Therapy for Former Child Sidekicks

About this book:

For fifteen years, Barnaby Vance was Kid Dynamo—spandex-clad, gravity-defying, and utterly disposable. At eighteen, his mentor handed him a severance check, a Honda Civic, and a twelve-year-old replacement, leaving Barnaby with blown-out knees, a mortgage, and no idea who he is without the lightning bolt on his chest. Now thirty-four, he sits in a damp church basement with five other former sidekicks: a PR rep who once refracted sunlight into lasers, a hulking ex-Paladin with fishing-line scars, a man who breathes through a CPAP because his gills never closed, and a woman who still scans every room for exits. Their therapist, Dr. Kevin, has a corduroy blazer, a clipboard, and the unenviable job of helping them untangle a lifetime of being someone else's supporting character.

*Therapy for Former Child Sidekicks* is a razor-sharp, deeply felt novel that treats superhero tropes as childhood trauma—and the aftermath as the real story. Chapter by chapter, the group navigates somatic regression (trying on the old suit is never a good idea), the economics of unfunded vigilante retirement, the particular cruelty of mentors who loved the brand more than the boy, and the slow, messy work of building a self when your entire identity was forged in someone else's shadow. The humor is black and surgical; the heartbreak is earned; the recovery is non-linear and utterly convincing.

You don't need to love comics to recognize the universal nightmare of outgrowing the role you were cast in before you could consent. This is a book about the bodies we break to please powerful people, the skills that don't translate to civilian life, and the quiet heroism of showing up, week after week, to answer the question no one ever asked: *Who are you when no one is calling for help?*