Sputnik's Children

Terri Favro

Description

'A literary, genre-bending novel full of heart Cult comic book creator Debbie Reynolds Biondi has been riding the success of her Cold War era inspired superhero series, Sputnik Chick: Girl with No Past, for more than 25 years. But with the comic book losing fans and Debbie struggling to come up with new plotlines for her badass, mutant-killing heroine, she decides to finally tell Sputnik Chick s origin story. Debbie s never had to make anything up before and she isn t starting now. Sputnik Chick is based on Debbie s own life in an alternate timeline called Atomic Mean Time. As a teenager growing up in Shipman s Corners a Rust Belt town voted by Popular Science magazine as most likely to be nuked she was recruited by a self-proclaimed time traveller to collapse Atomic Mean Time before an all-out nuclear war grotesquely altered humanity. In trying to save the world, Debbie risked obliterating everyone she d ever loved as well as her o

Sujets

• Science fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Ecw Press
• Date de parution: 11 avril 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781773050058
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

CONTENTS
FALLSVIEW CASINO HOTEL: May 2011, E.S.T.
The Untold Origin Story of The Girl With No Past
Volume 1 — ESCAPE FROM THE Z-LANDS!
One: A Tale of Two Timelines
Two: Glow-in-the-Dark Pat Boone Lie Detector Test
QUEEN ELIZABETH HOTEL, MONTREAL: May 2011, E.S.T.
The Untold Origin Story of The Girl With No Past
Volume 2 — SCHRÖDINGER SWINGS LIKE A PENDULUM DO
One: Superpowers, Secrets and a Side Order of Salami and Cheese
Two: There Be Dragons
Three: The Day of the Dead
Four: Trouble
Five: Torture Chamber of the Lizard King
HOLIDAY INN EXPRESS, SCARBOROUGH: June 2011, E.S.T.
The Untold Origin Story of The Girl With No Past
Volume 3 — “WE’RE LOOKING FOR PEOPLE WHO LIKE TO DRAW”
One: Plonk
Two: No Place Like Home
Three: Jesus Weirdo Superstar
Four: Collateral Damage
Five: Breakfast on Planet of the Mothers
Six: The Chronicles of Duff
Seven: Hotter Than Hell
Eight: Seduction by Comic Book
Nine: Tender Fruit
Ten: Shark Bite
Eleven: Truth and Justice
Twelve: Amchitka
Thirteen: Break and Enter
LAKE SUPERIOR PROVINCIAL PARK: August 2011, E.S.T.
The Untold Origin Story of The Girl With No Past
Volume 4 — A NOOK IN TIME
One: Modern Bride
Two: Out-of-This-World Honeymoon
Three: Our Lady of the Algorithm
Four: Beautiful Nobodies
Five: A Nook in Time
Six: Timesickness
CRAZY LADY ISLAND: October 2011, E.S.T.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
COPYRIGHT


For Ron, Jacob and Joey and in memory of Rosa Scrocchi, “Nonna Gigi”


“Did I save a universe — or have I awakened as from a dream? Can a future that was, be forever erased? Is the cosmos itself but a flickering ember of imagination — only to be snuffed out at will? When all’s said and done, who is the dreamer and which is the dream?”
The Silver Surfer (Stan Lee) “Worlds Without End” 1969


“Suppose you came across a woman lying on the street with an elephant sitting on her chest. You notice she is short of breath. Shortness of breath can be a symptom of heart problems. In her case the much more likely cause is the elephant on her chest.”
Sally Ride, first American woman in space


