Slugboy Saves the World

Sleeping Beauty is perhaps one of the most well-known and best-loved of all fairy tales. Beautifully illustrated in soft watercolors.

Thanks to an unfortunately tasty-looking radioactive garden slug, eleven-year-old Murdo McLeod is now the world's worst superhero. His two powers are pretty unique: the first is sliding up walls. Quite slowly. The second is secreting slippery slime from his skin. (Yes, just as disgusting as it sounds.)

In a Scotland full of awesome superheroes, Slugboy has a lot to prove. No one wants help fighting bad guys from someone with a horrible habit of (quite literally) messing things up. He's so underrated, in fact, that when an evil mastermind devises a plan to capture all the other superheroes, Slugboy isn't even on his list.

Now, Slugboy has to use his not-so-super and oh-so-gross abilities to free the other superheroes and save the world. Let's hope he doesn't slip up.

Mark A. Smith was born in Dundee, where he works as a primary school teacher. He lives in Fife and spends most of his spare time reading comics and writing stories. He is highly competitive but has yet to find a sport he's actually good at. Slugboy Saves the World is his first novel.

Darren Gate is the 2016 winner of the Kelpies Design and Illustration Prize. He is an illustrator and graphic designer based in Glasgow.