America of superheroes and super villains is not the romanticized
world of your childhood comic books. Here, people with
superpowers — or, as they are known, Supers — are taken from
their families and given a choice: they can get trained to become
superheroes and live out their lives to mirror the comic books
that share their likeness, or they can spend a lifetime of isolation
in Antarctica. Those who choose training receive a new identity,
get brainwashed, and live according to a complex set of rules
designed to protect regular people, the Normals, from the
Supers, and the Supers from the Normals. There’s no way out of
the contract.
A mosaic novel that uses comic-book imagery in prose, Escape
Clause tells the stories of the Supers who make up the Union of
Superheroes; not the benign, PR-approved tales that American
kids read in their comics but the grittier truth about the
beginnings and goals of the Union, about superheroes who can’t
catch a break whether they try to follow the rules or go rogue,
and about what really happens to those who have the misfortune
to be born with a little too much talent.
Set in the framework of our legalistic society, each tile of the
mosaic shines a new light on the relationships between powerful
lobbies and the government, between those who make the rules
and those the rules are made for, between people who are
different from one another. Superpowers or not, Union members
have to cope with the same sort of frustrations that any
employee or civil servant would instantly recognize.
And, as Supers and Normals alike learn again and again, when
bureaucracy and superpowers collide, nobody wins.
trade paperback | ISBN 9780975254097
5.25" x 8.25"
220 pp.
JEFFREY DeREGO is a full-time writer. His Union Dues stories
have already generated a base of over 1 million fans and have
gained critical acclaim among the independent science-fiction
and comic literary community.
Jeffrey has sold fifteen Union Dues stories in the podcast
science fiction market. His work has also appeared in the Granite
State Pulp Fiction anthologies.
Jeffrey lives in Derry, New Hampshire, with his two children, Ian
and Margaret.
“
I think the book was such a success because
the situations and conflicts were
surprisingly realistic, even with such
fantastic subject matter.
— Edward, Goodreads
© ENC Press 2018. Tipping sacred cows since 2003.
Covers may vary slightly from the ones pictured here.