Liss, David
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1966- ) US comics writer and author, most of whose novels have been historical thrillers, beginning with A Conspiracy of Paper (2000), most featuring Benjamin Weaver [not listed below]. A Young Adult series, the Randoms sequence beginning with Randoms (2015), a slightly helter-skelter though deliberately comic narrative whose young protagonist Zeke discovers that the sf he had devoured when even younger was literally true (for a different unfolding of this basic topos, see Galaxy Quest [1999]). Zeke is then uplifted to a vast Space Station where with three companions he will be tested to determine Homo sapiens's fitness to join a galactic Confederation (see Clichés). Space Opera complications tumble upon Zeke's head. From around 2010, Liss has scripted various comics for Marvel Comics.
His first singleton of sf interest, The Twelfth Enchantment (2011), is set in a nineteenth century Britain about to be challenged by Magical transformations analogous to the First Industrial Revolution; a haunted Mysterious Stranger, who turns out to be Lord Byron, visits the protagonist, complicating matters. Hostile Takeover (2018) is a Tie to the Marvel Comics Videogame Spider-Man, serving as a prequel to the action. In The Peculiarities (2021), which is set in a Alternate World version of late Victorian London, Aleister Crowley [see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below] insinuatingly implicates the tale's protagonist in complex machinations.
Liss's Graphic Novels, beginning with Mystery Men (graph 2011), have been executed for Marvel Comics (they are not listed below). [JC]
David Liss
born Englewood, New Jersey: 16 March 1966
works (selected)
series
Black Panther
Randoms
- Randoms (New York: Simon and Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2015) [Randoms: hb/Derek Stenning]
- Rebels (New York: Simon and Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2016) [Randoms: hb/Derek Stenning]
- Renegades (New York: Simon and Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2017) [Randoms: hb/Derek Stenning]
individual titles
- The Twelfth Enchantment (New York: Random House, 2011) [hb/Friedrich Wilhelm Schadow and Cornelius Norbertus Gysbrechts]
- Hostile Takeover (New York: Titan Books, 2018) [tie to the Videogame Spider-Man: pb/Alexander Lozano]
- The Peculiarities (San Francisco, California: Tachyon Publications, 2021) [pb/]
links
- David Liss
- Internet Speculative Fiction Database
- The Encyclopedia of Fantasy: Aleister Crowley
- Picture Gallery
previous versions of this entry