I really wanted to enjoy this. I really did. On paper, Masked, an anthology of original superhero stories penned by a motley crew of authors and edited by Lou Anders, sounds like it should work. And for the most part, it does. There are some definite highs ('Message From The Bubblegum Factory' and 'Vacuum Lad' were clear highlights) that manage to demonstrate how superheroes (and villains) have evolved since the Golden Age of Comics as well as showing just how human they actually are beneath the masks, capes and secret identities. Unfortunately, Masked suffers a problem that I feel the majority of anthologies face; a variation in quality between individual stories. That's not to say there is anything particularly bad about some of the pieces included here; but some of the stories feel wholly uninspired and lacking in comparison to some of the others. Overall, whilst Masked is a good attempt at injecting some Alan Moore-esque superhero realism into prose format, it doesn't quite manage to leap tall buildings in a single bound.