John McNally shows off the original Chris Burnham artwork illustrating his short story “Remains of the Night,” from the forthcoming anthology Who Can Save Us Now?, which McNally co-edited with Owen King. The two authors, and their illustrator, took part in a panel at the New York Comic Con Saturday afternoon, where Burnham talked about the challenge of encapsulating a 25-page short story into a single “splash page” image…and then doing it another 21 times. “How do you keep [the illustrations] consistent without them all looking the same?”
Prompted by a question from Austin Grossman, the author of Soon I Will Be Invincible, King talked about how the short story form gave writers teh opportunity to probe their characters’ backgrounds and delve into the psychology of superheroics. (Afterwards, Free Press editor Wylie O’Sullivan echoed that sentiment, praising the way the stories “get behind the facade.” She was not a comic book fan when she got McNally and King’s proposal, she admitted, but “I admired the aesthetic from afar.”) He also played up the diverse range of material, from authors like Tom Bissell, Jim Shepard, and Jennifer Weiner—although the stories don’t all take place in the same universe. “That would’ve been cool, though,” McNally chimed in.
To generate advance buzz for the book, which comes out in July, Free Press is inviting readers to submit their own superhero fiction (under 15,000 words) through the book’s official website, with a Nintendo Wii for the winner—and possibly inclusion in the ebook edition of the anthology.