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The Darker Mask
Expanding on the concept behind Byron Preiss's Weird Heroes from the 1970s, George R. R. Martin's Wild Card series, and Michael Chabon's McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales , The Darker Mask is a collection of original prose stories recalling the derring-do of the beings we call Superheroes and the worlds they fight to save. But unique to The Darker Mask stories is that these plots and characters color a literary universe outside of what has been predominantly white, idiosyncratic, and male in previous homages to pulp. This is the stuff of urban legends, new mythos, and extraordinary folks who might live in a soon-to-be-gentrified ghetto, the dreary rust-belt of the city, or in another dimension. The Darker Mask offers an eclectic mix of popular fiction writers exploring worlds gritty, visceral, and fantastic. Including stories Walter Mosley, L. A. Banks, Naomi Hirahara, Lorenzo Carcaterra, Tananarive Due and Stephen Barnes, Mike Gonzales, Gar Anthony Haywood, Ann Nocenti, Jerry Rodriguez, Reed Farrell Coleman, Doselle Young, Mat Johnson, Peter Spiegelman, Alexandra Sokoloff, Christopher Chambers, Gary Phillips, Victor LaValle, and Wayne Wilson.
368 pages, Hardcover
First published August 19, 2008
6 people are currently reading
360 people want to read
About the author
Gary Phillips
200 books231 followersGARY PHILLIPS has been a community activist, labor organizer and delivered dog cages. He’s published various novels, comics, short stories and edited several anthologies including South Central Noir and the Anthony award-winning The Obama Inheritance: Fifteen Stories of Conspiracy Noir. Violent Spring, first published in 1994 was named in 2020 one of the essential crime novels of Los Angeles. He was also a writer/co-producer on FX’s Snowfall (streaming on Hulu), about crack and the CIA in 1980s South Central where he grew up. Recent novels include One-Shot Harry and Matthew Henson and the Ice Temple of Harlem. He lives with his family in the wilds of Los Angeles.
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 19 reviews
August 6, 2011
I have to agree with the majority of the other reviewers: this is an uneven collection. But, from the worst (Tat Master) to the best(The Henchman), at least each story has something interesting to say (well, maybe not Tat Master, did I mention how bad that was?).
The three that really stood out for me were Trickster, The Angel of Loneliness and The Henchman (the author of that last story also wrote Incognegro, an amazing and disturbing graphic novel). The book is worth picking up just for these stories alone. There's also a decent Walter Mosley entry and The Whores of Onyx City is a pretty good read too. Over all I'd recommend this collection, but would also warn anyone picking it up that not all the stories are winners.
P.S. I'm giving this book four stars just because of The Henchman (and also a bit because of The Angel of Loneliness and a little because of the ending of Trickster).
The three that really stood out for me were Trickster, The Angel of Loneliness and The Henchman (the author of that last story also wrote Incognegro, an amazing and disturbing graphic novel). The book is worth picking up just for these stories alone. There's also a decent Walter Mosley entry and The Whores of Onyx City is a pretty good read too. Over all I'd recommend this collection, but would also warn anyone picking it up that not all the stories are winners.
P.S. I'm giving this book four stars just because of The Henchman (and also a bit because of The Angel of Loneliness and a little because of the ending of Trickster).
June 1, 2021
Got tired halfway through. It isn't necessarily the book's fault, I just tend to have much less patience for short story anthologies and collections than novels. Here are some of my thoughts on the stories I did read.
Dream Knights by L.A. Banks: A secretary fights back in her lucid dreams against the shadow creatures that haunt her while she's awake. The reason the shadow creatures (called the Watchers, for no real reason) exist is cool. Everything else plays out like bland wish fulfillment. Two and a half stars.
Trickster by Steven Barnes and Tananarive Due: Aliens attack Earth but die in a War of the Worlds-like situation, leaving their fleets behind. Fifty years later, a black American arrives at an African village, where he and an elder stumble across an alien aircraft. Simple yet beautiful writing, true tragedy and love and heroism. Five stars.
