What They Did to Princess Paragon is a humor novel by Robert Rodi, which tells the story of what happens when a venerable comic book superheroine is retconned as a lesbian.
Plot summary Gay comic book creator Brian Parrish is hired by Bang Comics to take over Princess Paragon, a superhero comic book that's been around since the 1940s, but whose sales are slumping badly by the 1990s. Parrish decides to reimagine Princess Paragon as a lesbian, a move which causes quite a bit of excitement and publicity for Bang, but also causes consternation among some of the fan base. One deranged fanboy in particular, Jerome T. Kornacker, is so outraged that his favorite superheroine is being "perverted," that he takes radical steps to stop the change.
Reception Publishers Weekly considered the novel to be "(t)ightly plotted and consistently amusing", "more farce than satire", and a "campy, breezy read" with "cartoonish" characters. What They Did to Princess Paragon , reviewed at Publishers Weekly; published May 2, 1994; retrieved September 27, 2020 Kirkus Reviews similarly lauded Rodi's plotting, but overall found the book to be "frothy", with "weak" characterization, stereotypes, and a "formula (that) is wearing thin" (noting in particular that this was the third novel by Rodi to feature a kidnapping).WHAT THEY DID TO PRINCESS PARAGON, reviewed at Kirkus Reviews; published May 16, 1994; archived online, May 20, 2020 Comic Book Resources praised it as "hilarious", "fall-down funny", and "terrific" for its portrayal of fans' "dark suspicions of what editors are really thinking" — and of editors' "nightmare of what hardcore fans are capable of". Friday with the Indie Superheroes, by Greg Hatcher, at Comic Book Resources; published August 29, 2008; retrieved September 27, 2020
Publication history 1994, USA, E. P. Dutton , Pub date 1 May 1994, hardcover 1995, USA, Plume , Pub date 1 May 1995, paperback
References
External links What They Did to Princess Paragon review at Beek's Books