Great Art: Moon Knight by John K. Snyder III

I've spent a lot of time thinking about vigilantes and heroes of the mystic of late, although it is for a project I will not say too much about just yet. But with that in mind, I've been perusing some moodier art of dark vigilantes. That's when I stumbled upon this piece by John K. Snyder III.

Snyder has been around for a long time. He was drawing Grendel comics over three decades ago and has worked his way through pretty much every publisher over the years, though much of his work has been for DC. Just in the last year, he drew an issue or two of Bloodshot for Valiant and doesn't seem to show any signs of changing his eclectic release of cool art.

As far as I can tell, this piece is the only time he drew Moon Knight, for a commission. The piece perfectly encapsulates what makes the character pop so well off the panel, with his silver-white costume up against a dark background. Flanked by his enemies and the visage of Khonshu, source of his abilities, it's a super-cool piece that makes the character just look plain awesome.

As always, you can check out a lot more Great Art in the Super Powered Fiction Facebook group!. And after you're done admiring some great art here, don’t forget to check out some of the other great stuff from me this week!

That's My Jam 5: "Dangerous Days" by Perturbator

Straight up, I have no recollection of who first mentioned the name Perturbator to me. I could guess it might have been Warren Ellis' newsletter but I cannot really say for sure. But I can say that I absolutely love things cyberpunk.

And man, Perturbator is so cyberpunk.

Perturbator is just one guy, an amazingly talented French individual with the very un-French real name James Kent. He's been working in the synthwave genre of music for the better part of the decade. Synthwave seems like a genre designed for me, with a heavy focus on 80s film and video games as inspiration. But a lot of artists of the field don't click with me.

But when I stumbled upon the album Dangerous Days I was insta-hooked. It has a powerful continued beat through all its songs, like some kind of rave out of a never made Neuromancer film. It's that push to move forward coupled with the rareness of lyrics that helps make it such a great album to play while writing.

Perturbator also has some great album covers.
Dangerous Days is by Ariel Zucker-Brull. 

Once the slow rise of the opening track "Welcome Back" melds into the driving beat of "Perturbator's Theme" my mind is hyper-focused and ready to get rocking on some words. I'm listening to the album right now as I write about it and it has become so ingrained in my creative process that I just want to go back to the latest Shockwave story.

The entire album is available to listen to on Bandcamp. Perturbator even has a pay-what-you-want model set up for downloads. I'm pretty sure I actually downloaded the album for free many moons ago, but I've certainly given Mister Kent my money with every subsequent Perturbator album he's released. Or you can just listen to on this handy Spotify list...


So it's a win-win to go give this album a chance. If you like eighties movies, synth music or just a driving beat, I doubt you will be disappointed.

Cosplay Friday: Meggan

One of the books I cut my teeth on as a comics fan was Excalibur by Chris Claremont and Alan Davis. The two men created a really solid team book that wasn't worried about being funny here and there. It's heyday was its first year and a half or so of issues, and they still hold up as some of the reasons I will challenge anyone that lumps the 80s and 90s in comics into some generic summation.

Meggan was one of the breakout characters of the series, a faerie girl in love with Captain Britain and with a bevy of powers including shape-changing, flight, super strength and empathy. She spent much of the first year of the series basically just wearing athletic wear as a "costume" until she finally received this number during the Cross-Time Caper story. Cosplayer Sara Moni brings the Davis design to life perfectly, an impressive feat considering all the character traits that come together for the character.

You can check out a lot more great Cosplay pictures over on my Twitter. And while you are admiring some great cosplay here, don’t forget to check out some of the other great stuff from yours truly this week!

Newest novel in the books! (WIP Wednesday)

Patrons can read the fifth chapter of the
Ragnarok arc right now! 

Though the final chapters gave me a bit of trouble, I have now completed the last words of Lightweight: Ragnarok. Composed of chapters sixteen through twenty-one of the ongoing Lightweight series (now available on Smashwords), the series re-ignited my love for the character after too much time spent away from Kevin, Millie and the city of Federation.

As of yesterday, my patrons on Patreon can read the first five chapters of Ragnarok while everyone else can pre-order them at Smashwords right now. The collected edition of the novel is planned for a summer 2020 release. It will kick off a series of releases in full novel format starting then, as all the hard work I'm currently putting in for my fans on Patreon will be released to the world.

Over the next couple months, I have plans to release new slightly revised editions of the first three Lightweight novels as well, correcting a few minor errors and adding a new afterword. That afterword will come along with a major push for my newsletter and the Patreon, which will both get bonus stories as well. It's all part of a greater plan to increase the discoverability of my work.

That being said, I don't want anyone out there already reading my work to think I will overlook them. While I plan to release several exclusives, I will make sure they are available to all my current subscribers as well as the new readers.

