I Read Books: Soon I Will Be Invincible

Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman

Dr Impossible has escaped from prison for the twelfth time. CoreFire, earth’s mightiest hero, is missing, possibly dead. So they reform the greatest superteam The Champions (technically The New Champions) to sort this mess out.

Written from the perspective of Dr Impossible super-genius and world’s smartest man, and Fatale, a cyborg brought on to the New Champions (filling in the role of Galatea, a robot who died protecting humanity from aliens) this is all about superheroes. When I first read it back when it was new (2007), I thought it was cool. When I re-read it, thinking about writing superheroes a few years later I was disappointed; both Fatale and Dr Impossible seemed curiously unmotivated. Fatale fought crime because she had been remade into a cyborg, and after being cut loose by her (mysterious) creators, what else was she going to do? And Dr Impossible was a villain because his life was empty, no one was as smart as him and he had a lab accident that gave him powers.

Now though, I think of it as a tragedy. More than that, we are media in res, as we always are with ongoing superhero universes. What has happened before is a weaving, complex web of relationships that cannot be escaped. Dr Impossible will always escape prison, and he will always try to take over the world, because that is what he has always done. There is no escape. Nothing can change this.

Anyway, it’s a lot of fun, even with the self-doubt and the problems with the super-team where friction in shaking down the new members intersects with the baggage of the old members. Recommended, even if it has been slightly left behind by the age of ubiquitous superhero films.

Read This: For an interesting take on superheroes that’s an interesting superhero story in itself.
Don’t Read This: If superheroes bore you.