What They Did to Princess Paragon (Robert Rodi Essentials)
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2.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $0.99
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Publisher Description
Robert Rodi's 1994 cult sensation is a scathing satire of corporate rapaciousness, sexual identity, and pop-culture absurdity. Long out of print, it now returns to enjoy a new lease on life as a definitive skewering of one of America's more brazen epochs. Brian Parrish is a very successful, bottomlessly ambitious cartoonist. When Bang Comics, publishers of the country's most iconic superheroes, begins redesigning its "properties" to compete on a grittier, harder-edged pop-culture landscape, Brian signs on to rescue the stodgy, virginal Princess Paragon. His solution? — Turn her Sapphic. This brings him into direct conflict with Jerome T. Kornacker, an unhinged fan who's in love with the Princess. Their battle of wits (and ultimately of weapons) plays out like Stephen King's "Misery" in reverse — and raises the question: Who really owns a fictional character? Her creator? Her copyright-holder? Her loyal fans? And will anyone survive long enough to find out? "An extremely enjoyable satire on today's comic industry … Of course, it's worse than this in real life, but it's seldom as funny." – Neil Gaiman "A delightful comic novel that's also faintly terrifying … forces us to recognize the bit of obsessive fan that perhaps lurks within all of us." – Charles Busch
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
How the world's greatest comic-book artist, Brian Parrish, a 38-year-old gay man from Manhattan, ends up trapped in a food plant ``in the middle of some piddly little college town two hours outside Chicago'' is part of the delight of Rodi's new novel. Brian's scheme is to rejuvenate the faltering sales of American comic-book icon Princess Paragon by turning her into the first gay super-hero. His design is modified at every turn by a cast of outrageous characters: Perpetrial Cotton, an African American feminist lesbian whose favorite T-shirt reads ``Ferraro for Veep''; Jerome T. Kornacker, a deranged fan upset at what is happening to his longtime fantasy girlfriend; and Heloise Freitag, Brian's chain-smoking publisher. Tightly plotted and consistently amusing, the novel is more farce than satire: Rodi's characters are as cartoonish as his superheroine. ``This is real life,'' Brian says to Jerome as Rodi attempts to inject some pathos into the dialogue. Nothing about the book suggests real life, however, which is exactly the point. Real life is seldom this funny. This is another campy, breezy read from a gay comic writer ( Fag Hag ; Closet Case ) who is quickly developing his own cult following.
