Get ready for Klingon-speaking Cosplayers, cutthroat convention politics, and the unlikeliest heroes ever known inside the epic dark comedy Battle at the Comic Expo.
Ron Lionel is the hottest creator working in comic books today. His comic series, The Enduring, sells out every month and is set to become a major motion picture. Ron has no problem using his status to get what he wants, whether that be special treatment from his publisher or seducing fangirls into bed.
Joe Cotter, on the other hand, gave up his dreams of being a writer years ago, and now lives for a steady paycheck. Joe’s sense of right and wrong was born from years of reading comics, fantasy novels, and growing up in fandom, and as the security chief for America’s Finest Comic Book Expo he’s as strong-willed as any hero with a power ring.
Enter Velma, an obsessed fan with a twisted sense of reality and some disturbing questions about The Enduring. When her righteous plan to gather answers backfires, the two men are accidentally abducted and left in a seedy motel room. Now these two unlikely allies must work together to save themselves and the convention before Velma’s mania takes over and destroys them all.
From drug-sniffing celebrities and uptight volunteers to long-forgotten tunnels under the streets of downtown San Diego, one fact remains clear: The truth is never simple, it’s sometimes darker than expected, and is often hidden just beneath the surface.
Trailers:
As a child, author Richard Andreoli would daydream about saving the day if a crisis broke out in real life. Those fantasies became even more acute when he started volunteering at Comic-Con in San Diego as a teenager, because who wouldn’t want to be seen as a hero in a place filled with fans of action/adventure stories, right? “But as I grew older it became clear that ‘good guys’ weren’t always pure and noble,” says the LA-based writer, “and the term ‘villain’ was in the eye of the beholder, so it seemed perfect to explore those concepts in a setting where people believed in those big ideals of heroism and protecting the innocent.”
Andreoli delivers on his youthful dream in his second book, Battle at the Comic Expo, a hilarious, oddly moving and pitch-perfect dark comedy action/thriller that captures the strange parallel universe of comics, cosplaying geeks, and obsessive fans to a tee. The novel is currently available at any national bookstore website as well as Amazon, with the audiobook being released at the end of June through Audible. A book trailer is available at the website: www.battleatthecomicexpo.com.
“From the first page, Richard Andreoli catapults you down the rabbit hole and immerses you in the crazy world of comic conventions,” says best-selling YA Fantasy novelist C.J. Abedi, who wrote the FAE Trilogy, which was optioned by filmmaker Ridley Scott. “But this isn’t simply a sardonic examination of fans; it’s a love letter to heroism and the people who believe in it most.”
In Battle at the Comic Expo, an obsessed fan (the tragic but endearing Velma) with a twisted sense of reality kidnaps the most successful and arrogant man working in comics today (Ron Lionel) along with his archrival (Joe) – a failed comic book writer who is now the head of Comic Expo security. These two unlikely allies must find a way to save themselves and stop Velma before she inadvertently kills them and destroys the largest comic book convention in the United States.
To expand the story and experience beyond the novel, Andreoli also created a number of websites and social media pages for the main characters:
https://www.americasfinestcomi
https://www.ragnarokcomics.inf
https://www.facebook.com/TheEn
https://twitter.com/RealRonLio