The Strega's Last Dance by Lorenzo Carcaterra: In an Italian working-class neighborhood, a gangster demands from a Strega the name of the person who means him the most harm. It's a standard revenge story with a supernatural twist, though it's not that twisty. The gangster is cartoonishly evil. He swears a lot and that's supposed to make him gangster-y. Three stars.
The Whores of Onyx City by Michael A. Gonzales: In glitzy, gritty Onyx City, composed almost entirely of black and brown people, a vigilante seeks revenge against the gangster responsible for her mother's death. The writing is wonky, overstuffed with adjectives and metaphors, and there are so many dangling participles. But it's a fun, over-the-top, Kill Bill-like romp with a badass protagonist. Four stars.
Heatseaker by Gar Anthony Haywood: A gangster orders a skip tracer to find out whether the woman who once spurned his advances is truly dead. Solid writing, believable antagonist, cool heroine, somewhat cool powers. It isn't terribly original but it's satisfying. Four stars.
Tat Master by Naomi Hirahira: After escaping from Japan and the gangster she had an abusive relationship with, a tattoo artist meets a manga store owner who leaves her with a mysterious power. The power is cool, but why or how the manga store owner passed it onto her is left completely unexplained. The tattoo artist kind of has not like other girls syndrome. The writing is solid though. Three stars.
Henchman by Mat Johnson: A temp jobber starts picking up temp positions as a henchman, making a name for himself in the process. A down-to-earth black protagonist in a ridiculous city, a new perspective on the Batman and Joker archetypes (well, I'm sure it's been done before, but new for me), funny conversational writing. This was so fun to read and I wish it were a whole book. Five stars.
I skimmed through the other stories, sometimes even read them halfway, but nothing except Trickster, The Whores of Onyx City, Henchman, and maybe Heatseeker stuck out to me in a good way. I'm glad I got to read those stories so I don't regret picking up this anthology.
Dream Knights by L.A. Banks: A secretary fights back in her lucid dreams against the shadow creatures that haunt her while she's awake. The reason the shadow creatures (called the Watchers, for no real reason) exist is cool. Everything else plays out like bland wish fulfillment. Two and a half stars.
Trickster by Steven Barnes and Tananarive Due: Aliens attack Earth but die in a War of the Worlds-like situation, leaving their fleets behind. Fifty years later, a black American arrives at an African village, where he and an elder stumble across an alien aircraft. Simple yet beautiful writing, true tragedy and love and heroism. Five stars.
The Strega's Last Dance by Lorenzo Carcaterra: In an Italian working-class neighborhood, a gangster demands from a Strega the name of the person who means him the most harm. It's a standard revenge story with a supernatural twist, though it's not that twisty. The gangster is cartoonishly evil. He swears a lot and that's supposed to make him gangster-y. Three stars.
The Whores of Onyx City by Michael A. Gonzales: In glitzy, gritty Onyx City, composed almost entirely of black and brown people, a vigilante seeks revenge against the gangster responsible for her mother's death. The writing is wonky, overstuffed with adjectives and metaphors, and there are so many dangling participles. But it's a fun, over-the-top, Kill Bill-like romp with a badass protagonist. Four stars.
Heatseaker by Gar Anthony Haywood: A gangster orders a skip tracer to find out whether the woman who once spurned his advances is truly dead. Solid writing, believable antagonist, cool heroine, somewhat cool powers. It isn't terribly original but it's satisfying. Four stars.
Tat Master by Naomi Hirahira: After escaping from Japan and the gangster she had an abusive relationship with, a tattoo artist meets a manga store owner who leaves her with a mysterious power. The power is cool, but why or how the manga store owner passed it onto her is left completely unexplained. The tattoo artist kind of has not like other girls syndrome. The writing is solid though. Three stars.
Henchman by Mat Johnson: A temp jobber starts picking up temp positions as a henchman, making a name for himself in the process. A down-to-earth black protagonist in a ridiculous city, a new perspective on the Batman and Joker archetypes (well, I'm sure it's been done before, but new for me), funny conversational writing. This was so fun to read and I wish it were a whole book. Five stars.
I skimmed through the other stories, sometimes even read them halfway, but nothing except Trickster, The Whores of Onyx City, Henchman, and maybe Heatseeker stuck out to me in a good way. I'm glad I got to read those stories so I don't regret picking up this anthology.
