The Adventures of a Wimpy Superhero

  Praise for the Diary of a Wimpy Vampire series and Adventures of a Wimpy Werewolf

  ‘This series of vampire parodies is one of the funniest I’ve ever read.’

  www.wondrousreads.com

  ‘Fantastically witty and hugely entertaining, this fun and accessible diary will appeal to any fan of Twilight or Adrian Mole, teenage or otherwise ...’

  Goodreads.com

  ‘Twilight meets Diary of a Wimpy Kid in this inventive parody of both.’

  guardianbookshop.co.uk

  ‘This hilarious book will have you laughing your head off as you learn of the misfortune of Nigel Mullet.’

  Fresh Direction

  ‘Teens who are fans of the Twilight saga will love this laugh-out-loud parody.’

  Woman’s Way

  ‘A funny light-hearted read.’

  Books 4 Teens

  ‘Just the sort of book to encourage reluctant readers to decide reading is really worthwhile ... hilarious.’

  Parents in Touch

  Diary of a Wimpy Vampire won the Manchester Fiction City Award and the Lincolnshire Young People’s Book Award, and was short-listed for the Northern Ireland Book Award, the Worcestershire Teen Book Award and the Hampshire Book Award.

  Tim Collins is originally from Manchester and now lives in London. He is the author of over twenty books including the Diary of a Wimpy Vampire, Dorkius Maximus, Cosmic Colin and Monstrous Maud series. His books have been translated into over thirty languages and have won awards in the UK and Germany.

  First published in Great Britain in 2015 by

  Michael O’Mara Books Limited

  9 Lion Yard

  Tremadoc Road

  London SW4 7NQ

  Copyright © Michael O’Mara Books Limited 2015

  All rights reserved. You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN: 978-1-78243-438-2 in paperback print format

  ISBN: 978-1-78243-440-5 in e-book format

  Designed and typeset by Envy Design

  Illustrations by Andrew Pinder

  www.mombooks.com

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Thanks to Louise Dixon, George Maudsley, Andrew Pinder, Jo Wyton and everyone at Michael O’Mara Books.

