Super-Villains

By Michael Canfield

In Excelsior City trouble finds everybody. Lang Lofton's busy managing his media empire from atop the Kryse Building , weighing a mayoral run, and, oh yeah, roaming the night as a masked vigilante. He's got an new problem too: no villains left to defeat. Until his mortal enemy Archetype gets released from Belfry Hospital for the Criminally Insane. And just as Venus Diamond is set to display at the city’s Supernatural Wonders Museum. Besides, there’s a new player in town. Coincidence? Never.

A rollicking superhero adventure novelette, with humor and a little bit of heart.

Michael Canfield writes about monsters, superheroes, couples, bank robbers, babies, astronauts, paranoids, background artists, hobbyists, and other people. He has published mystery, suspense, fantasy, science fiction, horror and just-plain-odd stories in StrangeHorizons.com, futurismic.com, EscapePod.com, M-Brane SF, in dead-tree magazines including Black Gate, Talebones, Realms of Fantasy, Flytrap, and other places. His story "Super-Villains" was reprinted in the prestigious Fantasy: The Year's Best series, edited by Rich Horton. Several other stories received honorable mention in Ellen Datlow's The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror series. Born in Las Vegas, he now lives, works, plays, writes, and watches television in Seattle.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Vauk House Press
• Release date: Jan 2, 2011
• ISBN: 9781458176967

Michael Canfield

Michael Canfield writes about monsters, superheroes, couples, bank robbers, babies, astronauts, paranoids, background artists, obsessives, and other people. He has published mystery, fantasy, science fiction, horror and just-plain-odd stories in the magazines Strange Horizons, Escape Pod, Realms of Fantasy, Black Gate, Flytrap, and others.His novelette “Super-Villains” was republished in the prestigious Fantasy: The Year’s Best series, edited by Rich Horton (Prime Books). Born in Las Vegas, he now lives in Seattle.

Book preview

Chapter One

The Wing hung in inky shadow below a water tower that topped a warehouse on 295th Street. With his hyper-acute senses, he tracked two men emerge from the main building, behind the tall iron gates of Belfry Hospital for the Criminally Insane. He knew both of them well.

One of them, Archibald T. Pupper, a.k.a. Archetype—the most formidable foe the Wing had ever faced––had murdered the Wing’s first manservant Raja, more than two dozen policemen, and countless others. He had stolen millions in jewelry, artwork, munitions—even historical landmarks such as The Metropolitan Fountain, and the Knightsborough Bridge. He had caused billions more in property damage and had repeatedly violated the well-being of every man, woman, and child in Excelsior City.

Despite this, the medical board at Belfry Hospital had seen fit to parole Pupper not once, not twice, but—as of this very night—three times.

The Wing watched as Pupper walked to the gate, accompanied by the noted neurosurgeon Dr. Van Hellion, himself a reputedly-reformed super-villain. (*Way back in issue #217—ed.) Pupper looked frail tonight, his wily, maniacal mind hidden in the deceptively meek frame of his face. He was wearing inmate’s whites, not the burgundy riding coat and yellow jodhpurs he favored as Archetype, and he clasped his little sack of personal items in a pinched grip, like an old woman gingerly squeezing a coin purse. His hair had been thinning from the first and now, after his latest stint behind Belfry’s walls, he was completely bald.

He was getting old, thought The Wing, but age wouldn’t stop Archetype. First thing, no doubt, Pupper would serve his vanity and procure a toupee. Then would come the maniacal plots and outrageous crimes—but the Wing wasn’t worried. When Archetype strayed again, the Wing would catch him, again—and again after that, same as always.

Van Hellion shook his patient’s hand farewell, then turned back to the dark halls of Belfry. Pupper minced his way up 295th Street until he reached North 40th Avenue, where he stopped to wait for the bus. Pupper had no minions to call for transport now—the Wing had finished them, too, years ago—but it would not take long for someone with Archetype’s reputation to assemble a new crime army.

Pupper, seeming oblivious to the Wing’s scrutiny, sank down on the lonely bus-stop bench to wait.

The arch-villain displayed no emotion when the Wing left the shadows and dropped into the street, inches from his