Michael Colon (he/him) is a creative freelance writer and novelist, born and raised in the Big Apple, New York City. He uses his craft to profoundly impact the lives of others with thought-provoking words that breathe life into his characters. He often equates his writing to painting masterpieces with prose. His inspiration comes from various societal art forms, cultural differences, and his own life experiences. When he isn’t writing, he enjoys working out, watching sports, visiting museums, and exploring nature trails.
AUTHOR LINKS:
Author Page: twbpress.com/authormichaelcolon
Book Link: TWB Press – The Greatest Comic Book Tale Ever Told
Your novel, The Greatest Comic Book Tale Ever Told, is focused on a young boy in the foster care system, placed with a family in Irontown, who uses superhero stories as escapism. Can you share with us the roots of this premise, the personal/real life elements you’ve put into this book and its main fictional influences?
The roots of The Greatest Comic Book Tale Ever Told come from a very real place—growing up and understanding what it feels like to search for identity, safety, and meaning when the world around you doesn’t always provide it.
While I wasn’t in the foster care system myself, I was raised in a single-parent household in New York City, and there were moments where instability, uncertainty, and emotional weight shaped how I saw the world.
That feeling of wanting to escape, of needing something bigger than your circumstances to hold onto, is very real to me.
Superhero stories became that outlet—not just as entertainment, but as a kind of emotional armor.
Introduce us to Sonny, your main character. What was the process of character developement like for you – did he develop organically as you were drafting, for example, or did you sit down beforehand and sketch him out in notes, or some other process?
When it came to developing Sonny, it was a mix of both planning and organic discovery. I had a clear emotional blueprint of who he was before I started writing—his loneliness, his imagination, his need to belong—but I didn’t map out every detail of his personality in advance. A lot of who Sonny became revealed itself in the writing process.
As I put him into different situations, especially more intense or vulnerable moments, he began to respond in ways that surprised me but still felt true to his core.
Talk us through the main themes that readers can expect from this book. Were they always there from the start, or did they evolve as you were writing?
At its core, The Greatest Comic Book Tale Ever Told explores themes of identity, trauma, escapism, and what it truly means to be a hero.
Sonny’s journey is really about trying to understand who he is in a world that has constantly defined him by his circumstances.
The foster care system, the instability, the emotional weight he carries—it all shapes him, but the question becomes whether he has the power to shape himself in return.
What makes these themes so important to you as a writer, and which were the most compelling for you to explore in this superhero story?
Identity was one of the most compelling themes for me to explore. Sonny’s journey is rooted in that question of “Who am I, really?”—especially when the world has tried to answer that question for you. That’s something I think a lot of people can relate to, whether they’ve experienced instability, loss, or just the pressure of expectations.
Watching Sonny navigate that, and slowly begin to define himself on his own terms, felt deeply personal to write.
Writers often have to kill their darlings – were there any ideas, concepts, scenes, or characters that didn’t make it into the final book that you may use elsewhere, or that you were sad to see go, and if so, what were they?
There were certain scenes—especially ones that leaned deeper into the surreal, almost cosmic side of the story—that I loved on a conceptual level but had to pull back.
Some of them were visually striking and very “comic book” in nature, but they disrupted the pacing or overshadowed quieter, more human moments. Those were probably the hardest to cut because they captured the tone I enjoy writing in, but they just didn’t serve the story in the way I needed them to.
Do you have anything else to plug here that is currently out or coming soon? What should readers look out for?
Looking ahead, I’m interested in pushing my work further into visual storytelling as well—exploring opportunities to adapt some of these stories into short films or other visual formats.
A lot of what I write is very cinematic in nature, so that feels like a natural next step.
Overall, if you’re drawn to stories that blend grounded emotion with a touch of the surreal—whether it’s through superheroes, sci-fi, or interconnected human experiences—there’s definitely more on the way.
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