July 22, 2024
not my book. good artwork though
February 15, 2021
Found in a 12-year-old notebook, a time when I was apparently writing reviews by hand first. My handwriting has not improved since then, but I don’t think it’s any worse, either.
You can read the title a bunch of ways, but to quote the intro, “these ain’t your mama’s and daddy’s super heroes”. In some cases, I’d argue the “super”. In others, I’d argue the “hero”. A couple of stories are outright fantasy, but isn’t the Superhero genre really just specialized Fantasy, regardless of what science-y trappings you might put on it?
But super or not, hero or not, the editors have put together a solid anthology of well-written stories with interesting characters who would have a hard time finding a home elsewhere. From the junkie who, courtesy of a magic potion, gains superpowers but only when she shoots up, to the housekeeper who discovers the secret lair of a billionaire client, to the man who allows himself to be subsumed by an alien war machine and intervenes in an African civil war, there are heroes and other strange things.
From the shadows, from the fringes, from the gutters, the aim of The Darker Mask seems to be to force us out of our preconceptions. Heroes in the real world don’t prance around in spandex spouting bad dialogue, so why should literary ones? The superhero genre seems to be expanding that view in recent years. Spandex and garish colours are still in, but the heroes are mostly humans, too, with hopes and dreams, fears and flaws.
They’re still mostly white and middle or upper class, however, and that’s where The Darker Mask strolls up to the boundary with a crowbar and does what comes naturally. The eighteen stories here pick up o the far side to play with the shards, dirtier, grittier, and darker. While that’s not always my thing, here it seems to work and across a wide variety of styles and types.
It’s hard to find an anthology where I like all the stories. This one came pretty close. If there were one or two that didn’t do it for me, they still give me something to chew on.
You can read the title a bunch of ways, but to quote the intro, “these ain’t your mama’s and daddy’s super heroes”. In some cases, I’d argue the “super”. In others, I’d argue the “hero”. A couple of stories are outright fantasy, but isn’t the Superhero genre really just specialized Fantasy, regardless of what science-y trappings you might put on it?
But super or not, hero or not, the editors have put together a solid anthology of well-written stories with interesting characters who would have a hard time finding a home elsewhere. From the junkie who, courtesy of a magic potion, gains superpowers but only when she shoots up, to the housekeeper who discovers the secret lair of a billionaire client, to the man who allows himself to be subsumed by an alien war machine and intervenes in an African civil war, there are heroes and other strange things.
From the shadows, from the fringes, from the gutters, the aim of The Darker Mask seems to be to force us out of our preconceptions. Heroes in the real world don’t prance around in spandex spouting bad dialogue, so why should literary ones? The superhero genre seems to be expanding that view in recent years. Spandex and garish colours are still in, but the heroes are mostly humans, too, with hopes and dreams, fears and flaws.
They’re still mostly white and middle or upper class, however, and that’s where The Darker Mask strolls up to the boundary with a crowbar and does what comes naturally. The eighteen stories here pick up o the far side to play with the shards, dirtier, grittier, and darker. While that’s not always my thing, here it seems to work and across a wide variety of styles and types.
It’s hard to find an anthology where I like all the stories. This one came pretty close. If there were one or two that didn’t do it for me, they still give me something to chew on.
February 4, 2011
The stories in this book all deal with the supposed 'uncommon' heroes of fiction - the ones that don't fall into any broad category already established by modern superhero tropes. None of the protagonists in this book would pal around with Superman or Wolverine, no sir. No figure-hugging spandex for these folks, nuh-uh! It is because these stories depart from the usual superhero norms that they are far more entertaining than what one gets reading the usual comic-book pablum that's out there.
That being said, the book itself was only 'okay' in my estimation because, while the stories were generally uncommon and out-of-the-box, they were also wildly inconsistent in quality, ranging from the worst 1920's pulp revenge fantasies, to nuanced and well-thought-out examinations of issues that spanned farther than the story itself. One in particular (I don't have the book directly at hand at the moment, so I cannot recall the title) struck me as purely amateurish and puerile, and not worthy of publishing.
Now that's going to bug me forever, so I'll have to come back to this review when I've got The Darker Mask close by.
