Book Synopsis
He can't be seen. He can't be stopped. He can barely be explained.
Somewhere between a superhero saga, a noir detective's fever dream, and the world's most unhinged pulp anthology, there's a man in a cape who isn't there — a pipe-smoking, cosmically weary vigilante who solves problems by simply appearing to have already solved them, usually while nobody's looking.
He runs with a team that shouldn't work on paper and somehow works less in practice: a French-adjacent martial artist perpetually one dismemberment behind schedule, a private eye whose narration outpaces his actual competence, an unlicensed Bat-vigilante with a grudge against slumlords, a cosmic villain who rebranded himself "likeable" for reasons that remain, against all logic, effective. Throw in android werewolves, a jackass engineer with a death-ray/toaster hybrid, a lie-detecting machine that goes ding, and a legal showdown over an ordinance that doesn't exist — and you've got the daily operating conditions of Splatco's strangest asset.
This is a book that treats the apocalypse (sorry — the Hypocalypse) with the same straight-faced gravity as a zoning dispute, and vice versa. It's got Old West mining camps, mistaken identities, a hammock under a bridge in the Keys, a televangelist's four-decade con job unraveling in real time, and a mask that thanks you in the exact tone of a man who's spent his whole life closing pledge drives — right before you realize what a man like that does to everyone who ever trusted him.
Equal parts satire, superhero deconstruction, and outright literary chaos — for readers who want their comic-book adaptations to actually read like something happened to the English language on the way to the page.
If you've ever wanted a cape story with footnotes it doesn't need and jokes it can't resist, this is your book.
About The Author
Tony Arnold is the cryptonym under which Vernacular Ontologist and Tiki Misanthropologist Dr. Crabbe Rangoon publishes his creative fiction. Serving on renowned explorer Horst von Hesselbrut's last expedition, his subsequent endeavors included procurement journeys into Asia, the South Pacific and The Dark Continent. Distinguished as the Praetor Imprimitor of the Ordinis Orientalium Nasi Templum, he serves as the Intergalactic Attache for the Temple of Scientonomy. He is formally attached to the Ruling Council of The Spear of the Just and is Chancellor of the Ministry of Truth. He holds the Regent Chair of the Knights of the Eightfold Clover, and is an internet influencer. He's a Lifetime Honorary Member of the Slack Key Recessionists, and is also a member of the Dollar Shave Club. Dr. Rangoon resides in a stilt home above the waters near Candor-on-Asperger, where he writes and edits for the White Devil Press, and serves as a consultant to the National Department of Identification in Countercrypto Disinfotainment.