A foundational text of the modern superhero novel, Grossman’s debut offers a sharp, satirical, and surprisingly poignant look at the inner lives of heroes and villains.
The narrative is split between Dr. Impossible, a narcissistic and tragically insecure super-genius plotting his next world-conquering scheme from prison, and Fatale, a powerful new cyborg heroine with amnesia, who is being recruited into the world’s premier superhero team.
Grossman masterfully deconstructs classic comic book tropes, exploring the mundane bureaucracy, professional jealousies, and existential crises of super-powered individuals. It brilliantly answers the question: what do superheroes and villains think about when they aren't fighting?
This grimdark fantasy novel dismantles the hero/villain binary entirely. In a world where near-death experiences can unlock extraordinary abilities (EOs), college friends Victor Vale and Eli Ever turn themselves into monsters through their shared ambition. A decade later, they are bitter enemies locked in a cycle of revenge.
Told through a non-linear narrative that jumps between their tragic past and a tense present, Vicious is a gripping exploration of jealousy, obsession, and the corrupting nature of power. Schwab forces the reader to question who the real villain is when both protagonists are driven by morally reprehensible motives.
Sanderson sets his Reckoners series in a chilling dystopia where super-powered individuals, known as Epics, have emerged—and every single one of them is a vicious, power-hungry tyrant. In the fractured city of Chicago, the seemingly invincible Epic named Steelheart rules with an iron fist.
The story is told from the perspective of David, a normal human whose father was murdered by Steelheart. Possessing a key piece of information—he has seen Steelheart bleed—David joins the Reckoners, a rebel group that studies and assassinates Epics.
The novel combines intricate world-building and spectacular action with a high-stakes mystery, as the Reckoners must uncover the specific weakness of each god-like tyrant they hunt.
A biting critique of the superhero genre told from the perspective of the people who get thrown through walls. Anna works as a "hench," performing low-level data entry for supervillains.
But after a violent encounter with a beloved superhero leaves her permanently injured and jobless, she begins to use her skills with spreadsheets to calculate the immense cost of collateral damage caused by "heroes."
Her data-driven takedown of the hero industry catches the eye of one of the world's most feared supervillains, who offers her a chance to dismantle the system from the inside. Hench is a darkly humorous and razor-sharp novel about accountability, corporate culture, and the quantifiable cost of unchecked power.
This Pulitzer Prize-winning novel isn't about superheroes themselves, but about their creation and the profound power of their stories. In the late 1930s, Josef Kavalier, a young Jewish artist and escape artist, flees Nazi-occupied Prague and lands in New York City with his cousin, Sammy Clay.
Together, they invent a superhero, The Escapist, who becomes a national sensation during the Golden Age of comic books.
The novel masterfully weaves the cousins' personal struggles—Kavalier's desperate attempts to save his family and Clay's exploration of his sexuality—with the patriotic, fantastical adventures of their creation, illustrating how art becomes a vital form of hope, rebellion, and escape in dark times.
When the world’s greatest superhero, Dreadnought, falls from the sky and dies at her feet, teenager Danny Tozer inherits his power—a mantle that physically transforms her body into the one she has always known was hers.
As the new Dreadnought, Danny must not only learn to control her incredible new abilities and face a world-ending threat, but also navigate the fallout with a family that refuses to accept her gender identity. Daniels uses the superhero transformation as a powerful and direct metaphor for trans self-discovery.
Dreadnought is a thrilling and deeply heartfelt story that demonstrates how the fight for self-acceptance can be just as heroic as any battle against a supervillain.
What is it like to be the only ordinary person in a family of superheroes? Celia West, the daughter of Captain Olympus and Spark, has no powers and has spent her life trying to build a normal career as a forensic accountant, far from the shadow of her famous parents.
But when her city faces a new danger and her father is implicated in a crime, Celia is drawn back into the world of capes and secret identities she fought so hard to escape.
Vaughn delivers a grounded, domestic take on the superhero mythos, focusing on themes of legacy, family pressure, and the difficulty of forging your own identity when you're expected to be extraordinary.
A sweeping, literary novel that uses superpowers as a central metaphor to explore friendship, race, and the evolution of a Brooklyn neighborhood from the 1970s onward.
The story follows two motherless boys, Dylan Ebdus (white) and Mingus Rude (Black), whose lives are changed when a neighborhood vagrant gives one of them a magic ring that grants the ability to fly.
The power is less a catalyst for superheroics and more a lens through which Lethem examines childhood innocence, betrayal, the burden of secrets, and the cultural forces of gentrification and hip-hop. It's a profound character study that treats superpowers not as a plot device, but as a complex, messy part of the human experience.
In a society rebuilt from ashes by a group of heroes known as the Renegades, order has been restored, but at what cost? Nova Artino is an "Anarchist," one of the villains defeated by the Renegades, and she believes their rigid control is a new form of tyranny.
Possessing the power to put people to sleep with a touch, she infiltrates the Renegades' ranks on a mission of vengeance and subversion. The narrative alternates between Nova’s perspective and that of Adrian, a Renegade prodigy and the adopted son of the group's leaders.
This dual-POV structure creates a compelling examination of justice, power, and whether heroes and villains are defined by their powers or their conflicting ideologies.
When every passenger on a flight from London to Delhi mysteriously develops a unique superpower—one that reflects their innermost desires—the world is thrown into delightful chaos.
Set primarily in India, the novel follows a diverse cast, including a blogger who can multiply himself, an aspiring actress who can change her appearance, and an air hostess who can communicate with technology.
Basu uses this premise to deliver a witty, fast-paced satire of modern India, skewering everything from political corruption and media circuses to celebrity culture and online activism.
Turbulence offers a fresh, global perspective on the superhero genre, exploring how sudden, extraordinary abilities would collide with deeply ingrained social structures.
This novel is a high-octane blend of two beloved genres: the superhero epic and the post-apocalyptic zombie horror story.
A year after a zombie plague devastated the world, a small group of superheroes—including the Superman-like Mighty Dragon, the gadgeteer Zzzap, and the vigilante Stealth—protect the last bastion of human survivors in a fortified film studio they call "The Mount."
Clines excels at combining thrilling action sequences and clever use of powers with the grim realities of survival horror. The story explores the psychological toll on heroes who are accustomed to saving the world but are now reduced to simply holding the line against an endless, undead horde.
A cornerstone of the "realistic superhero" subgenre, this long-running, shared-world anthology series begins in 1946 when an alien virus is released over New York City. The "Wild Card" virus rewrites human DNA, killing most of its victims but granting a small percentage of survivors extraordinary abilities.
Those gifted with useful or beautiful powers become known as "Aces," while those cursed with grotesque physical mutations are called "Jokers."
Edited by Martin and written by a roster of acclaimed sci-fi and fantasy authors, the series presents a sprawling alternate history that examines prejudice, political intrigue, and celebrity culture through the lens of a super-powered society.
Offering a charming and lighthearted spin on the genre, this superhero romantic comedy focuses on the people who have to deal with the logistical and emotional chaos of loving a hero. Beatrice, a coffee shop owner, is determined to live a normal life after her superhero sister's messy public divorce.
Her plans go awry when she finds herself falling for a seemingly ordinary (and handsome) regular, who happens to be the secret civilian identity of one of the city's most powerful heroes.
Super Adjacent cleverly explores the everyday challenges of the superhero world, from scheduling dates around alien invasions to the perils of being a potential target for supervillains, all with a healthy dose of humor and heart.