Book excerpt: Comic-Con, 2036. The world is rocked by the bizarre and inexplicable materialization of Cateklysm Catholicon - a colorfully clad whackjob decreeing that humanity's only hope lies in the lessons found in superhero comic books. "Cateklysm's Challenge" is born, enticing even the most skeptical with a prize that promises "the power to change the world."But two decades later, the world has gone to crap. The prize, the Challenge, and Cateklysm himself have all been forgotten by everyone but the Chowderheads - diehard superhero worshippers, who champion the progressive ideology infused into comics.Enter Clayton Clayborn, a tragically orphaned, seventeen-year-old, second-generation Chowderhead living a dystopian nightmare existence on a Martian space freighter. Obsessed with the Challenge, he'll face a gauntlet of comic book nerdery that will take him to alien worlds, thrust him into gladiatorial combat against supervillain look-alikes, and push him to the brink of annihilation in the heart of what seems to be the Batcave. But as Stan Lee would put it, "Excelsior."