Additional information
by Batton Lash (Illustrator), Anya Kagan (Editor), Anne James (Editor)
This book's third edition consists of several short stories. Several times the slapstick laughs, superheroic slugging, alliterative adverbs, and literary sugar (or corn syrup)!
Note: Even though a couple of my nice reviewers said "comic" and "comic book," this is a prose book, not a graphic novel (although the end has Super Holly artwork.) I write in a comic book style, thinking of Adam West and Stan Lee. Maybe my writing style makes them see the action.
I am Dave M. Strom. I write stories about comic book author and short-tempered superheroine Holly Hansson, along with her superpowered friends (and fiends). I like to put funny into my superhero stories. More laughs, less grim and gritty. In a world somewhat sillier than ours, Holly Hansson's graphic novel "The Last Super" was helping Holly achieve her geek girl's dream: in her twenties, she was becoming an author where her female protagonist was brave and smart and strong! But through a combination of DNA, radiation, a superpower extra-dimensional force, or other comic book doubletalk, Holly Hansson also got superpowers, along with thousands of other empowered comic book fanboys and fangirls. Holly is slowly adjusting to her new job as the most powerful super of her world. Holly is not adjusting to paparazzi aiming their telephoto lenses at the super logo on her chest. That logo is an up-arrow for a reason. Here is the story list.
- Super Bad Hair Day! A battle-weary Super Holly shows up where the only man in the world can save her from the world's worst bad hair day: Lash the barber's barber shop. Holly tells her old friend the story of how grit and grime and asphalt was ground into her long blonde hair. But Holly has a date with destiny in less than half an hour, can Lash possibly free Holly's long blonde hair from the clutches of a tarry monster in time?
- The Poet and the Supersplainer! Super Holly fights a battle on two fronts! The evil Karate Queen is intent on stealing the prototype 5-D phone from the CEO of Apricot Computer! With that phony power, what evil will that villainess inflict upon the world? And upon Cal "The Intellectual" Critbert, Holly's grim, super-smart, heroic boyfriend, whom The Karate Queen is eyeing in a hungry way? Is Holly's super-strength and super-telekinesis a match for the Queen's super-karate and rhyming battle banter?
- Kittygirl in The Fiendish Brain Freezer! Eight-year-old Kittygirl, the girl with super-kittycat powers, must step into the hero role when her home town, and her hero Super Holly, are falling under a villain's brain-freezing power!
- The Dimensional Dollar!Super Holly must stop a money-gobbling villain from converting cash to ultimate power!
- The Intellecta-Rhapsody! A script for the audio story where Super Holly and her boyfriend's intelligent car must stop a gigantic tank armed with Holly's kryptonite (green lutefisk, YUCK)!
- Chapter Zero of The Comic Book Code! Read the event that made comic book writer Holly Hansson SUPER!
- Super Holly artworks by several comic book artists.
Note: Most of these stories were edited, and I rewrote them after accordingly. So any typos, misspellings, etc. that remain are mine. If you find any mistakes, please do not blame the nice editors.
Author Biography
Dave M. Strom writes superheroine slapstick so fangirls, fanboys, and fan-wannabes can also see themselves as superheroes, if slightly geeky ones. Like the mightiest of all: Super Holly Hansson, who writes and fights in a world gone comic book. Dave likes chocolate mocha cake, his MacBook and iPad, comic cons, writing clubs, and performing his stories at open mics. He has been a comic book fanboy since before Stan Lee created Spider-Man, and he has finally decided to make some super people of his own. He works in Silicon Valley as a technical writer. He won a first place award in the 2016 and 2017 San Mateo Fair Literary Contest for his audiobook version of his short stories, "The Malevolent Mystery Meat" and "The Intellecta-Rhapsody." He has had other Super Holly stories printed in Carry The Light, Fault Zone: Transform, Fault Zone: Uplift, and Scripting Change.
