Soon I Will be Invincible (Vintage)
by Austin Grossman
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Book Summary Information
Author: Austin GrossmanEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-06-10
ISBN: 0307279863
Number of pages: 336
Publisher: Vintage
Book Reviews of Soon I Will be Invincible (Vintage)
Book Review: An absolutely engrossing take on the world of the superhero
Summary: 5 Stars
This past week was an unusually good one for me as a reader. I read not one but two enormously entertaining novels, Neil Gaiman's THE GRAVEYARD BOOK and Austin Grossman's SOON I WILL BE INVINCIBLE. This past week was an unusually good one for me as a reader. I read not one but two enormously entertaining novels, Neil Gaiman's THE GRAVEYARD BOOK and Austin Grossman's SOON I WILL BE INVINCIBLE.
Gaiman's book is justifiably more acclaimed (it won the Newbery Award and is up for several other awards as well). It represents one of his very best prose accomplishments. I'm a bit more mystified by the number of low ratings and even more surprised that although it still gets a solid 4-star overall rating by Amazon reviewers that three very negative reviews are the featured reviews. This just doesn't feel right.
I can understand some critiques of Grossman's book. It is not a terribly deep book, but the astonishing claim of one featured reviewer that most comic books have more depth and character is mind-boggling. I have several shelves of comic books or graphic novels, and only a few have more fully realized characters. Let me borrow a distinction made by the novelist E. M. Forster (obviously not a Sci-fi or superhero writer, though not many people seem aware that he wrote a classic dystopian Sci-fi short story, "The Machine Stops," adding his name to those of Alduous Huxley and George Orwell of distinguished British novelists who dipped successfully into Sci-fi) in his critical work ASPECTS OF THE NOVEL between flat characters and round characters. Now, not all flat characters are bad characters. Pretty close without exception all of Dickens's characters are flat characters, and most of Jane Austen's are as well. In PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, for instance, Elizabeth Bennett is a round character, but her mother Mrs. Bennett is a flat one. "Flat" means that they are not subject to development or change, that they are frozen, perhaps even cartoonish, and start and end pretty much the same way. In novels with flat characters, the change comes from plot and not from the alteration in the characters. Most comics have flat characters, even in a work as great as WATCHMEN. Several of the characters in SOON I WILL BE INVINCIBLE are very definitely "round" characters. In the face of this, I don't know how any claim of the lack of depth in the character in the novel can be sustained.
But setting aside questions of "depth" (claims of a lack of it are usually mere pejoratives meant to diminish perception of it and I think in regard to this novel pretty meaningless), the book is just a heck of a lot of fun. In less than 300 pages Grossman has created a superhero universe with a richness and diversity that most superhero stories take seventy or so issues to match. He not only created a superhero history, complete with former and current good and bad guys, but also has melded them into a recognizable historical context. The whole world he depicts feels complete and real. And the various heroes are marvelously depicted. Elphin and Feral feel as complete and real as the vast majority of superheroes who have become mainstays of the DC and Marvel universes. And I especially loved the way Grossman gradually reveals the deep interconnections between many of the superheroes, like CoreFire, Fatale, Damsel, Lily, Blackwolf, and, of course, Dr. Impossible. I can't imagine many fans of the superhero genre not delighting over every page of this novel. Unless, of course, they just need the pictures to have a good time. And there is no shame in admitting that it is the pictures and not the words and ideas that does it for you.
It isn't a very deep reveal, but I nonetheless got a kick out of learning about the amazingly immature and petty pains that drives Dr. Impossible to force respect out of a world that he feels that has slighted him. For all his posturing and declaiming, he remains a snubbed and hurt college student who has been excluded by a social group he envies. The more we learn about Dr. Impossible, the smaller he appears. Great big brain and huge super powers harnessed to a fractured and tiny psyche.
I'd like to close by qualifying my recommendation. The philosopher Stanley Cavell wrote in his classic book on the philosophy of cinema THE WORLD VIEWED that fans of movies are distinguished in that they tend to be fans of most films, not just the very best ones. Oddly enough for fans of a popular mass medium, fans of comic books tend to be strangely narrow and hyper critical, dismissively criticizing the bulk of works in the field and allowing themselves to like only a very few. My own belief is that what drives this fastidiousness is an inferiority complex about like as adults an popular art form frequently associated with children. I think this is just profoundly wrongheaded. Yeah, this particular Justice League story might not be as good as the best JLA stories, and this X-Men might not be up there with Grant Morrison's best efforts. But so what? I'm deeply suspicious of anyone who claims to like comic books but who constantly finds fault. If you can't find something to enjoy in most, I suspect that you are worried about "the reader over your shoulder" that you fear is about to laugh at you if you publicly confess that you like this "kids" story. My advice: grow up and have more fun!
So here is my recommendation. If you are a grown up and mature reader and not worried about what others are going to say if you love a novel that is essentially a graphic novel without the graphics, do yourself a favor and read this immediately. It is just sheer, unadulterated fun.
Summary of Soon I Will be Invincible (Vintage)
Doctor Impossible?evil genius, would-be world conqueror?languishes in prison. Shuffling through the cafeteria line with ordinary criminals, he wonders if the smartest man in the world has done the smartest thing he could with his life. After all, he's lost every battle he's ever fought. But this prison won't hold him forever.Fatale?half woman, half high-tech warrior?used to be an unemployed cyborg. Now, she's a rookie member of the world's most famous super-team, the Champions. But being a superhero is not all flying cars and planets in peril?she learns that in the locker rooms and dive bars of superherodom, the men and women (even mutants) behind the masks are as human as anyone.
Soon I Will Be Invincible is a wildly entertaining first novel, brimming with attitude and humor?an emotionally resonant look at good and evil, love and loss, power and glory.
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