  CONTENTS

  FRIDAY 1ST JANUARY

  SATURDAY 2ND JANUARY

  SUNDAY 3RD JANUARY

  MONDAY 4TH JANUARY

  TUESDAY 5TH JANUARY

  WEDNESDAY 6TH JANUARY

  THURSDAY 7TH JANUARY

  FRIDAY 8TH JANUARY

  SATURDAY 9TH JANUARY

  SUNDAY 10TH JANUARY

  MONDAY 11TH JANUARY

  TUESDAY 12TH JANUARY

  WEDNESDAY 13TH JANUARY

  THURSDAY 14TH JANUARY

  FRIDAY 15TH JANUARY

  SATURDAY 16TH JANUARY

  SUNDAY 17TH JANUARY

  MONDAY 18TH JANUARY

  TUESDAY 19TH JANUARY

  WEDNESDAY 20TH JANUARY

  THURSDAY 21ST JANUARY

  FRIDAY 22ND JANUARY

  SATURDAY 23RD JANUARY

  SUNDAY 24TH JANUARY

  MONDAY 25TH JANUARY

  TUESDAY 26TH JANUARY

  WEDNESDAY 27TH JANUARY

  THURSDAY 28TH JANUARY

  FRIDAY 29TH JANUARY

  SATURDAY 30TH JANUARY

  SUNDAY 31ST JANUARY

  MONDAY 1ST FEBRUARY

  TUESDAY 2ND FEBRUARY

  WEDNESDAY 3RD FEBRUARY

  THURSDAY 4TH FEBRUARY

  FRIDAY 5TH FEBRUARY

  SATURDAY 6TH FEBRUARY

  SUNDAY 7TH FEBRUARY

  MONDAY 8TH FEBRUARY

  TUESDAY 9TH FEBRUARY

  WEDNESDAY 10TH FEBRUARY

  THURSDAY 11TH FEBRUARY

  FRIDAY 12TH FEBRUARY

  SATURDAY 13TH FEBRUARY

  SUNDAY 14TH FEBRUARY

  MONDAY 15TH FEBRUARY

  TUESDAY 16TH FEBRUARY

  WEDNESDAY 17TH FEBRUARY

  THURSDAY 18TH FEBRUARY

  FRIDAY 19TH FEBRUARY

  SATURDAY 20TH FEBRUARY

  SUNDAY 21ST FEBRUARY

  MONDAY 22ND FEBRUARY

  TUESDAY 23RD FEBRUARY

  WEDNESDAY 24TH FEBRUARY

  THURSDAY 25TH FEBRUARY

  FRIDAY 26TH FEBRUARY

  SATURDAY 27TH FEBRUARY

  SUNDAY 28TH FEBRUARY

  MONDAY 29TH FEBRUARY

  TUESDAY 1ST MARCH

  WEDNESDAY 2ND MARCH

  THURSDAY 3RD MARCH

  FRIDAY 4TH MARCH

  SATURDAY 5TH MARCH

  SUNDAY 6TH MARCH

  MONDAY 7TH MARCH

  TUESDAY 8TH MARCH

  WEDNESDAY 9TH MARCH

  THURSDAY 10TH MARCH

  FRIDAY 11TH MARCH

  SATURDAY 12TH MARCH

  SUNDAY 13TH MARCH

  MONDAY 14TH MARCH

  TUESDAY 15TH MARCH

  WEDNESDAY 16TH MARCH

  THURSDAY 17TH MARCH

  FRIDAY 18TH MARCH

  SATURDAY 19TH MARCH

  SUNDAY 20TH MARCH

  FRIDAY 1ST JANUARY

  I’ve decided to become a superhero. I’m tired of reading comics and watching movies and imagining fighting crime. I want to get out there and actually do it.

  All I need is a name and a costume. And some crime, obviously. I’m not sure how much there is around here. Someone dumped a broken washing machine by the underpass the other day. could this have been the work of a supervillain?

  If so, I fully intend to track them down. Because there’s a new hero in town, and no evildoers are safe.

  Watch out, crime. I’m coming for you.

  SATURDAY 2ND JANUARY

  I’ve examined my comic collection and it seems that many of the best superheroes are based on animals. All I’ve got to do now is find one that hasn’t been done.

  Cats

  Spiders

  Rats

  Hamsters

  That’s it. Brilliant! Hamsters haven’t been done. I’ll be Hamsterman. I just need to give myself all the powers of a hamster.

  I could get a radioactive one to bite me. That’s the sort of thing they do in the comics. But I expect radioactive hamsters are quite hard to get hold of. If I bought a normal one and microwaved it, would it go radioactive? Or would it just explode, like a sachet that wasn’t perforated before you put it in?

  Also, what powers do hamsters even have? They can store things in their cheeks, but how could that help with crime fighting? Maybe I could put weapons in mine.

  SUNDAY 3RD JANUARY

  Okay, forget hamsters. That was a non-starter. Looking back at my comic collection, I’ve noticed that the superheroes who aren’t based on animals are often named after their most amazing skill.

  So, what are my amazing skills? Let me look at my last school report ...

  Apparently my strengths are attendance, punctuality and volunteering to help the lunchtime supervisors.

  So I could be ...

  Attendance Man. Because crime never takes a day off.

  Or maybe ...

  Captain Punctual. Always on time to fight crime.

  Or perhaps ...

  Lunch Lady Man. Telling crime to stop running in the hallways and keep the noise down or he�
��ll report it.

  Hmm. I can’t help but feel these are lacking something. I must have a better skill I can base my identity around.

  UPDATE

  I think I need to develop a superpower first and think of a name and costume afterwards.

  Super strength would be a good one. I could definitely stop criminals with that.

  A lot of my favourite superheroes developed super strength by exposing themselves to radiation. So I just need to find a nuclear power plant, steal some radioactive waste, rub it on myself and wait for my biceps to bulge.

  UPDATE

  It turns out that radioactive waste is more likely to give you cancer than super strength. Glad I checked that.

