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Superhuman World

or, Marvelled

or, Me in the Marvel Universe

(see also Powernaut Comics)


  1. Foreword. Is it really about me, me, me?
  2. Introduction. As you may have noticed, the world is different in comic books. Here are the (at least) ten reasons why. Plus, when does this story start, anyway?
  3. Startup: The Adventures of Me in the Marvel Universe, 1988-1995. The original pile of comic book plots. For starters... Superheroes put on costumes and fight to neutralize other people's use of their super-technology - so I have to do that too. And I've worked on the MX Missile!
  4. Escalation, 1995-1997. Increasing confrontations with deadly villains, leading up to nothing less than the Judgment Day.
  5. The Yearbooks. After the Escalation was done, I kept compiling the stories.
  6. The Other Stories. Eventually the time had to come. I've started writing stories where I'm not the hero.

Foreword

Once upon a time (okay, it was 1988) I came up with a set of unpublished comic-book stories based on a theme that has since become cliche: the Marvel Universe as seen through the eyes of a "common man". Or through my own eyes, anyway. Not knowing the term "Mary Sue fanfic" back then, I plowed blindly ahead.

Since then, of course, I've learned that "Mary Sue fanfic" refers to self-indulgent fan fiction which places a proxy for the author in heroic or romantic situations, and is usually considered bad writing. But also since then, my proxy acquired his own life, to the point where any resemblance to me is largely coincidental. And his adventures would largely suck for a real person to undergo, because this guy goes through layoffs and all the same real-world crap I do, only with more super-villain attacks.

If I had to get it professionally published somewhere, I'd let the character keep his name change, and call the whole series "Marvelled" or "Superhuman World". But lucky me, I'm not a pro, I'm an amateur. These stories were intended for amateur publishing, in the days when this required major expenditure on photocopies. Since I am fundamentally lazy, I decided to save publishing the stories for a later day. But I had so much fun with these stories that I kept writing them. I even started having dreams which wound up as perfectly good stories.

Now that any lazy amateur bum (particularly myself) can publish on the World Wide Web, nothing can save the world from these stories. I've started with summaries, and added links to the actual stories as I write them (or retrieve them off my crappy old Apple ][e computer). And you can treat yourself to the exquisite pleasure of watching some of these stories get written.

Besides, since I first self-published this stuff, Web logs have come into style. As far as I can tell, a Web log is like having your own message board where the topic is you. (And people call Mary Sue fan fiction self-indulgent...) So don't think of this as Mary Sue fan fiction, think of it as a Web log with superpowers.

So try it out, maybe it won't be all that bad for Mary Sue fanfics.

(signed) Scott Eiler