Soon I Will Be Invincible

Austin Grossman's 2007 novel, Soon I Will Be Invincible, is set in the real world with superheroes, and is just about the funniest thing I have ever read. It is written from the viewpoint of the supervillain Dr. Impossible and the female cyborg Fatale. The novel takes a perfectly realistic look at the lives and motivations of super-powered individuals.

Probably the best part of the novel is Dr. Impossible's deadpan, unintentionally hilarious internal monologue. All Dr. Impossible wants is what every evil super-genius wants. He wants to conquer the world, and he wants to explain his diabolical plan to you before he does it.

Dr. Impossible's nemesis is Corefire. He is a good looking, overly self-assured, invulnerable dolt. Dr. Impossible hates him and so do I. He is one of the founding members of the supergroup the Champions.

Next in the pantheon, and also a founding member, is Blackwolf. He has no superpowers, but has trained his mind and body to near perfection. He has the single-minded focus of a borderline autistic, which he is rumored to be.

Damsel, the third founding member of the Champions, is the daughter of a golden age superhero and a princess of an alien planet. She has some issues due to her mixed heritage.

Fatale, who has no memory of her life before the accident that led to her transformation into a cyborg, eventually discovers that the corporation that saved her life was a front for Dr. Impossible. Needless to say, this little development comes into play later in the novel.

Some of the other more interesting characters include:

Lily, born in the far future and stranded in the present. Her powers include super-strength and she also has access to far future technology. Also notable for her translucent appearance.

Elphin, supposedly the last fairy on Earth. She is inhumanly fast and strong and has some nature-controlling powers. The novel never makes it clear if she really is a fairy, or if she's an alien of some sort.

Mr. Mystic, a magician much like Dr. Strange. His powers include illusion and teleportation.

Two of the most inexperienced Champions are Bluetooth and Phenom. Bluetooth is a geeky young hero infused with alien technology. He has the power to read minds and control electronic equipment. Phenom's powers come from his cybernetic implants. In one of the best scenes of the novel, the hapless duo attempt to interrogate Dr. Impossible, which leads to his escape. Oops!

The most important supervillains, other than Dr. Impossible, include Baron Ether, a Golden Age scientist and robotics expert. He is sort of a mentor to Dr. Impossible. The Pharoah, whose powers come from a magic hammer, is Dr. Impossible's friend, sort of. (Actually, he thinks he's an idiot.) The Pharoah's hammer is one of the most powerful objects on the planet and figures prominently in Dr. Impossible's plan to rule the Earth.

Not to spoil anything, but does it come as any surprise when the New Champions are able to foil Dr. Impossible's plan? No matter how close he comes, even Dr. Impossible knows that he will ultimately fail, and the cycle will begin anew. And in that process, we have a lot to learn from Dr. Impossible. As he stands on the verge of taking over the world, ' at the fulcrum point of creation', he blurts out, 'God I'm so unhappy.' Success means the end of the journey, and Dr. Impossible knows that the journey is more important than the goal. Defeat means renewal, and a rediscovery of your purpose. Dr. Impossible certainly knows his own purpose: 'When your laboratory explodes, lacing your body with a supercharged elixer, what do you do? You don't just lie there. You crawl out of the rubble, hideously scarred, and swear vengeance on the world. You keep going. You keep trying to take over the world'.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/29/books/review/Itzkoff2-t.html

http://bottlecity.blogspot.com

The Real James Bond

In his 1966 play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Tom Stoppard in effect deconstructs the character of Hamlet by shifting our perspective to that of two minor characters in the original play. In a similar way, Alan Moore's The Black Dossier deconstructs James Bond by showing him from the perspective of Wilhelmina Murray and Alan Quartermaine. He becomes Jimmy, a misogynistic, 'nasty little thug', quite different from the debonair, sophisticated spy that we are most familiar with. This version of Bond is in some respects reminiscent of the original Ian Fleming novels.

The 2006 reboot Casino Royale also shows James Bond in a different way: somewhat of a thug, quite a bit less confident, and certainly far removed from the Sean Connery and Roger Moore versions. While not completely inverting the character, the movie succeeds in returning to the original source material for a new perspective.

The picture on the left is an image of James Bond commissioned by Ian Fleming. He looks a lot more like Daniel Craig than Pierce Brosnan, doesn't he?


No discussion of The Black Dossier would be complete without referencing Jess Nevin's unbelievable annotations. See link below.

http://www.shsu.edu/~lib_jjn/dossier.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosencrantz_%26_Guildenstern_Are_Dead

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is Michael Chabon's Pulitzer Prize winning novel about the Golden Age of Comics. The novel follows the lives of two Jewish boys, Joe Kavalier and Sam Clay. The pattern of their lives in some ways mirrors that of Superman creators Siegel and Shuster. They experience many of the same difficulties when they naively bargain away the rights to their creation, The Escapist. The novel also explores discrimination against Jewish immigrants, as well as the tragedy of the Holocaust.

Chabon shows that there were two reasons why Jewish writers and artists were so prominent in comic books and pop culture of the time. First, due to discrimination, this was sometimes the only work available. Secondly, comics and other pulp works were an important escape and creative outlet that allowed downtrodden immigrants the chance to dream and create their own heroic mythology.

Kavalier and Clay was a tremendous breakthrough that greatly contributed to the acceptance of comics as a uniquely American art form worthy of study and critical appreciation.

Kingdom Come

Kingdom Come (1996) was a landmark DC mini-series written by Mark Waid and illustrated by Alex Ross. The story was based on Alex Ross's idea, and Mark Waid was added to the project due to his knowledge of DC history. Set in the not too distant future, the plot centers on an archetypal Superman who has retreated to his Fortress of Solitude, disillusioned due to a cataclysmic clash of values between the older generation of superheroes and a newer, amoral group of meta-humans.

The precipitating event of the graphic novel is the Joker's murder of Jimmy Olson, Perry White, Lois Lane, and the entire staff of the Daily Planet. Before he can be put on trial, the Joker is in turn murdered by a new superhero called Magog. Magog is later acquitted of murder, and this acquittal causes Superman to become so disillusioned that he isolates himself from human society.

Later events in the novel center upon Superman's return to Metropolis and his attempts to put things back into order. He creates a type of prison camp for metahumans he deems to be criminals. He eventually comes into conflict with a group of superheroes (and some supervillains) who have united around Batman, who feels that Superman has become too rigid in his ideals.

As the conflict reaches its climax, total disaster is averted by the sacrifice of Billy Batson/Captain Marvel. The remainder of the novel is devoted to a sort of coda wherein Wonder Woman become an ambassador for super-humans, Batman becomes a healer, and Superman essentially becomes a farmer as he begins to restore the Midwestern farmlands destroyed in the war.

Critics have always speculated as to who deserves most of the credit for the success of Kingdom Come. Possibly the best way to judge this is to look at what each creator produced in later years . Alex Ross was one of the creators of 2005 DC mini-series Justice. Mark Waid is probably best known in for his 'three-boot' of The Legion of Superheroes.