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thebitterguyBefore everyone's read it and I sound like a total Me Too, I just wanted to say I finished Soon I Will Be Invincible and enjoyed it quite a bit. The book is narrated by two characters, fallible both. Half the chapters are narrated by Dr. Impossible, one of the setting's great supervillain, while the other half are narrated by Fatale, a rookie cyborg superheroine and new initiate into the world's great superteam.
I liked Dr. Impossible's narrative. You could tell that he was seeing the world just a little differently, exaggerating certain details, ignoring others. If you've ever been a bit of a social outcast, you might be a little sympathetic towards him, 'till you realize that getting tackled by a football player or snubbed by a cheerleader doesn't justify knocking the planet out of its orbit.
A lot of the characters map onto existing characters, although some are more like archetypical. Three characters seem to be the Big 3 from DC, but while Blackwolf is Batman in a different cowl, Corefire is more a combination of a Superman-level character with a Firestorm-esque origin and Damsel is much less Wonder Woman than either of the other two is like their counterpart.
Of course, more nerdy discussion is behind the cut.
One of the more interesting bits is how one of the characters appears to be one of the girls from the Narnia books. I couldn't figure out why they never did anything with her (whose title was "Queen of Elfland") and Elfin, the lost elven warrior. At one point, Elfin accompanies Fatale to Regina's house but she waits in the car crying. Sure, it makes sense, she's probably met her before, but I don't think Grossman even says that much.
Overall, though, it's a good story, but comparisons to Watchmen are a bit much (for a value of 'a bit' equal to 'a lot'). It seems to be a... I hate using 'realistic' and 'superheroes' in the same sentence, because by its nature the superhero genre becomes unrecognizeable if it's too realistic. It's more like is the Giffen/Dematteis Justice League book, which focused just as much on what heroes did during downtime as it did Krakathoom battles.
It was nice that Grossman did something with the the disconnect between a fundamentally normal person and a cosmic god-like being. When the cosmic Stormfront meets up with the characters, you get the sense that there are different motivations between people who fight crime and people who dance on stars.
It's also good to see that supervillains, as a rule, don't work together very well. The supervillain bar is also amusing, since they are criminals and have to hide and can't just hang out in a satellite (okay, who thought that was a good idea, really? Another of IC's sins.).
It's a good superhero story, sure, and definitely novel for being in prose*. It's worth checking out.
*NPI
I liked Dr. Impossible's narrative. You could tell that he was seeing the world just a little differently, exaggerating certain details, ignoring others. If you've ever been a bit of a social outcast, you might be a little sympathetic towards him, 'till you realize that getting tackled by a football player or snubbed by a cheerleader doesn't justify knocking the planet out of its orbit.
A lot of the characters map onto existing characters, although some are more like archetypical. Three characters seem to be the Big 3 from DC, but while Blackwolf is Batman in a different cowl, Corefire is more a combination of a Superman-level character with a Firestorm-esque origin and Damsel is much less Wonder Woman than either of the other two is like their counterpart.
Of course, more nerdy discussion is behind the cut.
One of the more interesting bits is how one of the characters appears to be one of the girls from the Narnia books. I couldn't figure out why they never did anything with her (whose title was "Queen of Elfland") and Elfin, the lost elven warrior. At one point, Elfin accompanies Fatale to Regina's house but she waits in the car crying. Sure, it makes sense, she's probably met her before, but I don't think Grossman even says that much.
Overall, though, it's a good story, but comparisons to Watchmen are a bit much (for a value of 'a bit' equal to 'a lot'). It seems to be a... I hate using 'realistic' and 'superheroes' in the same sentence, because by its nature the superhero genre becomes unrecognizeable if it's too realistic. It's more like is the Giffen/Dematteis Justice League book, which focused just as much on what heroes did during downtime as it did Krakathoom battles.
It was nice that Grossman did something with the the disconnect between a fundamentally normal person and a cosmic god-like being. When the cosmic Stormfront meets up with the characters, you get the sense that there are different motivations between people who fight crime and people who dance on stars.
It's also good to see that supervillains, as a rule, don't work together very well. The supervillain bar is also amusing, since they are criminals and have to hide and can't just hang out in a satellite (okay, who thought that was a good idea, really? Another of IC's sins.).
It's a good superhero story, sure, and definitely novel for being in prose*. It's worth checking out.
*NPI
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no subject
Date: 2007-08-02 08:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-02 08:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-02 08:26 pm (UTC)I read it as well
Date: 2007-08-02 08:39 pm (UTC)Re: I read it as well
Date: 2007-08-02 09:07 pm (UTC)I liked the fact that she didn't remember what it was to be normal; that seemed to be a quality a lot of the superheros possessed, but the supervillains are fairly familiar with their mortal weaknesses.
Her desire to remember what she was like, while at the same time being afraid of what she'd find out, was interesting.
Re: I read it as well
Date: 2007-08-02 09:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-02 08:58 pm (UTC)