Soon I Will Be Invincible

Different forms of media, when done really well, don't translate to other forms of media very well. Take Stephen King novels, which are superbly written (not really my cup of tea, you understand, but I have to admit they are well written) and written to be novels. When translated to screen, if they are direct translations they tend to suck donkey's testicles, and the better movies tend to stay true to the spirit of the story, rather than the actual word. And this applies to all media done well, I might add, so when I picked up "Soon I Will Be Invincible" I was somewhat hesitant because it was basically a novel about comics. Good comics don't translate terribly well because they are designed to be visual, novels not at all.

This novel, however, was one that took the idea of a comic world, and put it into a novel, being faithful but at the same time poking gentle fun at the genre it was writing about. Dr Impossible is the villain of the piece, and his is one of the viewpoints the novel is written from. Entertainingly we get to see him compose his villainous plan (his thirteenth, no less) and effect his escape, almost giving everything away at the beginning when he is about to gloat about how he will escape. It transpires he suffers from Malign Hypercognition Disorder or Evil Genius syndrome. Throughout the book he goes from terribly confident to miserably depressed and his plan is completely mad (he is going to move the Earth out of its orbit). As in all comics he manages to be defeated only at the last moment, but he already has plans for his next mad scheme.

The other point of view the book is written from is Fatale, who is a cyborg who has just joined the new Champions, a superhero group trying to find out what has happened to CoreFire, a former teammate. Fatale feels like a loner because she doesn't bond with the others and is treated a bit like a fill in tech person. When she discovers that she was created by Dr Impossible, she becomes a little more concerned about their whole mission, but again, begins to plan the speech she will make when she confronts and hopefully defeats the evil genius.

The book is very faithful to the comic genre, and all the characters start off as aloof, but by the end we get to see more behind their motivations and they become more three-dimensional in characterisation. If I had any complaints it is that the book tends to start off a little too slowly. It picks up considerably by the time Fatale is working with the New Champions, but until that point her storyline is a little slow to pick up momentum.

Other than that, if you are a comics fan, you will love this book.

"B+"