  I could achieve super strength by going to the gym every day. But it costs a lot of money and you have to sign up for a year. Plus, you have to eat extra food while you’re putting muscle on, and that’s not going to be cheap. And keeping my identity secret from my parents will be hard if I bulk up to superhuman size.

  I think I’ll develop super intelligence instead. By the time I update this diary tomorrow, I expect I’ll be using lots of long words and coming up with cunning plans to outsmart supervillains.

  MONDAY 4TH JANUARY

  Last night I tried to give myself super intelligence by reading the whole of an encyclopaedia. I got as far as ‘Aardvark’ before falling asleep. I think I might need to learn speed-reading first. But I can remember that aardvarks are nocturnal, native to Africa and have more bones in their nose than any other mammal, so I think I’m well on my way to super intelligence.

  Maybe I should become Aardvarkman. The whole nocturnal thing would work well, but my mask might get caught in elevator doors. No, I can’t afford to take that risk. Back to the drawing board.

  It was easy for my favourite superhero Ratman to come up with his identity. His parents were shot by a gangster in New York, then he saw a rat scuttling past, then he vowed to rid the city of crime while dressed as one. Simple.

  I’m not saying I want anything that horrible to happen to me, but it would be nice if fate suggested an identity, because it’s really hard to sit down and think of one.

  UPDATE

  At school today I told my best friend Henry about my plan to become a superhero and he got overexcited as usual. He held his arms out, fastened his coat around his neck to make a cape and pretended to fly.

  This is a serious attempt to battle crime, not a childish game. I hope I can get some more mature friends when I’m a superhero.

  During history I tried to impress the girls from my class by talking about how I was going to become a hero. But they all got texts and had to look at their phones, which always happens when I try to talk to them.

  I didn’t mind, though. I shouldn’t even have mentioned it. When you become a superhero, you have to turn your back on normal relationships. It’s one of the sacrifices you make when you dedicate your life to fighting crime. If you get close to anyone, it only lets supervillains capture them and use them to lure you into a trap. You let your emotions take over from your cold logic, and that’s something no crime-fighter should ever do.

  UPDATE

  Writing that last bit just gave me an amazing idea for an identity. I’ll be The Loner. Pretty cool and mysterious, eh? Also, it lends itself to catchphrases like, ‘You’re never alone when The Loner’s here’ and ‘Fighting crime is a lonely business, but someone has to do it.’

  ANOTHER UPDATE

  Okay, I have an identity. Now I need an origin story. All superheroes have origin stories.

  I’m not the last of a race of superbeings exiled to Earth. Dad’s company relocated when I was young, but that was from East Tadchester, not a dying planet full of superior beings.

  I’ve never been experimented on by a secret government organization. I had a flu jab once, and I’m pretty sure the government were behind that, but it wasn’t very secret. And it didn’t turn my bones into a new type of metal and make claws shoot out of my hands with a cool ‘SNIKT’ noise.

  And neither of my parents have been killed by gangsters. Our car got keyed outside McDonald’s after Dad had an argument with a bald man about some barbeque sauce, so maybe I could avenge that.

  It’s not much, but I’ll try and work it into an origin story.

  Exiled from Tadchester at an early age, forced to watch his dad’s car being vandalized and subjected to painful inoculations, young Josh Walker dedicated his life to fighting crime. Whoever you are, whatever your problem, you can count on The Loner between 4 p.m. and 9.30 p.m. on weekdays and at any time on weekends and school holidays.

  TUESDAY 5TH JANUARY

  Terrible news. Henry has chosen to become my crime-fighting sidekick. I tried to explain I was called The Loner, which meant the whole sidekick thing wouldn’t work, but he didn’t listen.

  He’s decided to call himself The Ninja Kid. He reckons there’s a gap for a new martial arts-themed hero since the Kaptain Karate comic got cancelled. There might be a gap, but there’s no way Henry is the person to fill it. He doesn’t know any martial arts, and has none of the coordination, strength or patience needed to learn them.

  He’s the only person in our class who’s even worse than me at sports. He can’t climb a rope or do the long jump without ending up flat on his face, so he’s got no chance of taking out a supervillain with a ninja attack.

