"Best Superhero Novel?" Topic

Which do you recommend?

Full novels that aren't movie adaptions are pretty rare. The Wild Cards line has a lot of shorter tales that are quite good, usually early on, but I haven't kept up since the series emerged from hibernation.

+1 on the Wild Cards.I have followed them since hibernation and they're not too bad. But the first 5 I'd say were the best.

"Gladiator" by Philip Wylie. Good novel and came along before two comics guys created a story called "Superman" :)

My favorite is the 'Ex-Heroes' series by Peter Clines.

You've read the early Roger Zelazny? Mythic characters reinterpreted in Marvel comics style. With award-winning prose. Look for:

Creatures of Light and Darkness – Egyptian gods.

Lord of Light – Hindu gods.

Definitely Ex-Heroes series – as Nathan Fillian says on the reviews Superheroes and Zombies what more can you wish for?

I don't know about "best", but I'd like to find a few good ones myself. Preferably they shouldn't be part of a ten-book trilogy and not aimed at young adult audience.

From the few I could find that met the criteria and seemed to get generally positive reviews I fairly recently read Lavie Tidhar's The Violent Century and found it to be quite good, actually. It's part Weird World War II/Weird Cold War novel, part SpyFy -- with superheroes so there's a lot of different stuff in a fairly small package there.
link

I liked Ex-Heroes a lot, too, so my recommendations also go to superheroes vs. Zombies!

I only read part one, thoughI, how are the other books?

Richard Sharpe!

My absolute FAVORITE is 'Soon I Will Be Invincible' by Austin Grossman. Fun and snappy read, hits all of the usual tropes but then stands several of them on their head, a major part of the story is from the super villain's view, and the implied setting is very interesting.

It's probably been more of an influence on my super-hero gaming than actual comics have been!

-Will

WMINSING beat me to it. "Soon I will be Invincible" is excellent.

Larry Correia, of Monster Hunter International fame, has the Grimnoir Chronicles trilogy (plus a couple of short stories) that is essentially pulp-era superheroes without the spandex.

Earlier in the century mutations start appearing in humanity, each mutant (called an "Active") gets one particular type of mutation (super-smart, able to control gravity, able to harden their body, able to pass through walls, etc.). It also has dirigibles and an evil Japanese empire. There's a glossary in the book of each type of Active, for anyone who wants to game it too.

I like them, but it takes about a third to half of the first book to really grok the setting. I recommended MHI to my brother and he grabbed the first in this trilogy instead, and didn't like it, so your mileage may vary.

One thing I didn't like was the swearing in the novels – not that I'm a prude, and I'm sure they could swear in the 1930s as well as now, but they didn't do it in public and we've been raised on movies and period fiction that excluded swearing, so it pulls you out of the period to read it. Whenever I read "mofo" (you know what I mean), I place it in the modern period, not the pulps.

Oddly, the MHI series has very limited swearing but is in the modern period. Anyway, it's jarring.

Worm – A complete web serial

This is an excellent story, it is a web serial, free to read, the story is complete. It is long. The start seems like a young adult story because the main character is a teenage girl but it moves beyond that. Below is the link to the webpage.

parahumans.wordpress.com

Soon I will be invincible – Austin Grossman link

@tulsatime- thanks for the tip on Worm; A couple of chapters in now, very interesting.

-Will

Citadel – Training in Necessity

unillustrated.wordpress.com

Is a web serial and the first part is also available as a kindle book for $2.99 USD as well as being free on the website.

The first part covers the training of the characters then the next part follows the characters as they go to their assignments.

It is an excellent take on superheroes. The overall story is still being written, I checked and the most recent addition to the story was on Sept 6 2016

Don't know if it's the best but I'm partial to Elliott Maggie's Last Son of Krypton about (obviously) Superman. It's one of the best descriptions of Krypton and characterization of Lex Luthor.

Only one I ever read was Spiderman:Mayhem in Manhattan. surprisingly good for what it was.