Zephyr Phase Four (Zephyr #4)

Alternate cover edition can be found here


It's 2012 on the eastern seaboard of the United States. The place is Atlantic City: a sweeping longitudinal metropolis rebuilt following widespread devastation in 1984. Superhumans are not only real, they're human. All too human, as Nietzsche would say.

Zephyr is an alt.superhero adventure influenced by postliterary writing and Sturgeon's law. The style is cynical, cinematic and systematically against standard expectations of the genre. Imagine if Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho was about costumed vigilantes rather than stockbrokers and you have half the idea.

Zephyr tells the story of a major, if somewhat jaded superhero in an alternate universe where New York City has been abandoned and the Beatles were a superhero team. Zephyr is a regular guy, but with powers, and it's easy to wonder if his life might have been better without them as supervillains and other problems that only superhumans can deal with derail his efforts handling life.

In Phase Four, Zephyr's past sins come back to haunt him as the threat of invasion by an army of superhumans from another parallel looms large over Atlantic City. Amid the chaos, and as he is forced off-world and beyond in a quest to save all those nearest and dearest to him, Zephyr finally closes in on Arsenal and the Demoness, his mother's killers, just in time to discover everything he thought he knew about his secret past is not as it first seemed.