Soon I Will Be Invincible

infobox Book |
name = Soon I Will Be Invincible


image_caption = US cover of "Soon I Will Be Invincible"
author = Austin Grossman
cover_artist = Flagicon|United States Geoff Spear
Chip Kidd
Flagicon|United Kingdom Bryan Hitch
country = USA
language = English
series =
genre = science fiction
publisher = Pantheon Books
release_date = June 5, 2007
media_type = Print (Hardcover)
pages = 288
isbn = 0375424865
followed_by =

"Soon I Will Be Invincible" is a novel by Austin Grossman. It was published by Pantheon Books in New York on 5 Jun 2007.

The novel is told through two alternating first person narratives of the characters Dr. Impossible and Fatale. Dr. Impossible is a self-proclaimed supervillain of the mad genius variety, who suffers from "Malign Hypercognition Disorder" ("evil genius" syndrome). Fatale is a female cyborg and the novel begins with her called up to join the superhero group The Champions, a Justice League of America/Avengers-style team in the wake of the disappearance of the superhero CoreFire.

Plot introduction

The novel is set in the modern world with superheroes. It is written in the first person from the point of view of two characters: The supervillain Dr Impossible and the new heroine Fatale. The novel takes a realistic look at the lives and motivations of superheroes and villains without parodying or deconstructing the genre.

Explanation of the novel's title

The title, apart from a generic supervillainous claim, relates to the third, and least thought-out, element of Dr. Impossible's plan: he has to become Invincible.

Plot summary

The story is told from the point of view of the supervillain, Dr. Impossible, and the rookie heroine, Fatale.

As the story starts the world's greatest superhero, CoreFire, has gone missing. The former superteam The Champions regroup to discover his whereabouts, bringing in two new replacement heroines, Lily and Fatale. The most obvious suspect is Dr. Impossible, CoreFire's archnemesis. However, he is in a maximum security prison at this point, following his defeat by Damsel (leader of the Champions) during his twelfth world domination attempt.

An interrogation by two novice heroes about CoreFire's disappearance gives him the chance to escape and start work on the plan he developed in prison. The New Champions attempt to find Impossible, convinced he is responsible for CoreFire's demise, while he attempts to gather the materials he needs to accomplish his plan. This is intercut with flashbacks to earlier times and his origin, as well as reflections on other paths he could have taken in life.

Fatale, meanwhile, observes on the actions of the New Champions as its newest member. She often feels out of her league, and is uncomfortable with being a replacement for a much-loved deceased member. However, her early encounters show her to be highly competent and she earns the respect of her teammates. Fatale's closest friend on the team is another new member, Lily, a reformed supervillain and formerly romantically attached to Dr. Impossible. Fatale contrasts Dr. Impossible's flashbacks by having no memory of her life before the accident in Brazil that made her a cyborg, with her exposition coming from her new experiences with the other superheroes. During the investigation, she discovers that the corporation that transformed her into a cyborg was a front for Dr. Impossible during one of his previous plans.

The climax is reached on Dr. Impossible's island, as he begins his plan to start a controlled Ice Age, making him Earth's ruler and only source of energy. He almost succeeds, using the hammer formerly belonging to the supervillain The Pharoah (the only item catalogued as being "Invincible") to defeat the New Champions when they attack. CoreFire is revealed to be still alive but he is also unsuccessful against Dr. Impossible and the hammer. Dr. Impossible is stopped by Lily, who had disappeared and not been captured earlier. Lily reveals that she is actually Erica Lowenstein, Dr. Impossible's childhood crush before his transformation and frequent kidnapee when she became the Lois Lane-like girlfriend of CoreFire.

