The Super Review 

Chapter One

 

 

When a story begins, the first line is invaluable. This is where you hook your reader, raise a question that needs answering and introduce just enough of the premise for them to be introduced. From the heading “Foiled Again”, I expected instant action; a fight scene in which superpowers are instrumental as the evil Dr. Impossible is defeated or captured (probably as part of his evil scheme), all of which sets in motion a hunt for the titular invincibility.

 

Instead, we get this:

 

“This morning on Planet Earth, there are one thousand, six hundred, and eighty-six enhanced, gifted or otherwise superpowered persons.”

 

Where to begin? We don’t know who’s talking yet, although we assume it’s the bad guy depicted on the front cover. We don’t know when or where we are, except morning on Earth, which doesn’t particularly narrow it down. And there’s no big question to intrigue us. All that has been accomplished is that we now know that superpowers exist in this world – but there’s no real reason to care.

 

I’m not gripped by ‘this morning’, I’m not gripped by ‘Planet Earth’, and by ‘one thousand’ I’m actually a little bored. On the first line! They say authors will always remember the first line of their first book; I imagine Austin Grossman constantly misquotes his.

 

Who cares about the number? Clearly, this was an attempt to show Impossible’s heightened intelligence with an exact figure - like the ability to quote the first 14 digits of pi. But it comes too soon. Introduce Impossible first, then point out that he’s a genius, then prove it. Otherwise, the point is lost. As was my attention.

 

Of course, most readers go beyond the first sentence before making their decision. Usually you’ve got the whole first page, but the first line is the most memorable and emotive part. Not that it matters in this case. Having wasted the opener, Impossible goes on to list moronic details about a population of superheroes which are nothing to do with the novel itself.

 

It’s far too early to use a throwaway joke about the Sphinx being a superpowered individual for a cheap laugh. That’s a tension-breaker, something to lighten the mood. But we haven’t even got a mood yet. There’s even less reason to mention ‘The Infinitesimal Seven’ who don’t even have the minutest part in this narrative.

I’m also pretty sure the pointless boring numbers don’t add up. He cites 1686 persons, but lists 1796 (if I’ve done the sums right), unless certain persons belong to multiple categories, but that only makes the numbers even more redundant.

 

Why these particular facts? Why aren’t we told how many can fly, how many have scales, how many can bench-press a truck or speak to insects? How many are blond, brunette or ginger? Black, white or blue? How many are sidekicks, how many are amputees, disabled, dead, famous or otherwise? What makes these particular things noteworthy enough to be included in the opening passage over these other useless facts?

Something actually interesting: how many are off-worlders, magic-users, or religious avatars? That at least would paint a picture of the world we’re delving into, instead of knowing that there’s a super-powered bird out there somewhere.

 

At least we know it’s a common thing and we can presume heroes are accepted by law enforcement – although the book never deals with this explicitly at any point. In fairness, it’s the go-to assumption anyway.

The one ‘interesting’ fact in this is that superheroes outnumber villains. Why? Is that likely, when law enforcement are so vastly outnumbered by criminals? It certainly doesn’t create a sense of danger for the heroes. There’s plenty of them. There’s also a similar number of neutral persons according to the numbers, but only 126 living normal lives. Odd.

 

This needless list is followed up by an equally needless rendition of how very intelligent Dr. Impossible is, which I’d gathered from his 300+ IQ. For me, it’s boring and repetitive, but we’ll stick to facts. The fact is, the voice is relatable. There’s no big fancy words, or over-eloquent phrasing. It feel like Dr. Impossible is talking to us on our level.

 

Great, right?

 

Wrong. Dr. Impossible is meant to be the smartest man in the world and he’s talking to me in the same language as your average news anchor on local news. It’s less Lex Luthor and more Metallo. Less Magneto than Toad or Quicksilver. Now, I’m not suggesting every genius villain should be impossible to understand for us lower-intellects, but there should be a sense that they’re coming down to our level. Not in a patronizing way.

 

To an extent, we do get that voice. At least, a hint of it. Once we’re introduced to the idea of him being imprisoned, and the monotonous details are out of the way, we hear the acerbic bitterness of a man who thinks he’s better than the rest of us.

