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Publication Date: 2007 Publisher: Pantheon Books 287 pages Summary In the wake of his nemesis' disappearance, Doctor Impossible, supervillain and world's brightest mind, sets out once again to take over the world. In a Nutshell At once a brilliant hommage to superheroes, and a clever satire of it, Grossman's first novel manages to be both absolutely tone-perfect and fresh at the same time. Review It's a tall order to bring something fresh to the superhero genre in 2008, especially if you try and do this in novel format. The comicbook medium already features dozens of brilliant alternate takes on the genre, such as the seminal Watchmen, to name only one. It seems an odd choice, then, for Austin Grossman to tackle superheroes in the novel form; but Grossman's bet pays off in spades. Quite simply, Soon I Will Be Impossible manages at once to play homage to all the clichés of the genre, and to take them for a spin. The novel follows two alternating viewpoints. The first one is that of supervillain extraordinaire, Doctor Impossible, a brilliant and demented scientist who keeps trying to take over the world over and over again. This half of the novel is where the brilliance of Grossman's first novel truly shines: Doctor Impossible is both a truly classical evil genius, but also painfully self-aware. For instance, he makes a valliant effort to hold back from revealing his evil plans through exposition, a habit that sunk his plans in the past. He realizes the impracticality of capes and helmets but yet goes along with them out of fear of being taken down in jeans and a t-shirt. Grossman did a very clever thing with Doctor Impossible: he made him a geek. Doctor Impossible gets to shed some light on his own background, and his struggles for acceptance and recognition strike a true chord with the common growing pains of a geek. This makes Doctor Impossible a very appealing character, at once comical and tragic, and always interesting to read as he goes through the steps of his most recent sinister plan for world domination. He is at once a pathetic figure, and a nerdy wish-fulfilment. The second viewpoint of the novel concerns itself with the New Champions, a superhero group reeling from the recent disappearance of their paragon, CoreFire. This story is told through the eyes of Fatale, a female cyborg and new recruit of the supergroup. Some of the characters in the New Champions are interesting; Blackwolf, despite being clearly a Batman figure, is depicted as a focused autistic who commited his life to fighting crime, and that makes for an intriguing character. Unfortunately, Fatale herself is not very compelling, and she actually has a very small part to play in the overall plot; and because the superheroes are less driven by their own pathos than Doctor Impossible, I felt these parts of the story dragged on when compared to the fast-paced supervillain parts. The story does flounder in the third act, and some of the plot twists it introduces are neither satisfactory nor very logical. One character in particular turns into a mess of false origins and secret identities that sound like a botched attempt at merging two characters. But even if the ending is rather flat, the ride there is absolutely cool, especially the Doctor Impossible parts. Ultimately, Soon I Will Be Invincible is the tragi-comic story of Doctor Impossible, and how his own internal demons hold him back from truly accomplishing his goals of world domination. But Doctor Impossible is not one to give up, even after twelve failed attempts; and I'm looking forward to the next one. |
Copyright © 2005-2008 Daniel Roy