Main Characters

The New Champions

*Damsel, the leader of both the original Champions and the New Champions. She is the daughter of a golden age superhero and a princess of an alien planet, as well as Blackwolf's ex-wife. Her powers are flight, superstrength and a multicoloured forcefield, similar to Wonder Woman. Her half-human/half-alien background cause social and physical problems (mild prejudice from her father and occasional nausea respectively).
*Blackwolf, the only unpowered member of the team. He has achieved physical perfection through training following the death of his brother and sister. He was also diagnosed as mildly autistic at an early age. By the time of the novel he rarely works as a superhero, spending most of his time running his corporation. He is Damsel's ex-husband. His motivations and mannerisms make him reminiscent of Batman.
*Feral, a half-human/half-tiger and the only member of the team who still patrols and fights street crime. In an interview, author Austin Grossman said the character was intended to be gay. However, due to limited plot involvement, he found it unnecessary for this to be explicitly stated.
*Elphin, the "Knight of Titania" and the last fairy on Earth. She appears to be a teenager but was born in the 10th Century. She has insectoid wings and carries a magical spear. Inhumanly fast and strong and has some nature-controlling powers.
*Mr. Mystic, a magician much like Dr. Strange or Mandrake the Magician. He was a stage magician before travelling the world and discovering the secret of true magic in Tibet. He wears a tuxedo and top hat as his costume, complete with a wand. His powers are undefined but include illusion and teleportation.
*Rainbow Triumph, a teenage girl given experimental treatment for her terminal illness by her rich father. The treatment saved her life and gave her superpowers, such as superspeed, but she needs to keep taking her medicine every few hours or she will die. She is mentioned as being Blackwolf's sidekick occasionally, although the two do not like each other and the pairing is probably for PR reasons.
*Lily, a reformed supervillainess and formerly involved with Dr. Impossible. She claims to come from the far future, having been sent back to prevent an ecological disaster that would destroy humanity (however, after accomplishing her mission, she decided she preferred the future as it had been and wanted to change it back again). She is superstrong, invulnerable and transparent (making nearly invisible in many situations). It is revealed at the end that she is really Erica Lowenstein, CoreFire's early girlfriend, and the background was made up (although the future was a real one, until it was accidentally prevented by Dr. Impossible during the course of the novel).
*Fatale, the superheroic view-point character. She was horribly injured in an accident in São Paulo and agreed to undergo experimental sugery, making her a cyborg and the "Next Stage in Warfare". The corporation that performed the surgery disappeared, leaving Fatale to work for the NSA for a time. She is recruited into the New Champions near the beginning of the novel.

Other Heroes

*CoreFire, the world's greatest superhero - who is missing as the novel begins. He was created in a lab accident by Dr. Impossible himself, before he became Dr. Impossible. Powered by "Zeta Radiation" he is invulnerable, superstrong, superfast, he can fly and he possesses Heat- and X-Ray vision - within the novel the Champions database lists him as "Invincible". The Zeta radiation was the result of an experiment performed by Dr. Impossible before he acquired his own powers but the credit is given to another scientist. CoreFire was a founding member of the original Champions, and serves as Dr. Impossible's nemesis.
*Galatea, an android member of the original Champions, but fully human emotionally and much loved by both her team and public. Sacrificed her own life to defeat an alien invasion on Titan approximately a decade before the novel begins. Her death was the main cause of the original team's break up. Fatale is deeply uncomfortable being her de facto replacement.
*Bluetooth, a geeky, quite intelligent, but inexperienced young hero infused with alien technology. He has the power to read minds, control electronic equipment, and limited control over free electricity.
*Phenom, a jock-ish young hero who has used cybernetic implantation to become a killing machine and partner of his longterm friend Bluetooth. Tough, but again, inexperienced. An interrogation of Dr. Impossible, made by Bluetooth and Phenom, leads to his escape in the early part of the novel.

Several other minor heroes past and present (Go-Man, Lightwave, Regina, Stormcloud) are described by both Dr. Impossible and Fatale as references and examples for particular situations, but take little actual part in the story.

