Superheroes

I recently found out that Samhain Publishing has put out a call for Superhero romance novellas for an upcoming anthology, and with superheroes on my mind lately--the new Thor movie comes out this week--I'm beginning to contemplate whether there's a way to present supers in a way that hasn't been done before.

Marvel, seemingly, has done it all.  We've had mutants, gods, aliens, ordinary people with unusual talents, people who have been bitten by spiders or exposed to strange substances or radiation...you name it and it's probably been done.

The trick here isn't so much finding something that hasn't been done, because it looks like that would be a near-impossible task.  The trick would be in finding something that's been done but doing it in a different and fresh way.

I know people still like superheroes.  If I want evidence of that, all I have to do is look at how many hits my old "Why We Need Superman" post has gotten over the more than two years since I wrote it.  The idea of a superhero romance is an intriguing one, since that's an area that so often gets overshadowed by the action and combat.  There have been a few famous superhero romances, sure, but still it seems a relatively undervalued subject when you look at the sheer number of superheroes that have been invented over the last few decades.  Also, I confess I've read a lot of storylines wherein the superheroes I hoped would end up or stay together simply...didn't.  Disappointing, if you like romance.

This call for submissions sounds like a challenge, but I still have a couple of other fiction projects in the works, so we'll have to see what calls the loudest.