A Little Bit Pro, a Little Bit Fan

Thanks for letting me post here! I'm Eilis Flynn, and I write fantasy romance, with a special interest in superheroes. My interest in the cape and cowl set goes back a long way. Long ago, I lived and worked in the comic book industry, and I saw the beginnings of the modern renaissance in comic books that had its recent peak in the movie The Dark Knight.

If you haven't seen this movie, adapted from DC Comics graphic novels by Frank Miller's interpretation of the classic superhero, you might be one of the very few. It's an excellent example of how comics don't have to be cartoony, how they can actually speak true to the human condition, and they can evoke a real emotional response.

By now most people have heard about actor Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker, and yes, it's absolutely true what they say - he's creepy and magnificent. Christian Bale is excellent, and Aaron Eckhart, who plays crusading district attorney Harvey Dent, is great (and sadly, his performance has been completely eclipsed by Ledger's tragic death; I didn't even realize he was in the movie until shortly before it premiered).

I'm not going into why I think superheroes are so hot right now (although it might be fun to go into why, in a quintessential American work, virtually all the main players in this movie and its predecessor are British or Australian - am I the only one who noticed that? Bale, Ledger, Oldman, Caine, Neeson - who's Irish, but that's close enough), because so many others have analyzed the phenomenon into smithereens. I know why superheroes always resonated for me. They are the modern god (a reference made in the recent movie Hancock, also with a superhero theme), the eternal guardian of the defenseless. But they were always for boys, with the girls always an afterthought (let's face it, even the superheroines who popped up from time to time were usually just a sop so girls didn't complain!) - so finally, in a classic case of if you want to read something you gotta write it yourself, I had to address the inequity with Introducing Sonika.

In Sonika, I address the question of if you had the power to save the world, what would make you give it up?

Physical therapist Sonya Penn, the daughter of superheroes, gave up her training to be a superhero when her parents were killed in a confrontation with their arch-enemy, Gentleman Geoffrey. She turned away from what would have been her life, trying instead to be a "normal" person, unable to admit her powers to manipulate speed and sound preclude her from ever being normal.

Her "ordinary" life comes to an abrupt end when she finds herself attracted to John Arlen, her newest client, and his plans to avenge his father, who was murdered by the son of Gentleman Geoffrey. Drawn to his passion and determination, she agrees to help him in his quest. Sonya finds herself at the crossroads of her destiny: Will she don the uniform she was meant to?

After Sonika, I knew this was what comics should be; superheroes don't have to be two-dimensional, they can instead speak true to the human condition. Not to mention I enjoyed writing about it thoroughly. And with that combination, how could I resist?