen’s story, “conflict” seems like a pretty strong word for such a light book. Anderson approaches his storytelling like something between a comic strip and a sitcom, devoting time equally to Psyche’s conflicts with the frosty queen bee of the team, his relationship with his totally platonic best friend, his struggle to prove his worth to all the heroes with more combat-ready powers than super-empathy and the conflict between people’s expectations of what is gay and what is straight and what the reality of gayness and straightness is, all told in little character sketches that vacillate melodramatic soap opera and character-based comedy. Oh, and there’s superheroes and supervillains punching each other and blasting each other with superpowers, because this is a superhero comic.

But hey, you’ll see all that for yourself soon enough, as Blog@ begins serialization of Anderson’s So Super Duper. I’m just here to let you know that you’re in for a fun ride with an especially effervescent character unlike any other superhero you’ve ever met.

Now go say “HIEeeeeeeee!” to Psyche; I’m sure he’ll be like so totally excited to meet you…

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 20th, 2009 at 11:54 am and is filed under Independent. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.