Robert Mayer

Robert Mayer (1939-2019) was an American journalist and novelist. He is best known for Superfolks (1977), a novel that satirizes the superhero and comic-book genre through a retired hero living an ordinary suburban life who must return to action when the world's other superheroes start disappearing. Though a modest seller on release, the novel became an influential, quietly cited touchstone for later superhero deconstruction, with figures including Alan Moore acknowledging its influence on the genre's more self-aware and satirical turn. Mayer's fiction is distinguished less by a large body of work than by this single, prescient premise: a superhero story told from the point of view of a hero whose powers no longer matter.