That being said, the book itself was only 'okay' in my estimation because, while the stories were generally uncommon and out-of-the-box, they were also wildly inconsistent in quality, ranging from the worst 1920's pulp revenge fantasies, to nuanced and well-thought-out examinations of issues that spanned farther than the story itself. One in particular (I don't have the book directly at hand at the moment, so I cannot recall the title) struck me as purely amateurish and puerile, and not worthy of publishing.
Now that's going to bug me forever, so I'll have to come back to this review when I've got The Darker Mask close by.
September 30, 2012
I've had bad luck of late with collections, but this one felt awkward and immature; a teenage amateur dressing up for his first night on patrol. Many of the writers tried to literally describe comic book action, but the problem is that comic books work only because they're illustrated. Making that literal made it feel adolescent rather than action packed. It was even more of a disappointment because the introduction talked up the content eloquently and really got me excited for what was inside. But by the time I got through "The Whores of Onyx City" I had seen so much disbelief-stretching action with so little explanation and believable characterization (hard to do in a short story, but if writing was easy everyone would do it) that I couldn't take any more. It felt like picking up issue 179 of a big, ongoing series... there probably were answers to all my questions, but because I'm not starting way back at the beginning, I'm just confused and disappointed by what I found.
July 10, 2020
Everybody is reinventing superheroes these days. But if authors are going to tug on Superman's cape, they better have something interesting to say. The Darker Mask is a collection of superhero stories that emphasize racial and sexual diversity. That's cool. The heroes in this book are often confused by the extraordinary physical gifts they possess. And more often than not, they come from disadvantaged backgrounds and don't relate to Batman-like philanthropic gestures. They're just trying to pay child support or drive a nice car. That's it.
August 3, 2016
I started reading this over a year ago, on a flight home for Christmas, and the thing about short story books is they're easy to put down and come back to a long time later. Overall I thought the collection was kind of uneven but it opens and closes very strong, two of my three favourites are the opening and closing stories - "Dream Knights" and "Housework" - and then in between I really liked "Henchman", among others. I really loved the premise of this collection, and I definitely recommend it.
March 22, 2012
There were some really great stories in here, and some that I didn't like that well. I did appreciate the concept of the collection, a re-centering of the "superhero" as the oppressed/disregarded/underdog. Yes to that. Mat Johnson's "Henchman" was hilarious, "The Picket" by Walter Mosley thought-provoking, and both "Dred" by Jerry A. Rodriguez and "The Whores of Onyx City" by Michael A. Gonzales gave me kick-ass women heroes with badass outfits, and I do LOVE those.
July 13, 2009
There are a few stories I liked, one I really wanted to keep going-- Sweeper-- some that I found pointless and overall, not worth buying, even though I did. If you had gone to the Capital Bookfest and heard the authors go on about it, you would have done the same thing I did. I mostly regret the lost $14 but some of the stories were worth like $8.
July 11, 2009
A series of dark, short stories about superheroes (often accidental heroes, or villains who were really heroes), most involving race relations. The writing was a bit uneven, but I liked most of the stories. It was a good accidental find at the library.
November 13, 2011
High quality adult short stories of the other side of being a superhero. Not all stories are great but most are. Well worth the time and in some ways (blaspheme alert) better at what it is trying to do than The Watchmen.
Want to read
August 27, 2008Can't wait to get to this collection of superhero stories written by "genre" authors and compare it to Who Can Save Us Now?, written by "literary" ones.
October 6, 2008
I liked the ones about class struggle - "The Henchman" was my favorite, I think. Some of the stories in here are icky revenge fantasies and pulpy pulp pulp, but there were a few standouts.
August 11, 2011
A couple really good stories and a few that just didn't appeal to me. The good ones were enough to make it a worthwhile read, tho.
June 25, 2012
This collection of heroic tales focuses on folks who aren't normally explored as superheroic characters.
April 11, 2015
A bit hit and miss, but the concept of writing a more inclusive shared superhuman universe is a great one. I'll follow up some of these authors and see what their longer works are like.
May 5, 2010
mostly OK; some great stories
Displaying 1 - 18 of 19 reviews