My focus now is on another Doctor Cosmic Presents story as well as the remainder of Quadrant and Shockwave. Then late this year, I will return to work on book five of Lightweight. If my writing schedule remains on track, I will have it complete before the collected edition of book four is ever released.

Wish me luck and keep reading!

Kickstart the Week 75: The stupendous art edition!

I am a nut for cool art in a variety of formats, ranging from comics to book covers to fine art for its own sake. This time around I'll look at three features that just go above and beyond with superb art!

I'll kick things off with a return as Karl Kesel and David Hahn have returned to make their failed Impossible Jones comic a reality now as an original graphic novel.


Described as "grin and gritty" by its creators, Impossible Jones follows the misadventures of a thief that after getting super-stretching powers is mistaken for a hero. She rolls with it and an all new hero(-ish) is born. Hahn draws with a clean animation-esque style that is perfect for this kind of grand super-adventure! Check it out at Kickstarter!

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I was not familiar with the work of Kristof Spaey before I stumbled upon his Kickstarter, but the gentleman knows what I like. He's creating hundreds of pieces of art in the style of classic adventure and mystery pulp paperbacks. You know the type: they all feature an attractive woman and a cool title.

The Kickstarter's slipcase featuring Spaey's art.

Spaey has already produced four art books in this series and he's now out to fund his fifth and final one plus a slipcase for all the books. These all look just amazing, but the Belgium-based artist sadly offers no digital editions for those of us not able to pay three times the book's cost for shipping. Sadly that means I can only recommend these to my readers in the European Union, but everyone should at least head over to the Kickstarter and check out his art!

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We wrap this edition with a collection of stories from Helios Quarterly. The Best of Helios Quarterly features stories from the first three years of what they describe as a magazine of diverse speculative fiction. And while I'm not particularly familiar with the magazine, its writers or editor Zelda Knight, I can certainly say they have a knack for great covers on the three years of issues this collection draws from. We will close out this Kickstart the Week with the George C. Cotronis cover of this book as a final encouragement to go take a look at the book on Kickstarter.

Great Art: Ninjak by Michel Fiffe

Michel Fiffe draws one of my favorite comics right now in Copra, but he doesn't do non-creator owned characters all that often. But this variant to the Valiant Ninjak book was totally worth the price of admission!

As always, you can check out a lot more Great Art in the Super Powered Fiction Facebook group!. And after you're done admiring some great art here, don’t forget to check out some of the other great stuff from me this week!

Gallur-y: Super-Nenas!

Over the last few years, Mexican artist Rafael Gallur has become a go to painter for action. A regular painter of amazing lucha libre magazine covers, he channels the energy of Frazetta into modern cover art, something very lacking on this side of the border. And since his art doesn't quite fit into the usual comic-oriented Great Art feature, I thought it was time to give him his own feature here at Super Powered Fiction. Few painters can match the power he brings.

Unlike a lot of his work, Super Nena (or Supernena, as I've seen it written both ways) isn't an actual star of lucha libre. Created for the fiction magazine Sensacional Del Luchas, she allowed some female led stories with a whole lot of T and A. But because of her original nature, it sure looks like she was set up to be a bit more super than some of the other luchadors in the book. She definitely has a Catwoman vibe with her whip as a weapon. This cover seems to pit her against evil duplicates of herself, ones willing to use automatic weapons and murder wantonly. There's a great story there I suspect!

Be sure to head over to Gallur's DeviantArt to check out more work by him and order some of his amazing work as prints. After you're done admiring his work, don’t forget to check out some of the other great stuff from me this week!

Have you joined The Good Fight yet?

I'm going to get real here. I talked about my story in The Good Fight 5: The Golden Age already, but apparently that's not brought quite enough readers to our amazing anthology. Our classic era super-heroics aren't attracting the level of readership for our previous four volumes of the Pen & Cape Society's premiere superhero anthology. Each volume features new stories from a variety of authors and superheroic worlds, and I'm proud to make this my fourth appearance in one of these books.

I could conjecture a hundred reasons as to why the book hasn't found success, but I know one thing that's definitely hurting it: lack of reviews! After just over a month out, it still only has one review on Amazon and none on Smashwords. The digital edition is $3.99, a steal for a book featuring twelve new stories by yours truly and a host of talented authors including the late great James Hudnall.

In order to encourage more reviews and in return, I have five digital copies available for reading and review. If you receive a copy, you must be willing to read it and give it a starred Amazon review within one month of receipt. I will give these away to the first five people that respond to this post here, on social media or by emailing me at nick {at} superpoweredfiction {dot} com.

If you have even a fraction of the love for super powered fiction that I have, I know this is a deal too good to pass up! And even if you don't get a free copy, please buy the book and review it when you're done. Every single review helps immensely. I know you see that a lot, but it is incredibly true.

The Good Fight 5: The Golden Age is now available on Amazon, Smashwords and pretty much everywhere you buy books.