  I’m going to put my foot down tomorrow and tell Henry he can’t join me in the fight against evil.

  WEDNESDAY 6TH JANUARY

  Henry brought his Ninja Kid costume into school today, and his mum had obviously put a lot of work into it, so I didn’t have the heart to tell him he couldn’t be my sidekick.

  Why he got his mum involved at all, I have no idea. Now she knows his secret identity. All a supervillain would have to do would be to tie her to a chair, drench her in gasoline, light a match and she’d blab all his secrets. In fact, he wouldn’t even have to bother with the gas, because she uses so much hairspray she’s pretty flammable anyway.

  Having said that, his disguise looks quite cool. It’s made from bright orange Lycra with ‘NK’ initials on the front. It will strike fear into the hearts of criminals, and make it safer for Henry to cross roads at night.

  At the risk of revealing my own secret identity, I’ve asked Henry’s mum to make me a costume. I’ve designed a black Lycra body suit with a big yellow ‘L’ in the middle and a cape with ‘Loner’ written in yellow.

  She’s going to make it tonight. I can’t wait.

  THURSDAY 7TH JANUARY

  What a disaster. Henry brought my superhero costume in today and it turns out his mum couldn’t read my handwriting. Instead of sewing ‘LONER’ on the back, she’s put ‘LOSER’. And she used up all her yellow fabric so she can’t even redo it. Typical.

  She put a lot of work into it, so I suppose I’d better use it. And at least she made the fastenings out of Velcro, so I can easily take it off in an emergency. It might look cooler to have your cape attached to your mask like Ratman, but you won’t look cool if it gets trapped in the engine of a jet.

  Henry and I have told our parents we’ll be at chess group after school tomorrow, but really we’re going out to fight crime.

  Watch out, supervillains. Because we’re here to kick butt and chew bubblegum. And we’re all out of bubblegum.

  FRIDAY 8TH JANUARY

  After school we walked into the centre of town, through the shopping complex and over to the grocery store near the big crossroads, but we didn’t see any crime.

  It’s much easier being a superhero if you live somewhere like New York. They have a lot of mobsters and criminal masterminds. All we saw were old people on motorized scooters, mothers with young kids and men in delivery vans.

  I saw a man throw a cardboard coffee cup from a car window, which meant he was committing the crime of littering. Unfortunately, the cup bounced off a streetlight and went into a bin.

  You may have won this time, mister car driver, but the net
is closing in.

  We were about to give up when I spotted it. Some genuine crime.

  A man pulled into one of the disabled spaces at the front of the grocery store car park, got out, and walked straight inside. He didn’t even have a limp or anything. There was no way he was really disabled, which meant he was using the space illegally.

  It was time for us to spring into action.

  We raced into the store and went to the nearest toilets to change into our disguises. There were only two stalls, and one of them was out of order. Henry went in first and took ages. I hoped the criminal was doing a big shop, because otherwise he’d have gone by the time we transformed.

  When Henry was finally done, I dashed into the cubicle to pull my costume on. I could see why Henry took so long. There was only one dry patch on the floor, and it took ages to get into my costume without getting disgusting toilet-floor juice all over it.

  We got outside just as the man was putting his shopping bags in the back of his car.

  ‘Get out of that parking space,’ I said. I put on a really deep and gravelly voice to scare the wrongdoer and protect my identity. ‘You’re not disabled!’

  The man muttered something and continued loading his bags.

  I wasn’t sure what to do next. Unfortunately, Henry was.

  ‘I am The Ninja Kid, this is my sidekick The Loser and we order you to stop!’ he shouted.

  ‘The Loner,’ I said. ‘I’m called The Loner and he’s my sidekick, not the other way round.’

  ‘You are breaking the law and must face our wrath!’ shouted Henry.

  He shoved the shopping cart into the man’s groin, sending him crashing to the floor. The leg of his jeans rode up to to reveal a prosthetic limb. Oh God.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  The man propped himself up on his elbows and stared at us.

  ‘He didn’t mean it!’ I said. I picked up one of his shopping bags and lifted it into the back of his car. ‘Let me help you with these.’