 

Nevertheless, he only ever feels like a man with 100+ IQ, not 300.

 

He exhibits none of the common drawbacks of high intelligence – the lack of social skills, the obsessive behaviour, the routine and precision. We’re told these things are true, but his language and his actions don’t convey it. In fact, he tells us he doesn't 'cultivate friendships', which isn't the same as being unable to have them. This is an issue that not only persists throughout the novel, but actually gets worse, until his voice and behaviour are identical to that of Fatale.

 

For all his lack of obvious intelligence, Impossible does manage to sound quite menacing for a while, but he ruins it with a poorly timed “damn it”, which sounds like he’s trying to convince himself as much as us. He then goes on to say, “And yes, I am invincible.”

 

But he’s not. Not then, not ever. 

 

And then he tells us he’s the fourth most infamous man alive. Why am I reading a novel about the fourth most infamous? There’s no good reason I can find for Impossible being the fourth, or the first not being the focus of the novel. It doesn’t provide a more interesting perspective, or a social commentary on the shadow cast by the absolute pinnacle over those just below. It’s just specifics for the sake of specifics.

 

The menacing voice lasts all of a page, before we’re back to tangential musings, first about his therapist and then, in a characteristic plot device, a flashback of his childhood. This wouldn’t be so bad if it added to the story, but even the segue is clumsy.

 

“It’s a danger in my line of work to tell too much; I know that now. And last time I told them everything, giving it all away like a fool, how I was going to do it, how escape was impossible. And they just listened, smirking. And it would have worked, too. The calculations were correct.”

 

You’d assume this leads on to a plot that didn’t quite work out. Something to do with telling all, and an impossible escape, and calculations defied. Instead, the next line is this:

 

“By the time the bus came that morning it was raining pretty hard…”

 

As well as being nothing to do with the passage before, this little ‘flashback’ has nothing to do with anything. In a way, it tries to give insight into the childhood of a super-villain, but it’s full of generalities, years passing in the space of paragraphs, and nothing useful beyond angst and self-imposed social exile. All it really adds is pages. And lots of rain.

 

Austin Grossman is a huge fan of percipitation. It’s the second time he’s mentioned the wee hours in just one chapter, and the rain becomes a prominent feature over the next few passages, as these quotes show:

 

• Rain drummed hollowly

 

• Rain rapped on the ceiling

 

• Rain sizzled down

 

• Sopping morning

 

• Rain kept up

 

• Rainy morning

 

As you can see, 'morning' gets more than its fair share of mentions, too. Times show up quite often as well, with little poignancy. It mirrors Impossible’s personality; a tired wet morning. Which would be fine, if that was Grossman’s intention, but the supervillain shouldn’t be a loser. We want Magneto, not Killer Moth.

 

There are a lot of contradictions as we move through. Grossman goes through pains to make Impossible’s character recognizable, and goes so far as to have him tell us, “I wasn’t very much different to other people.” Only to follow it up with what Austin must have thought to be a witty oxymoron. “Except I was.”

 

Impossible also claims to have an eidetic memory, but his descriptions are consistently vague. Therein lies the difficulty of writing a genius character; you really need to have some claim to being intelligent yourself, so that you can render their plans and thoughts realistically.

 

From this point on, Grossman seems unable to decide on a character for Impossible. At one moment, he’s menacing and feared and supremely confident, but in the next instant he’s full of self-doubt, struggling with denial and is actually just a nerd with a chemistry set. The super strength that Impossible blurted about – rather than showing through an act of strength – never features, beyond taking some heavy hits.

 

And that would have made a much better scene to begin with: one in which Impossible survives one of the new inmates taking a shot at him, as he mentions so often happens, proving his strength and giving us a glimpse of his power and personality. Does he kill the offender, or let him go, or a middle point? Much better than so much mental monologue.

 

The same mistake is made with Lily. We don’t get introduced to her, we get told about her. She doesn’t appear until much later. The same is true of Corefire, who is presented amid a list of not-so-insightful lessons about what you need to be a super villain, trivializing the whole premise into a parody that isn’t funny (although it’s done effectively in the Bubblegum Factory).

 

The chapter finishes with everything explained and nothing done.