Superfolks

From the dust jacket: There were no more heroes. Kennedy was dead. Batman and Robin were dead. The Lone Ranger was dead. Superman was missing. Even Snoopy had bought it: missing in action over France. In this fading pantheon of heroes, the very last to give up combat against the forces of evil had been the most powerful hero of all, unseen in almost a decade since, unknown to the world, his Superpowers had begun to fail. Slipping into the humdrum routine of middle-class life, using the humdrum secret name David Brinkley, he was now forty-two years old, married, with two children and a third on the way. He expected never again to dash into a phone booth, strip down to his uniform, don his purple mask, and leap into battle against the forces of darkness. Then comes a TV new bulletin; an ominous phone call; and Brinkley, against his wishes, dragging along the flab of middle age, is drawn into one last heroic battle to save the world. In his comic adventures, searching to understand what is happening, find the enemy, and deal with his own yearnings, he encounters a collage of characters from real and imaginary worlds, including nefarious villains of every sort and the girl reporter who was the lost romance of his youth. Brinkley is Everyman, mourning lost goals and lost powers, dealing with his own multiple identity, facing the encroachments of middle age - like the rest of us.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Science Fiction, Nonfiction, Fiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.