Flyboy Action Figure Comes with Gasmask - Softcover

Munroe, Jim

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0006480918 ISBN 13: 9780006480914

Publisher: HarperCollins Canada, Limited, 1999

Synopsis

Ryan is a university student dealing with the normal problems of a 22-year-old guy -- shyness, virginity, weird roommates, and a massive crush on Cassandra, a waitress at his local greasy spoon. (Oh, and a freakish ability to change into a fly.) When he finally gets up the nerve to ask Cassandra for a date, he learns that the two have more in common than they first thought. (Turns out that Cassandra can make things disappear.)

Sharing their secrets for the first time, Ryan and Cassandra realize they were made for each other...and to battle forces of evil! Inspired by Sailor Moon, they team up to fight the villians in their own backyard, taking on cigarette barons, right wing newspapers, and the overzealous local police. But can the Superheroes for Social Justice transform the world in time? Find out in...

About this title

About the Author

Jim Munroe is a "pop culture provocateur" according to the Austin Chronicle, and an "independent press icon" to Time Out Chicago. After leaving HarperCollins for political reasons, he founded No Media Kings and published five books, the most recent one a post- Rapture graphic novel called Therefore Repent! He also started The Perpetual Motion Roadshow, an indie touring circuit that sent 100 artists on the road between 2003 and 2007, and currently he is running the Artsy Games Incubator, a writer's-circle style group helping creators without programming skills make video games. He lives in Toronto with a crafty ladyscientist and their bafflingly attractive baby.

From Publishers Weekly

Two 20-somethings with special powers join forces for a wave of antiestablishment activism in this big kid's parable for the electronic age, a talky, caffeine-fueled Canadian debut novel celebrating difference and peddling self-empowerment for a new generation of disaffected youth. Ryan Slint, a quirky, mildly histrionic and altogether affable University of Toronto undergraduate with a penchant for entomology falls for Cassandra, a bisexual punk rocker turned waitress who works at a diner near campus. Their increasing intimacy precipitates a string of outrageous confessions: Cass reveals that she was impregnated by an extraterrestrial and gave birth to a clairvoyant alien-human hybrid; Ryan confides he can turn into a fly at will; not to be outdone, Cass discloses that she harbors the power to make things disappear, a talent she first discovered when she was six and "disappeared" her uncle after he tried to rape her. Having come to terms with their superpowers, Ryan and Cass invent the alter egos "Flyboy" and "Ms. Place" and set out to convert their idiosyncrasies into tools for social improvement. As the Superheroes for Social Justice, they embark on a media-savvy crusade to deface cigarette billboards (Ryan's mother, a smoker, has recently been diagnosed with breast cancer), fight for the right to peacefully assemble for feminist causes and lobby for the legalization of marijuana. By the end, the Superheroes and their ragtag crew emerge from a m?lange of puerile pranks, sophomoric insights and escapist stunts still young but with a good deal more direction. Munroe's exuberant, often original phrasings rescue the prose from tediously earnest heart-to-hearts and dialogue that can read like a press release. But for all their efforts, the Superheroes cannot save themselves from the excessive moralizing that makes this novel resemble a slightly less wholesome after-school special. (Nov.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: HarperCollins Canada, Limited
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0006480918
• ISBN 13: 9780006480914
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 239