Shelf Care: SuperMansplaining

Welcome to Shelf Care, where I review three books related by a theme. These aren't necessarily the latest releases, but are hopefully books you can't believe you missed.This month: SuperMansplaining – women confirming there are some problems that superpowers can’t fixAs female superheroes aren’t nearly as prevalent as their male counterparts, there haven’t been that many examples of what having superpowers or dealing with them would mean for women.This is starting to change a bit, with shows like Disney’s latest: She-Hulk: Attorney at Law. While the reviews for it have been mixed (though it has triggered every incel on the Internet, so I believe that’s a check mark in the “pros” column), I thought the show was most interesting when it touched on how superpowers might change a woman’s experience in a male dominated world. While She-Hulk didn’t dig as deep as I would have liked, it turns out that there are a number of books out there that have dug deeper (directly or indirectly) into this topic, so if you’re interested in how the super powered might affect the super irritating sexist crap women experience every day, consider one of the following.So if you likeA feminist take on the superhero businessA rebuttal to the trope of women in refrigerators known as “fridging”Short storiesThe afterlifeYou might likeThe Refrigerator Monologues, by Catherynne M. ValenteOverviewCalling out the fridging trope head on – these are first person accounts from female characters whose fatal experiences only served to promote their boyfriend’s careers.Sample passage

If there’s a constant in the universe, it’s that Paige Embry is dead. I am a permanent error page. 404: Girl Not Found. Oh, sure, I know a guy on the outside. A pretty damn powerful guy. A guy with the speed of a maglev train, the brainpower of a supercomputer, and the strength of a half-dozen Hollywood Hercules. A guy who can slalom between skyscrapers like gravity forgot to take down his name and number. But he’s never once peeked in on me. Never once caught me, in all the times I’ve fallen. I hear he’s dating now. We do get the news here in Deadtown. Every morning in four colors. He’s got somebody prettier than a lipstick ad who’ll stay home while he fights crime, waving from a window in a goddamn apron. I bet she lives forever.But one thing the dead do love is telling our stories. We get to take our stories with us. They don’t take up a lick of room in the suitcase. Most days I leave my apartment in Hell’s Kitchen (actual Hell’s actual Kitchen), go down to the Lethe Café, order a cup of nothing, look out the window at the blue-gas burntbone streetlamps, and wait for the girls. Ladies who lunch. Ladies who lost. You don’t have to be lonely down here if you don’t want to be. They come one by one, all big eyes and long legs, tucking strands of loose hair behind their ears, carrying pocketbooks and hats and secret griefs. Julia, Pauline, Daisy, Bayou, Samantha and more and others. Every time they open the frosted-glass door a gust of autumn leaves and moonlight blows in and sticks against the legs of the tables. They apologize to Neil, the gargoyle behind the espresso machine. He shakes his big woolly wolfshead, pulls a black ristretto shot of emptiness and says, Don’t you worry about it, honey.It’s always autumn in Deadtown. It’s always the middle of the night, even at nine in the morning.We call ourselves the Hell Hath Club.

TakeawayAt a time where pop culture just seems it has to be hitting Peak Superhero (I mean, can anybody count how many Marvel series are in production without missing a few?) The Refrigerator Monologues actually has something new to say, with stories from the perspective of the “damsel in distress” who has been randomly killed off to spice up the hero’s character’s arc with a bit of tragic backstory, which is a disappointingly common trope called fridging (which recently got a fourth wall breaking mention on the aforementioned She-Hulk.) Valente hits this trope head on with a collection of short stories set in the afterlife where a group of women meet to tell the stories of what brought them here. The tragic death of the hero’s girlfriend that set him on his current path? It looks a bit different when she’s the one telling the story. The villain that compelled his sidekick to join him on a Bonnie and Clyde style rampage? He left out a few details that she’s a little too happy to provide. Of course, this being a superhero universe, at least one storyteller expects to be leaving any day now once her boyfriend gets in touch with the right necromancers.All in all it’s a clever take on the trope, and my only complaint with the book is the title, which, while it is wildly appropriate, and quite marketable to readers familiar with fridging or The Vagina Monologues, it isn’t much to entice anyone else. I’d found the book because I’d loved Valente’s 2018 novel Space Opera, went looking to see what else she had written and then found out about the fridging trope. That said, if you’re looking for a fresh take on superhero stories, The Refrigerator Monologues is treading some very interesting ground.Or if you likeSupervillian office dramaActuariesThinking “You guys wanna do this someplace else?” during every city leveling superhero fightAustin Grossman’s Soon I Will Be InvincibleYou might likeHench, by Natalie Zina WalschotsOverviewThe career of a temp working for a supervillian takes an unexpected turn when the superheroes rather expectedly show up.Sample passage

