This week’s review is of Other People’s Heroes by Blake M. Petit

Synopsis: Josh Corwood has spent his whole life in a world full of superheroes, even becoming a reporter just to get a little closer to their world. When he finally comes face-to-face with the Capes of his dreams, though, he realizes his ideal view may not be in synch with reality.

Production: The audio quality in this podcast is good. He made serious strides compared to his previous podcasts. I’m going to ding him here for one pet peeve of mine. Edit marks. Not infrequently, he’s guilty of leaving obvious edit marks in the episodes. This is easily rectified and according to the author he will be doing more serious QA for the Podiobooks version (which they would, of course, require). No idea if he’ll be doing the same in his own feed. For this, he loses a letter grade.

Grade: C

Cast: Blake elects to act as the voice for each of his characters and stays consistent within each character. If hearing a man do a woman’s voice irritates you then this isn’t the podcast for you, but then that would also disqualify Sigler and a number of other podcast novels. He’s a stage actor and this is to his credit as I’m sure it played a role in his being able to… play… roles.

Grade: B+

Story: This is a comic book in audio form. The characters are fairly well fleshed out (some more than others). The story is certainly enjoyable and there are a few surprises towards the end. That’s always good. If you’re looking for a serious treatise on the state of humanity at large, well there’s actually a little bit of that here. If you’re looking for an interesting take on what it would be like to live in a comic book universe, then I recommend this. It compares favorably in my mind to Playing For Keeps*.

Grade: B+

Verdict: Audio issues aside, I think this is a strong entry. It’s funny. I love the takes he has on some of the superhero/villain tropes and the world he’s constructed is very interesting. There are more stories in this universe including on that was published in Flagship. I will continue to check out Blake’s podcast projects. I might recommend waiting for the Podiobooks* version though.

Grade: B

*At the time of posting the Podiobooks site is down due to upgrades. Consider donating to help them defray costs and keep money flowing to the authors!