Villains

*Dr. Impossible, the supervillainous view-point character. Has an IQ classed in the 300s and is a recognised sufferer of Malign Hypercognition Disorder (In other words, he is an evil genius). Described as the fourth most dangerous man on Earth. He has attempted to conquer the world twelve times with varying degrees of partial success, but always ending in bruising defeats at the hands of heroes. The novel chronicles his escape from a maximum security prison and his thirteenth attempt at conquest. He attended a special school thanks to his high ability in mathematics as a child, coincidentally being the same school where Corefire, Blackwolf and Damsel spent their childhood, and then went to Harvard. It was while participating in high-end experimental physics here that he accidentally created CoreFire while working on an experiment with Zeta radiation; Jason Garner was caught in the blast of a malfunctioning machine and given super powers. Distraught, mainly because his childhood crush Erica Lowenstein was now infatuated with Corefire, Dr. Impossible retreats into his work. A future accident in the same field gave him his own powers, further enhancing his intelligence as well as giving him some level of superstrength and invulnerability; he can rip ATM's out of the wall and survive bullets with mild bruising. These powers and his immense intellect mean that he often has the upper hand even when fighting the entire Champion team, beating them twice in the course of the novel - without Corefire present. He has almost completely abandoned his civilian identity, though Lily reveals his first name is "Jonathan".
*Baron Ether, a Golden Age supervillain famed for his mastery of mechanics and robotics. At some point he constructed the android Galatea. Something of a mentor to the young Dr. Impossible, now retired and living under house arrest. Dr. Impossible openly pines for the more glamorous, sophisticated and genteel age his mentor inhabited.
*The Pharaoh, the closest person to a friend Dr. Impossible has besides Lily. He claims to be the reincarnation of Ramses (despite not being able to read or speak Egyptian and not specifying which Ramses he was) and carries a magic hammer he reportedly found as a child. The hammer makes him invincible when activated with a secret word. While the hammer is considered one of the most powerful objects on the planet, Pharaoh is seen by other superpowers as something of a joke due to his limited intelligence and lack of ambition.

Again, several other villains are anecdotally referenced or make cameo appearances during the novel, but take little or no actual part in the plot.

Major themes

Even as Dr. Impossible constructs his latest world domination scheme, he finds himself reflecting on his life and whether he could have used his beyond-genius IQ for anything else - curing disease, saving the ecosphere, amassing vast piles of cash... or at least, anything that didn't involve being regularly pummelled by superheroes.

His calm deconstruction of his own futile, repetitive and self-destructive behaviours - even as he repeats them yet again, and knowingly lies to himself that "this time things will be different" - can be compared to classic existentialist theories, particularly Sartre (bad faith: Dr. Impossible's compulsive behaviour negates his own chance at a happy existence). Another Sartrean aspect is how Dr. Impossible allows his nature to be defined by the views of others - even revelling in his infamy - while simultaneously protesting their unfairness and incompleteness.

Another recurring theme is the place of superheroes in a modern world. While Grossman takes care not to satirise the superhero genre of itself, he uses them to take pot-shots at post-2000 morals and ethics. For example, the conceit that Impossible's actions are caused by a mental illness (Malign Hypercognition Disorder) rather than his own choices reflect on modern notions of personal responsibility.

Allusions and references

Allusions to other works

The novel alludes to the characters and events in mainstream American superhero comics. The three founding members of The Champions are based on the DC Comics characters Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. The New Champions were inspired by the Marvel Comics teams Avengers and Ultimates. Grossman has stated in an interview that he "ended up drawing on both [Marvel & DC] sensibilities in writing the novel." [ [http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/collective/A25959784 BBC - Collective] , Issue 266, Interview with Austin Grossman; Retrieved 29 August 2007]

Regina, a member of the Super Squadron (itself an analog of the Justice Society of America) acquired her powers in a parallel dimension she and three of her siblings travelled to as children. Their story, said to be chronicled in the "Four Children in Elfland" series of children's books, is a clear reference to CS Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia.

The character of Fatale also mentions the real-world superhero comicbook concepts of the Golden Age, Silver Age and Iron Age (with appropriate characters and time periods), while also considering the possibility of a subsequent "Rust Age".

Grossman also transfers the structural dynamic of graphic novel character pieces like Watchmen to prose, blending the fantastical notions of superhumans with raw emotional content, the thoughts and feelings of the characters - and the frequently disturbing root causes for their behaviours - given as much time, space and importance as plot dynamics.