Dancing with the Squirrels: Tales from Comics Fandom and Beyond

Long before any theories about oversized detonations… there were funny stories about comic book fans! A long time ago, a certain aspiring author realized that he didn’t know much about what real-life detectives, spies, cowboys, or starship captains actually do, so it would be hard to write stories about them. But what he did know was what kind of trouble his fellow comic-book fans got into. So, taking the old advice to new writers, “Write what you know,” a little too much to heart, he instead wrote real fan fiction — stories about fans. This book collects some of his best, new and old, all as fresh and funny as when they were first written. In the title story, destiny strikes like lightning at a comics convention — but its aim is a little off. In the other stories, teenage comics fans hunt for rare and valuable old comic books in unlikely places while trying to live down the damage done to their reputations by the Batman TV show. The fictional locales range from a small town in Illinois to Los Angeles and even England, but the strangest story of all is set in Cincinnati — and happens to be perfectly true! Whether you’re a comics fan or a science-fiction fan, know some fans, or just have some idea of what comic books and science fiction are, Dancing with the Squirrels will introduce you to a world you may have never known existed. The fanboys — and even a fangirl or two — are on the move!

Dwight R. Decker has been enmeshed in the web of organized comics fandom since he was fifteen. Over the years he has written for comics fanzines, published comics fanzines, and even dabbled on the professional side as a translator of foreign-produced Disney comics for a number of publishers on both sides of the Atlantic. The high point there was translating an Italian-produced comic book (or "graphic novel") featuring an adaptation of Dante's Inferno with Disney characters (published in Walt Disney's Comics & Stories #666). He has also tried his hand at prose: for the anthology Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded, he translated a 19th Century Danish story that can only be described as steampunk when steampunk was what was right outside your front door and not just a genre. Most recently, he translated and published a 1744 German story that may be the first fictional account ever written of a trip to Mars (or at least somewhere close by), The Speedy Journey by Eberhard Christian Kindermann. In addition, he writes lighthearted novels in a science-fictional vein, and has just published Pleistocene Junior High, with The Napoleon of Time coming soon, available from the usual online sources.