FALLSVIEW CASINO HOTEL
May 2011, E.S.T. (Earth Standard Time)
A thin line of mutants, villains and superheroes stretches from the entrance to Conference Room B all the way to the slot machines. Yawning into their Red Bulls, gently farting and burping as they slump against windows and walls, most of them look like they partied all night on the American side, crossing the Rainbow Bridge at dawn for the free all-you-can-eat breakfast at ComicFanFest Expo.
No one makes eye contact with me. When a representative of Grey Wizard Comics hands me my contractually obligated low-fat chai latte before escorting me to the book-signing suite, a buzz ripples through the crowd. It’s starting to dawn on them that I’m the one they’re here to see.
It’s a better turnout than I expected, mostly teens and twenty-somethings with a smattering of stuck-in-the-past baby boomers costumed as characters who sprang out of my head twenty-five years ago. True believers, every one of them desperate for my comics to lift them out of their disappointing lives and turn them into ass-kicking saviours of the planet.
Sputnik Chick fans of all colours, shapes, sizes and genders — better known as Spunkies — form a queue, many of them wearing the trademark black tights, thunderbolt cleavage and lopsided haircut of the Girl With No Past herself. Mingled in the crowd are versions of Marco, his handsome Latin features unapologetically queer in MAC makeup, chatting up fans dressed as Johnny the K, the tall black love interest, with his wet-look anti-radiation suit and thermonuclearmagnetic boogie board. A lone Blond Barracuda towers over the others, all-white Andy Warhol hair and black synthetic armour covering his overdeveloped muscles like a spray tan.
A handful of Spunkies have shown up as Exceptionals, post-nuclear mutants who live short, tragic lives in the form of gooey baked goods with a single functioning lung under their pulsating carapaces. Mutations are as likely to be bacteria, spores or yeast as flesh and blood, I’ve tweeted, but I only started describing the Exceptionals as glutinous geopods after Bum Bum gave me the idea by baking a batch of hash-laced sourdough muffins and forgetting to fold in the baking soda.
A girl — I think — stands before me in a garment that’s been coated with podge to give it a gelatinous sheen. She looks like a giant wet amoeba. In my head, I dub the fan Gooey. Her fingertips protrude just far enough to drop a Sputnik Chick comic book in front of me to sign.
“You’re a freaking legend,” says Gooey, her muffled voice coming out of what can only be described as a blowhole.
“Now, now, don’t go calling me a ‘legend,’” I say, using a thick black Sharpie to sign my name on the front cover of her copy of Volume 25, Issue 9. “Makes me feel old.”
“Why have you never written an origin story?” her friend wants to know. Mouldy bread-crusts dangle from fishing line stitched to coveralls smeared with something that looks like it was cultured in a petri dish. I nickname her Crusty. “Sputnik Chick just shows up out of nowhere in New York City in 1979. Where did she come from? Even if her past was obliterated, she still has one, right?”
Gooey nods her head vigorously. Through her blowhole, I can smell tobacco and salt-and-vinegar chips. “Isn’t she ever going to get it on with Johnny the K? Why the hell does she always have to be so alone?”
Crusty chimes in again. “And you never even say what her real name is. She must have one — I mean, did her parents call her Sputnik Chick?”
“Of course not. Her real name is Debbie,” I say, flatlining my voice to control the quiver that afflicts me whenever the topic of Sputnik Chick’s provenance comes up.
Gooey shakes her head. “You named Sputnik Chick after yourself?”
I grip my Sharpie with both hands to disguise the fact that I’ve got the shakes. Gooey and Crusty are starting to get on my nerves. Why do so many young Spunkies become obsessed with knowing all these little details?
“Seems to me I can call Sputnik Chick whatever the hell I want,” I say. This time, it’s impossible to disguise the quiver in my voice.
The two of them look at one another through their eye slits.
“It’s just sort of weird,” says Gooey slowly.
I push the autographed comic across the table, hoping they don’t notice how shaky my signature is. “As for how Sputnik Chick got to New York City from another time and place — let’s just say I’m working on her origin story right now.”
Gooey and Crusty squeal and hop up and down, their Exceptional costumes billowing around them like rising bread dough.
“Cool!” exclaims Gooey.
“Anything you’re willing to, like, talk about?” asks Crusty.
“Not. Quite. Yet,” I answer slowly, trying not to stare at the nasty blue spores on an ancient slab of rye dangling from Crusty’s costume. “You know how it is — you talk about what’s in your head, you can’t get it down on paper.”
After oozing their thanks, Gooey and Crusty move on. Next in queue is a six-foot cross-dressing Spunky costumed as Sputnik Chick, gripping a vintage, not reprint, copy of Volume 5, Issue 2, “Love Hurts,” an all-time fan favourite. I handle the comic with care. A collector’s item these days, it could have cost this fan a month’s pay. It’s the issue where Sputnik Chick finally breaks up with Johnny the K after she tangled with the evil Barracuda. The Dark Lord of the Seas, as he calls himself, might be a sadistic psychopath, but Sputnik Chick finds herself irresistibly drawn to him.
The Spunky takes my hand and tells me she understands the complex interplay of emotions leading to Sputnik Chick’s inexplicable betrayal of Johnny the K. “Who wouldn’t want to fuck Barracuda?” she says breathily. “I totally get it.” She asks me to autograph the centre spread with the infamous fight/love scene, where Sputnik Chick brings Barracuda to his knees with a well-executed kick to the chin and a Pussy Galore–style over-the-shoulder judo toss. Barracuda responds by seizing her ankle and pulling her off her feet. Sex ensues. Six pulsating pages of it, the Barracuda’s submarine-shaped penis quivering in front of Sputnik Chick’s then-futuristic shaved pussy, a decade before every suburban mom got Brazilianed. I think it might have been the naked pudendum, rather than the penis, that got “Love Hurts” stopped at the border by the censor board in 1989, simultaneously transforming The Girl With No Past from an underground cult comic into a commercial hit and making me enough money to quit my day job art-directing Psychics of Fortune magazine out of an industrial park in Fort Lee, New Jersey.
Over the entwined bodies of Sputnik Chick and her arch-enemy sharing a post-coital cigarette, I sign the page with a flourish.
Next up is a South-Asian Johnny the K wearing what looks like a custom-tailored anti-radiation suit, silver and green. I can tell that he’s got a beef with me from the way he brandishes his rolled-up comic.
“Your fight scenes suck,” he says, shaking the comic at me like a club. “Your characters throw punches like ballerinas.”
I keep my eyes on the comic I’m signing for him. Don’t engage, I tell myself.
“Thanks for the tip,” I say, pushing him the comic. “That’s an awesome anti-radiation suit, by the way.”
Unexpectedly, he smiles at me. “Thanks. My mom made it.”
A few dozen more mutants and supervillains and I’m done. A respectable crowd, but not even close to the numbers I saw ten years ago. Cold War paranoia doesn’t sell like it used to. Even a Sputnik Chick movie has been back-burnered until I come up with an origin story exciting enough to re