My Brother The Superhero
A Book Proposal
TITLE: “Epic Fail: A Superhero’s Brother Tells All.”
OVERVIEW: Epic Man, as the public has never seen him, as only his brother knows him, in a warts-and-all memoir. Heavy on the warts.
PROMOTION ANGLE: Christina Crawford’s “Mommie Dearest” meets Lisa Brennan-Jobs’s “Small Fry,” but with Comic-Con interest.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Conway W***** (Author’s full name redacted to protect brother’s secret identity.) (Can’t even use my own damn name!) is a freelance dogwalker and life coach, four weeks sober. His explosive blog about brother Epic Man attracts more than 80 unique visits per month and can be converted to a monster publicity machine to sell this book.
SYNOPSIS: Ollie and Henrietta Wilson (my parents), whose smart, trusting, biological son evidently wasn’t good enough for them, find and adopt an alien baby. The author traces the child’s growth from his arrival on our planet to his current persona as Epic Man, the self-involved superhero oblivious to his brother’s pain. The universal lesson here is that when parents impulsively adopt a kid from outer space, it can negatively impact their firstborn.
LENGTH: 2,857 pages. (I’d be willing to cut a hundred or so if we can agree on which ones.)
TARGET AUDIENCE: Cleareyed truth-seekers who’ve had it up to here with Epic Man’s phony, selfless, All-American hero myth. It’s also a timely wake-up for those who drank the Kool-Aid. So, everybody.
CHAPTER RUNDOWN:
Chapter 1: Origin Story (Mine)
Starts with the author’s birth forty-three years ago in heartland America, and his six blissful years as an only child. Happy-go-lucky and secure in the glow of his parents’ unconditional love, he has no reason to suspect that it will change. Spoiler: it will change. This chapter (a longie) contains hundreds of baby Conway anecdotes and contemporaneous snapshots showing his joyful life until age six. It paints an idyllic childhood soon to be shattered by the arrival of a “brother.”
Chapter 2: Origin Story (His)
One spring day, while weeding the corn maze, mom and dad stumble onto the remains of an adult male and female. At first, dad fears they were tourists who’d become lost in the labyrinth the previous fall and he has a real situation on his hands. But a cursory glance at clothing labels shows they came from a faraway planet. There’s a wrecked spacecraft nearby, and inside, you guessed it, a howling infant, who’d somehow survived. (This kicks off a spate of misfortune that will plague the author for decades.) Rather than notify authorities, Dad removes the baby, places the deceased in the rocket, and bulldozes the whole shebang into a dirt-covered pit. Then he and mom take in the space infant to raise as their own. Why would they even do that? You’d think they were childless or something and didn’t already have their own terrific, unique kid. Here, the author speculates as to why his folks may have wanted to ruin his life.
Chapter 3: The Epic Twos
They name the baby D***** W*****. D** for short. D** the Man. (The author respects the current embargo on exposing Epic Man’s secret identity as it could endanger the lives of his aging parents in Middleton, Nebraska. On the other hand, might this reveal increase sales of the book? Open to your thoughts.) Due to his home planet’s heavy-duty gravitational field as compared to ours, young D** possesses “epic” abilities on Earth. What a happy surprise for the author’s dumbass parents. They laugh and clap as their new toddler flits around the farm at faster than the speed of sound, lifting tractors and shit. Conway, their actual son — a born and bred earthling, by the way — is just learning to balance a two-wheeler and could use some support and encouragement. No matter, Mom and Dad ghost him. His pre-K finger-paintings, once a mainstay of the refrigerator door, no longer rate. His pipe cleaner puppets? Zip. What is the author, chopped liver?
Chapter 4: It’s All About Him
Just before D** starts school, Dad sits us down for a talk. Tells us no one can know about D**’s heightened powers: flying, colossal strength, etc. It must be our secret, he says. “All we ever talk about is him,” I say. “Not true,” says Dad. “True,” I say. “He’s like your favorite subject. Why’d you even have me?” “Now you’re making your brother feel bad, Conway.” “I’m making him feel bad? Gee, poor little space alien.” My sarcasm soars over D**’s head. “What if someone bullies me, Dad?” he asks. “Can’t I break him in half?” “No, son. You’ve got to keep your powers under wraps and respond like a normal kid.” “Can I teach him a lesson? Drop him off a high building and catch him before he splats on the cement?” “No! You’re D** W*****, an average boy, get it? Someday, if you want, you can be a superhero and choose your own superhero name. “Cool.” “But,” Dad cautions, “most of the good ones are taken.” “What about Alpha Man?” asks D**. “Taken.” “Omega Man?” “Ditto.” “Conway, will you help me think up my superhero name?” “Fuck you.”
