Hire-A-Hero: The Superheroes Employment Agency by Marilyn Singer

We're B-list superheroes,
You've never heard of us.
We're B-list superheroes,
But our talents are A-Plus!

No task's too small or hard.
We're always on alert.
(Pay now by credit card--
you'll get a free T-shirt!)

The Avengers may be big box office, but if Spiderman and the Hulk are already booked, don't be bummed! There're always the B-listers, those alternative avengers. How about the super-spangled Blunder Woman?

Wherever I worked,
assisted, or clerked,
without lifting a hand,
by mental command,
I'd make hard drives expire,
and phones go haywire.

A one-woman stealth Stuxnet, Blunder Woman can cause industrial mayhem and electronic malfunction wherever she works. And if The Terminator is tied up elsewhere, there's always The Verminator.

For thugs, you've got the Terminator.
For rodents, me, the Verminator.

And then, if, er, Twilight sets in around the place, and things around the house begin to, um, bite, who you gonna call? Muffy the Vampire Sprayer!

When there's a lot at stake,
And a stake's not enough,
Call on Muffy.
She's got the stuff!

She's a specialist, a chosen one,
With a permit for a Guardian Gun,
Filled with secret garlic foam
To zap those stinkers in your home.

The Superheroes Employment Agency has just the cut-rate caped crusaders to meet your needs. Aging "Old School" heroes like The Masked Man and Sir Knightly are happy just to be employed and will courageously take on all school events and birthday parties. If Superman has gone out for some kryptonite, there's always Stuporman, who can subdue the most venomous villains with boring poetry readings, and The Hulk will be green with envy when he sees his alter-ego, the lacrymose Bulk, sink bad guys with torrents of sentimental tears.

Not-ready-for prime-time heroes are the spoofy stuff of Marilyn Singer's forthcoming The Superheroes Employment Agency (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012). Veteran witty rhymster Marilyn Singer and comic illustrator Noah Z. Jones pair up to form a dynamic duo in this poetical parody of the paranormal heroes who have ka-powed across our pages and sha-zammed across our screens for so many decades. Their B-list budget heroes and heroines have got your back!

We've helped good folks everywhere,
On land, in air, at sea.
(Hire us eleven times--
The twelfth job's always free!)

"Using a free range of page designs from sequential panels to full-spread scenes, Jones reflects both the changing rhythms and the overall buoyancy of Singer's rhymes with simply drawn, brightly colored cartoon views of each S.E.A. member in action," says Kirkus Reviews.

Moonlighting: Welcome to Monster Town by Ryan Hashka

THE SUN SETS ON MONSTER TOWN

AND THE CITY WAKES UP.

THE ZOMBIES ARE ON THEIR WAY TO WORK.

It's just another ho-hum workaday night in Monster Town. The yellow ghoul bus stops for monster kids to clamber aboard with their BatBoy lunchboxes in hand. Zombie office workers mumble their "How's it goin'?" to each other as they schlep to work with briefcases in one hand and a cuppa Joe in the other.

The ghost writers at the Monster City Gazette cover the news and crank out the haunt ads; and ghostmen with their monster mailbags dodge the usual dogs trying to bite their bony ankles as they deliver monster mail to Vampyra, Dr.Acula, and Lon Chaney. Master electrician Frank N. Stein, is ready to shock 'em all, and United Scare Lines is preparing a jetliner for takeoff.

With tongue firmly in cheek, Ryan Haska lets no old chestnut go unroasted in his Welcome to Monster Town (Christy Ottaviano Books) (Henry Holt, 2010). There are plenty of groaners in the brief text of his latest picture book for the primary reader, and although they may be old stuff to adults, they'll be fresh and new (and may require a bit of explanation) for youngsters new to spoofery. After all, that's the way these old gags live on to, er, haunt us. Who wouldn't giggle at vampires hard at work at--where else--the Monster Town Blood Bank? Second- and third-graders, who relish this kind of humor, will find this one, with its juicy visual gags done up in Hashka's appropriately monster-ish murky greens and blood red illustrations, good fun for the scary season.