Anti/Hero is a 2020 DC Comics middle grade graphic novel. It is written by Demitria Lunetta and Kate Quinn, and illustrated by Maca Gil and Sarah Stern.
In East Gotham Middle School, the athletic Piper Pájaro and brainy Sloane MacBrute live their lives on opposite sides of the same coin. At night, they don the identifies of the heroic Hummingbird and the not-so-heroic Gray. One school week comes the X-treme Competition, a series of athletic and intellectual challenges, of which the prize is a trip to the science facilities in Antarctica. Both girls are determined to win no matter what; for Piper, it means visiting her busy scientist parents, for Sloane, it means working with real scientists.
However, Sloane's mother falls ill, and with no expenses to pay for better treatment, Sloane is forced to turn to the villain known as the Bear for help. In exchange for treating Ms. MacBrute, he wants Sloane to steal a mysterious device known as the TMI. But when Hummingbird shows up to stop Gray, the two have an out-of-this-world experience...
Tropes in this comic include:
- Anti-Hero: Sloane, or her superhero identity, Gray, is this. She steals but only to get enough money to take care of herself and her mother, and in the story, she only agrees to steal the TMI because the Bear wants it in exchange for helping treat her ailing mother.
- Ascended Fangirl: In-universe. Sloane turns out to be a Batman fangirl, and geeks out over getting to meet him and get his approval after defeating the Bear.
- Atrocious Alias:
- Hummingbird is named the Cheesy Chipster and Wrecking Ball by the police and Sloane/Gray, much to her dismay.
- Piper/Hummingbird thinks Gray is a lame superhero name. Sloane sarcastically asks her if she thinks the Brain is a better name, but by the climax, they come up with the Gray Owl as a revision.
- Bears Are Bad News: The Bear, who's the biggest crime lord in East Gotham. And he also happens to have a pet bear.
- Big Damn Heroes: The Bat himself shows up to fight the mutated Bear, but only after he's already defeated by Hummingbird and Gray Owl. He comments on it and shakes their hands before leaving, which is as close as you'll get to him patting them on the back for a job well done.
- Body Horror:
- The girls discover from Mr. and Mrs. Pájaro's reports that the test subject rats that they experimented the TMI on ended up getting fused together at the butt (think CatDog). These bugs were why the TMI was put away in the first place.
- The Bear and his pet bear end up becoming one in the climax when the TMI bugs out.
- Brains and Brawn: Piper is obviously the Brawn and Sloane the Brains. They do learn to use each other's strengths after spending enough time in the other's body.
- The Cameo:
- Cool Uncle: Piper's uncle John Pájaro, who is a police officer and has taken a guardianship role toward his niece.
- Does Not Know His Own Strength:
- Piper catches a baseball hit by Sloane, only to find it deflated from her super-strength.
- Sloane-as-Piper accidentally destroys the TMI after the first body-switch by grabbing it too hard, unaware of Piper's super-strength.
- Fire-Forged Friends: Piper and Sloane initially don't get along (although Piper tries to be nice at first), especially when it turns out their secret identities are enemies, but as the story goes on, they come to understand each other and become friends.
- "Freaky Friday" Flip:
- The story is about Sloane and Piper switching bodies because of the TMI.
- The Bear attempts to do this to Bruce Wayne, but is stopped by Hummingbird and Gray.
- Good Parents: Sloane's mother Una did everything in her power to keep her daughter away from her father's business. Piper's grandmother and uncle also care about her.
- Gruesome Grandparent: The Bear, who used his granddaughter as test subject for an experimental serum that gave her super intelligence, yet did nothing for him.
- Hidden Depths: Piper suspects Sloane of being a Batman fangirl and finds a hidden poster of him (petting a cat, no less) in her bedroom.
- Highly-Visible Ninja: Sloane-as-Piper lampshades this to Piper-as-Sloane about her Hummingbird outfit, which Piper justifies is because she fights head-on as opposed to needing to sneak around.
- Muggle Best Friend: Ben, Sloane's neighbor, is a reporter for the school's newspaper and ends up being let in on the body-switching secret by Piper-as-Sloane, which segues into him becoming a friend of the duo.
- Mythology Gag: Bruce/Batman's character design is based on his designs in the DC Animated Universe.
- Raised by Grandparents: Since Piper's parents are away in some lab in Antarctica, she's basically raised by her grandmother and uncle John.
- Secret-Keeper:
- Piper-as-Sloane lets Ben in on the "Freaky Friday" Flip.
- Piper's abuela and uncle, as well as Sloane's mother, learn that their kids are superheroes. They let it be.
- Shout-Out: Sloane apparently doesn't have that much variety in clothes because smart people don't waste their thoughts on what to wear, a common fact about Albert Einstein.
- The Reveal:
- Piper reveals to Sloane that she got her super-strength from a lab experiment accident run by her scientist parents.
- Sloane's maternal grandfather is the crime lord Bear, and her mother Una tried to get away from him after he saved the stillborn Sloane's life with an experimental shot, realizing he only saw his family as experiments.
