Books

Wearing the Cape

By Dan Horn
June 23, 2011 - 10:53

Years ago, according to Marion G. Harmon's freshman offering Wearing the Cape, an inexplicable "Event" had occurred revealing the first of the world's true meta-humans. Subsequent superheroes follow, their diverse, supernal powers exposed under life-threatening circumstances. When a terrorist bombing levels an interstate overpass above Hope Corrigan during her morning commute, the horrific disaster catalyzes her latent abilities of strength, flight, and sensory amplification. She's what is known as a "breakthrough." After being discovered by Atlas, first of the American superheroes, during the emergency response effort, Hope is whisked away to the headquarters of the city-commissioned super-team, the Sentinels, and, after rigorous testing, classified as one of the most powerful breakthroughs in the country, not to mention a very marketable sidekick.

Plunged into an alien world of glitz-and-glam notoriety, politics, religion, advertising, and high-fashion, it's all a bit dizzying for a young woman whose childhood reveries included pretending she was Supergirl, but Hope, now codenamed Astra, must train with the Sentinels and corral her feelings of wide-eyed wonder (and her affinity for Atlas) if she has any sanguine expectation of achieving her mission: bringing the man, the Teatime Anarchist, responsible for the interstate bombing and other deadly attacks to justice.

Harmon, armed with the keen wit of an author more experienced in the field than himself, capably rationalizes the inexplicable: superheroes. Quite early on, one of his ersatz textual excursuses explains the super-power as an appropriate metaphor to gravity, and vice versa. We know it exists and we can quantify it, yet we can only theorize about its origin and its true nature. Much of this novel deals with the demystification of the fictive superhero, and does a very fine job of it, establishing a phenomenal framework to a genre truism too often accepted strictly at face value. The superhero stereotype is peeled away like a domino mask, exposing the humanity and imperfection beneath. Wearing the Cape also insightfully allegorizes motifs such as homosexuality (Harmon briefly covers the legal and social parameters of being "outed" as a superhero), the constant battle between science and faith, likening the superhuman to the very mysteries of nature itself, and military service, sacrificing your own desires of attending college or of normalcy for the sake of a sense of duty to your country or to the human race. It's not easy for Hope to give up her time at the University of Chicago or to alienate her friends and family for a life of crime-fighting, but altruism is Frost's road less traveled, never the clearest course to traverse but often the most spiritually fortuitous.

This is a remarkable first endeavor for Marion G. Harmon, portending great things to come from the author. Full of subtle romance, tongue-in-cheek aphorisms, high adventure, topical metaphor, and a precocious, almost sacrilegious, prose inquest of comic book familiarities, Wearing the Cape is  surprisingly realized pop-fiction for a relatively amateur novelist.

Perhaps the idea of an ambiguous cosmic "Event" heralding the age of superheroes isn't the freshest literary trope, but Harmon repurposes it so brilliantly, habituating the premise through the autopoietic supplements that kick-off each chapter and via the protagonist's own every-woman narrative, that it's impossible to dismiss as a simple regurgitation of past meta-yarns.  Astonishingly, Harmon succeeds in fostering an anecdotal voice that is unique, yet comparable to the austere magic-realist approach of his esteemed contemporaries in the field of neoteric fantasy, evoking a subdued post-modern vernacular, a refreshingly contemporary starkness in lieu of the prevalence of the supernatural, while also eliciting lush, vibrant imagery. His storytelling will surprise the reader from one page to the next: Just as you're settling in to Astra's romantic, superhuman gestes, you're suddenly finding yourself faced with excerpts of recondite solipsism, sociological commentary, and speculative surrealism. If nothing else, Wearing the Cape proves the author's immense potential, uncanny capacity for balancing assorted themes, and already formidable talent.

Harmon does miss a few opportunities to deepen his story, and I wonder if some of the shortcuts are due to the eager excitement of getting this book released. Harmon incessantly skirts the shores of avant-garde here, but never moors Wearing the Cape on anything substantially edgy. There are also a few issues concerning composition and fewer issues pertaining to grammar or typos. If reigned in by a scrupulous editor or perhaps even given a quick rewrite, the text wouldn't seem quite as inadvertently disjointed. The potholes in Harmon's prose are fairly shallow and should be easily smoothed over, giving his fine story some well-earned recompense. Hope's exploits are broadly imagined and instilled with dimensionality nonetheless, the book proving to be a compellingly quick read. While Wearing the Cape would be difficult to confuse with iconoclastic literature, it's got enough pluck and vision to rival the best pop-fiction around. It's also an incredible value from the Kindle e-book store. I very highly recommend giving it a try.

For the sake of full disclosure, I received a copy of this e-book for review.

Rating: 8 /10

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12