KTS
23rd July 2003, 07:00 PM
Speaking of comic-books (in recent topic "Hulk") I highly recommend anyone who's into them and hates the way Hollywood etc. ruins them to track down a copy of Robert Rodi's out of print novel "What They Did To Princess Paragon" (try amazon.com or co.uk's buy from seller options, or ebay).
Rodi's a gay writer, and this book is brilliant. They decide to update this comic-book heroine that's been around for ages ... so they turn her into a dyke. Then a psychopathic fan starts stalking the comic-book writer. It's brilliant, great camp tongue-in-cheek wit.
http//images.amazon.com/images/P/0452271630.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg
Got this on amazon.com
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
How the world's greatest comic-book artist, Brian Parrish, a 38-year-old gay man from Manhattan, ends up trapped in a food plant "in the middle of some piddly little college town two hours outside Chicago" is part of the delight of Rodi's new novel. Brian's scheme is to rejuvenate the faltering sales of American comic-book icon Princess Paragon by turning her into the first gay super-hero. His design is modified at every turn by a cast of outrageous characters Perpetrial Cotton, an African American feminist lesbian whose favorite T-shirt reads "Ferraro for Veep"; Jerome T. Kornacker, a deranged fan upset at what is happening to his longtime fantasy girlfriend; and Heloise Freitag, Brian's chain-smoking publisher. Tightly plotted and consistently amusing, the novel is more farce than satire Rodi's characters are as cartoonish as his superheroine. "This is real life," Brian says to Jerome as Rodi attempts to inject some pathos into the dialogue. Nothing about the book suggests real life, however, which is exactly the point. Real life is seldom this funny. This is another campy, breezy read from a gay comic writer ( Fag Hag ; Closet Case ) who is quickly developing his own cult following.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Rodi's a gay writer, and this book is brilliant. They decide to update this comic-book heroine that's been around for ages ... so they turn her into a dyke. Then a psychopathic fan starts stalking the comic-book writer. It's brilliant, great camp tongue-in-cheek wit.
http//images.amazon.com/images/P/0452271630.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg
Got this on amazon.com
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
How the world's greatest comic-book artist, Brian Parrish, a 38-year-old gay man from Manhattan, ends up trapped in a food plant "in the middle of some piddly little college town two hours outside Chicago" is part of the delight of Rodi's new novel. Brian's scheme is to rejuvenate the faltering sales of American comic-book icon Princess Paragon by turning her into the first gay super-hero. His design is modified at every turn by a cast of outrageous characters Perpetrial Cotton, an African American feminist lesbian whose favorite T-shirt reads "Ferraro for Veep"; Jerome T. Kornacker, a deranged fan upset at what is happening to his longtime fantasy girlfriend; and Heloise Freitag, Brian's chain-smoking publisher. Tightly plotted and consistently amusing, the novel is more farce than satire Rodi's characters are as cartoonish as his superheroine. "This is real life," Brian says to Jerome as Rodi attempts to inject some pathos into the dialogue. Nothing about the book suggests real life, however, which is exactly the point. Real life is seldom this funny. This is another campy, breezy read from a gay comic writer ( Fag Hag ; Closet Case ) who is quickly developing his own cult following.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.