Astonishing Heroes

“Everything you'd expect from a Gary Phillips story collection — solid, kick-ass pulp.”

— Bobby Nash, 2013 Pulp Ark Writer of the Year 


Louis Trent is a high rolling hit-man plucked from Hell only if he kills for Heaven. 


An anonymous city bureaucrat, The Reclaimer, senses what evil lurks via emanations from tenement walls. 


In the 1970s, Onyx Adams, a tough, kung fu'ing Afro-wearing female private eye teams with a so-called b'wana devil, the Ghost Wolf, to thwart one of history's greatest villains back from the dead. 


The Silencer is a Vietnam vet who returns home but the war goes on when a bomb injures him and kills the woman he loves. 


A seeming sellout Uncle Tom agent provocateur, American Black, reveals other plans. 


A weed smoking, easygoing inner city teen working in an old folks' home inherits amazing powers and responsibilities from WWII-era heroine Victory Angel as Kidd Vee; and several of the heroes team up in the past and present to prevent a climate calamity by a fanatical billionaire. 


In this anthology of 10 action-packed prose stories, veteran crime and mystery fictioneer and graphic novelist Gary Phillips (author of Big Water, Warlord of Willow Ridge, and co-editor of the acclaimed Black Pulp anthology) offers his rip-roaring revisionist take on the superhero genre – The Watchman meets Manchild in the Promised Land. 


As a special to this collection, Phillips has written an original outing bringing together several of these characters in one adventure for the first time ever.