The Temp Agency’s reception desk was in a long, bleak room. Smaller, windowless interview rooms branched off of it, reminding me of holding cells. One of the sickly fluorescent lights flickered. My eye twitched.There weren’t many of us there that morning, barely a dozen, in moody coats and unnecessary sunglasses and sharp-shouldered suits, chipped manicures and threaded eyebrows, all doing what we could to cast the illusion we were intimidating. No one was sitting. Two temp wranglers sat behind the desk: a man in an ill-fitting blue suit who was trying to make himself look less baby-faced by growing a thin blond beard, and a frighteningly neat woman with glossy black hair, pecking irritably at a tablet.“How bad do you think it’s going to be,” I asked June quietly.“Abysmal.”“Half of us leaving without work?”She tossed her head, gesturing to the hench-hopefuls behind us. “At least. I say two-thirds walk out of here with nothing.”The man in the blue suit stood, and the muttering around me quieted. I stood a little straighter.“Where are our drivers?” he asked.Three people stepped forward: a broad-shouldered blond woman with a buzz cut and two young men who scowled at each other, both wearing leather jackets and white T-shirts. Their matching, perfect pompadours trembled as they eyed each other aggressively, like the wattles on a pair of roosters.“Wore the same dress to the prom, I see,” June said in my ear, and I nearly choked on the coffee in my mouth.The woman looked up from her tablet; her eyes were shark black. “We need a chauffeur with first-class getaway. Who has a stunt background?”The blond woman raised her hand. “I’m certified. I have a lot of on-set work, mostly commercials.”“You got references?”“Of course.”“Let’s head out to the track.” The blue-suited man started to walk out of the room, gesturing for her to follow. He paused to glance back at the two men, who looked even more deflated than they had moments before. “Sorry, guys. Next time.”The two disappointed drivers turned to leave at the same time, and had to endure the awkwardness of stomping out together, both refusing to pause and let the other go first.“It’ll be a summer wedding,” I predicted. June choked on her coffee.

TakeawayThere’s a bit of required setup before the plot really gets rolling, so I’d rather not give anything away there, but this was a terrific, stay-up-late-to-finish-it book. While a lot of superhero tropes have been overdone, the people who work for the villains, to my knowledge, haven’t really had their own novel before. In Hench, it makes total sense that supervillains would require temp staffing and independent contractors. When your business model accounts for getting your headquarters blown up on a regular basis, you don’t want to have a lot of staff to lay off, and when you inevitably make your escape from prison, you’re going to need to staff up in a hurry.Hench is told from the perspective of a temp who starts off doing data entry as her hench job, and ends up being responsible for quite a bit more as she has to climb the corporate ladder while not being taken seriously by those with powers, so there are plenty of real world parallels there. It is a well paced, tightly written and well thought out look a what it would be like to work for the bad guys, while wondering if that really makes you one of them.Or if you like:Struggling personal assistantsTolerating diva behavior in the workplaceMean girl bloggers and workplace relationshipsStories set in San FranciscoYou might likeHeroine Complex, by Sarah KhunOverviewEvie Tanaka has kept her job as a diva superhero’s personal assistant because she is a master of managing mean girl bloggers, placating her boss’s moods and letting tantrums roll of her back, but when she has to step in to the spotlight, the demons she’s facing are nothing compared to the attitude she’s getting from, well, everybody.Sample passage

“Oh. You so would.” I took a step forward. Maisy dove behind Nate, her grip on his arm tightening. “Aveda has eyes everywhere. We know you were trying to stir up some kind of salacious mean girl bullshit. We know.”To emphasize my point, I did the I-see-you thing where I pointed at my eyes with my index and middle fingers, then pointed at Maisy, then back to me again. It was ridiculous. It was also immensely satisfying.“Not so mousy today,” Maisy murmured. “When did you decide to grow a backbone, Rude Girl?”“It doesn’t matter,” I growled. It was a pretty good growl. “What matters is this: you need to leave Aveda alone and stop posting all your snarky bullshit about her appearance. Enough with the tearing down other women and encouraging everyone else to look at them through a male gaze-centric lens. Just... enough. And keep your grabby hands off her escort.”I jerked my head at Nate. Maisy retracted her claws from his arm so fast her hair daisy fell to the floor. She slunk off, Shasta trailing behind her.“Man,” I heard her mutter. “What a gosh-dang cun—”“Was that necessary? Telling them off like that?”I turned back around to see Nate gazing at me, his expression amused.“What?” I said. “I got rid of them, didn’t I? Plus I’m protecting Aveda and her image. Maisy’s posts totally encourage the fans to make even shittier comments than usual. I know how damaging that can be; I wrote a paper on superheroines and male gaze-centrism in grad school.”“And the bit about the ‘grabby hands’?”“I could tell Maisy was making you uncomfortable.” My lips started to twitch and I tried to school them into a more stern expression. “I can’t have her disrespecting you in Nordstrom, of all places.”

TakeawayHeroine Complex doesn’t lend itself to being easily summed up, as there’s a lot going on here. Tonally the book reads like a young adult novel, but also features some of the steamier elements of a romance novel. Plotwise, there’s the history of things popping in from other dimensions which has created superheroes and the problems they have to face, and the present mystery of why these things from another dimension seem to be evolving. Finally there’s Evie’s character arc of learning to accept who she is and stand up for herself – which puts her at odds with her boss, her sister, and the team’s scientist, who is as good at being fit as he is at constantly getting on her nerves, (so I’m sure that won’t have consequences...) At the end of the day things were interesting enough to keep me reading, but I think that because there are two sequels and a bunch of rave reviews for the series at Khun’s website, younger or female readers will find the characters a lot more relatable. So if you’re looking for a book that features superheroes with real life problems, Heroine Complex is worth a read.So, what other books should be on this list? Leave your thoughts in the comments, and stay tuned for my next column.