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True Believers is a full-length novel by Thom Dunn, based on his play of the same name. It’s a satirical tale of star-crossed lovers, aspiring comic book creators, crazed fanboys, cybernetically enhanced humans, women in refrigerators, real-life superheroes, and girls who dress like Slave Leia as their lives intertwine over a whirlwind weekend at a comic book convention in the early 2010s.
The book will be serialized on Medium throughout the month of April 2020. Here is the first chapter. Check back every day for more chapters!
There’s a feeling of elation that shivers all through Billy’s body every time he approaches the Jacob K. Javits Center. Maybe it’s the way building basks in the warm autumn glow, and the aromatic melange of roasted street peanuts and sewage blasting up from underneath the street. Maybe it’s the thrill of the Hand-possessed Daredevil eviscerating Bullseye atop the building in Shadowland #1. Or maybe it’s just the simple satisfaction that Billy is home, where he belongs.
He adjusts the small Nike duffle bag he carries on his shoulder — carefully, so as not to disturb the sleeping Godhead within — and struts past the endless line of posers and frauds, with Calvin in tow. He counts the Ricks from Walking Dead, and a cluster of Scott Pilgrims, dozens of Heath Ledger Jokers, and at…
