I don’t know what it is, but while I love comics in general, superhero comics tend to leave me cold (except for Kurt Busiek’s Astro City). This is particularly strange when one considers that I enjoy superhero-themed novels (The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Klay, Soon I Shall Be Invincible).

Playing for Keeps is set in a world where the government has developed a drug, Zupra, that activates superpowers in the babies of women who take it. The superheroes thus born are tax-supported public servants and the subject of sickening adoration.

These people are not the heroes of Mur Lafferty’s book.

Not every child born this way gets superpowers. Some get lesser powers. Some get frankly disgusting powers (an important and very sympathetic character, Ian, can shoot high-powered jets of excrement from his hands). And some get powers that seem really wimpy indeed—until someone figures out their extent and how to use them.

THESE are Lafferty’s heroes, and they are caught in an uncomfortable crossfire between superheroes (who are mostly arrogant assholes) and supervillains (who seem nice at first but are manipulative bastards).

Heroine Keepsie, from whom nothing can be stolen, and her friends are the only ones who seem even remotely concerned with staying human in this world, and human they are; even the minor “Third Wavers” are exquisitely drawn, believable and sympathetic. They fight, fall in love, endure hellish experiences, argue with each other but ultimately stick together.

Can camaraderie save the world? Mur Lafferty makes a very compelling case that it can.