Chapters 5–16: Worst Roommate Ever
Twelve chapters, one for each year that D** and I share a bedroom. He has the top bunk, and of course, doesn’t use the ladder but “bounds” up. Okay, we get it, you can fly. When I’m out he uses his Epic Vision to read my locked journal, though he denies it. Tells me I’m crazy. That’s how he learns I’m struggling with my sexuality. Gaslights me by never bringing it up and acting like he doesn’t really know. I know he knows. Just like I know he listens in on my calls with his Epic Hearing, even though I use the downstairs phone and speak to friends only in whisper. He irritably denies this too. Then, like for no reason, starts avoiding me. Barely gives me the time of day, which, by the way, he claims he can turn backward by flying around the Earth, against its rotation, at the speed of light. Or something like that. Makes no sense. I asked my physics teacher, not mentioning any names. Wish D** had turned time back to before he was born.
Chapter 17: No Winning
My brother’s hostility toward me comes out in many ways. For example, the time Dad took us into the meadow for batting practice. I hit some powerful line drives, feeling pretty good about myself. Dad offered not a word of praise. Then D** gets up, belts one. Dad’s like, “Wow, son!” (I don’t get a “Wow, son!”) D** says, “Oops!” Then has to go retrieve the ball from the next galaxy.
Lots of stories like these will show the real Epic Man for who he is.
Chapter 18: Super Stoolie
One day, Mom says, “Conway, have you been smoking weed again in the attic?” “Thanks a lot, D**,” I say. “Using your heightened sense of smell to squeal?” “I had nothing to do with it,” he says. Mom says, “You don’t need special powers to smell reefer, Conway. The house reeks. You have a substance problem.” “Oh, I have a substance problem? It’s ‘my’ problem, is that it?” “Yes,” she says. “Well, could you blame me if I did?” I say. “I mean, I was once the Big Cheese around here, till Wonder Boy showed up. Now it’s like I don’t exist. He’s not even naturalized!” D** gets real earnest, pretends to care: “Conway’s been under a lot of school pressure, Mom. I’ll talk to him.” “Thank you, son,” she says. “Son?” I say, “I’m your son! Me!” I turn to D**: “And why do you call her Mom? Your mom is a dead Martian. Maybe I’ll do some squealing too and call ICE!”
Chapter 19: Track and Fraud
D** goes to Brown on a Track and Field scholarship and sets new javelin throw records in the Ivy League conference. Beats previous record throws by as much as eight miles. Claims not to have used his special powers. Yeah, right. I think he graduated summa cum liar. He rejects the Olympics for fear that the IOC doping test might discover he’s a non-human. After college, D** is hired as a P.E. teacher at a public school in Queens. Refers to this as his “alter ego.” Pretentious much? As if his regular ego wasn’t big enough that he needed a second. He earns a rep there for sudden and poorly explained absences from work. Due, no doubt, to running around in red tights and a blue cape and calling himself Epic Man.
I graduate Middleton, our two-year community college and join Dad in the family agribusiness. I work the lookout deck at the corn maze. Kind of like a lifeguard, to make sure no one gets lost in it. Also, I keep an eye out for an interplanetary search team that may come to take D** back to his own world.
Chapter 20: Favorite Son
Epic Man still comes home for Thanksgivings. My folks treat him like he’s the star of the family or something. Mom won’t even serve the turkey till like ten if he’s got some planet-threatening crisis on hand. And he’s always got some planet-threatening crisis on hand. Never a simple crimefighting job like a liquor store holdup. “Sorry I’m late, I had to intercept an asteroid hurtling toward Earth and heave it back into space.” A humblebragger like you wouldn’t believe. That includes his love life, too, which, shall we say, is complicated. How so? Epic Man and his alter ego are each shacking up with a different woman. (Definite reader interest here. I can name the ladies if needed.)
Chapter 21: Ego Maniac
EM is not a guy you want to sit next to at dinner. He’ll go on and on about his dreary day till you want to tear your hair out. “Had to save an aerial tram dangling over the Matterhorn glacier, reroute a Mega Tsunami in the Indian Ocean, stop a runaway tank car filled with chlorine, douse an exploding fireworks factory. And that’s before lunch!” Boorring. Worse, he’ll chew your ear off about his “archenemy.” Really? You have one of those? He’s convinced that the evil Dr. Retpursid (‘Disrupter’ spelled backwards. Lame.) has it in for him. Thinks the doctor’s efforts to create world chaos is specifically designed to embarrass Epic Man personally. Only proves what a paranoid narcissist he is. One thing is for certain — you’d never catch me whining about my archenemy.
