NewTomorrow by Cody Goodfellow
484 pages, Paperback
I have been reading Cody Goodfellow for two decades, and when I read his first novel, Radiant Dawn, I was convinced that he would be as big as anyone in the horror genre. I thought he would have massive book deals, fan clubs, movies, etc. Cody is a writer’s writer. He has the respect of those of us in the serious genre lit world. A few Wonderland awards, he has accomplished many great things, but he is not the household name I think he deserves to be.
Sure books like Repo-Shark or Scum of the Earth are genius works, but they are not commercial. I consider his horror novel Perfect Union a horror masterpiece, but it might be a little too strange for the spinner racks at drugstores. All that said this new novel while still being very Cody Goodfellow, with the right word of mouth and luck (let's be honest that is important) this is a story that should appeal to the mainstream.
An alternate history pulp era superhero tale that could be pitched as The Boys or Watchmen in a great depression setting. Sci-fi superhero crossovers with this kind of ambition are often not ready for primetime, and they often feel like underdeveloped sketches. What is special about New Tomorrow is how it feels fully developed, like a world that has been growing for a long time. It has the super smart and totally bat-shit crazy Cody Goodfellow hybrid that he has perfected. These are weird heroes White Devil and Kid Amoeba feel natural in this pulp era alternative.
“All this she’d learned when the real Electrocutioner died in her arms after saving the city from Dr. Gift, another suicidal lunatic who couldn’t hang himself. And still, the comics, the radio serial, the Electrocutioner Shock-Mittens, kept coming, as if their hero was old enough to vote.
So much for superheroes. She didn’t know if she would ever be worthy of the pretentious title, nor it worthy of her. She only knew she loved it.”
As you can see, the heroes feel like they were torn from a classic graphic novel that has lived in your memory, but at the same time, they are totally original and natural. Goodfellow understands the world he is playing with. This alternate world feels like it is in the past of a comic book universe, but it feels adjacent to our history. A lessor author wouldn’t or couldn’t make you feel like you were in the era but this novel does just that.
“The mask craze first struck New York four years ago when a gang in pirate costumes and a bulletproof flying coupe began knocking over Jewelry stores and banks under the colorful sobriquet, The Red Hook Wreckers. A rogue mobster calling himself El Pulpo donned an octopus mask and gunned down crime boss Giuseppe Masseria in Coney Island and eluded police for six months before he was served equally rough justice by Corsair, who was unmasked as a former cop drummed out of the force for being Sicilian. That so many on both sides of this weird civil war were frustrated inventors, scientists, and engineers whose bright ideas had been suppressed by the patent office only added to fuel the controversy.”
That passage highlights what Cody brings to the alchemy of this one-in-a-million novel. A knowledge of history, both real and pulp fictional, literary talent and a weird imagination capable of supporting a marriage of all these elements into a blended family. Who else could come up with a hero like Kid Amoeba?
“By trial and error, it had perfected its Camouflage, studying the rootless men, walking, hitching, and riding the rails. They were innocuous enough not to attract the authorities but large enough to present a target to predators.”
One of my favorite moments in the novel comes about halfway through when the pulp superhero elements fade into science fiction and alternate history. Real-life robber barrons whose names historians might recognize go to a meeting with the inventor who represents the hinge point where history changes with the invention of teleportation. It is a bad part of this culture, but how well does this technology work, in the hands of the villain…it changes everything. The change of venue makes an excellent shift in the narrative.
“Good God,” Whitney said, “We’re not on Earth.”
“At last, the sparkling intellect that conquered the markets reveals itself,” Chalice said. “What you’re seeing is the actual hub of our operations, through our best guess is it’s on the far side of the Milky Way. Suffice to say it is a long walk home. For want of a better name, I call it Circe, after the Greek goddess of transformation and initiation.”
“So this is a kidnapping?” asked Sarnoff, who had at least some inkling of the business of force from his humble beginnings as a newspaper boy.
“Merely a demonstration. This meeting ends when I’ve said my piece, and you’ve said yours.”
The historical vibe is also one of my favorite things in the novel, and pure Cody Goodfellow.
“A Salvation Army band slowly murdered “Onward Christian Soldiers” on the corner of Tenth Avenue and 34th. The White Devil flipped a quarter into their collection Kettle as he passed, crossing 34th amid a stream of bleary-eyed men and women going to or from soul-killing jobs. The sun’s dying rays touched the roofs of tenements and smoke stacks high overhead, the leaden heat stored up from the sweltering day seeping back out of the half-molten asphalt. Everything west of 10th had been swept away by bulldozers and wrecking balls to make way for a new tunnel to Jersey.”
One of the best things about New Tomorrow is something I refuse to spoil, and that is the nature, backstory, and tactics of the villain; it is so well thought out. The good guys and the big bad could all hold the weight of a novel on their own, but instead, the epic treat is that we get a saga-worthy cast of characters.
The historical vibe is also one of my favorite things in the novel and pure Cody Goodfellow. Check out this part…
“A Salvation Army band slowly murdered “Onward Christian Soldiers” on the corner of Tenth Avenue and 34th. The White Devil flipped a quarter into their collection Kettle as he passed, crossing 34th amid a stream of bleary-eyed men and women going to or from soul-killing jobs. The sun’s dying rays touched the roofs of tenements and smoke stacks high overhead, the leaden heat stored up from the sweltering day seeping back out of the half-molten asphalt. Everything west of 10th had been swept away by bulldozers and wrecking balls to make way for a new tunnel to Jersey.”
It highlights the vibe, the historical feeling you get reading the novel. New Tomorrow is punching above its weight class on almost every page. It is a epic worthy of the word, that is as strange as it is ambitious. An unbelievable triumph.
Here is the problem. I don’t know if it will be discovered. I thought it was inevitable before. You have to take me seriously and read this. Then you have spread the book around. It is the reason this book will keep finding fans.
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