The book’s title tells you everything you need to know. Soon I will be Invincible is a delightfully witty, lighthearted, introspective look at the typical superhero mythos from both sides of the struggle between the forces of good and evil. The book has two protagonists on opposite sides of the law with parallel character arcs. Doctor Impossible and Fatale. Doctor impossible is a super villain in the vain of characters like Doctor Doom and Magneto. A high-ranking villain whose past feats of villainy demand that he be taken seriously. He aims to take over the world at whatever cost like classic villains of old. Fatale is the newest member of the greatest superhero team on earth bent on stopping Doctor Impossible from taking over the world. She is like a cross between Cyborg and Captain America. The result of a government experiment to create a super-soldier for “the next generation of warfare.”
The book’s use of opposing narratives keeps us up to date on both sides of the story as Doctor Impossible gets ever closer to achieving his goal of world domination while Fatale and her team attempt to track him down and stop him before it’s too late. Both protagonists receive equal characterization but I just can’t help but love Doctor Impossible. Despite being A-list super villain material, he just can’t seem to catch a break. His plans always fail no matter what he does and it’s usually because his own ego stands in his way. He locks heroes up rather than killing them so that he can see the looks on their faces as their world crumbles. He monologues about his intellectual superiority and tells everyone his evil schemes before he’s pulled them off. Despite being deadly serious and arguably competent, his track record of failure and egotistical ramblings makes it hilarious to follow his antics as he partly stumbles and partly schemes his way through the story.
Fatale, on the other hand, is a no nonsense engine of war (pun fully intended) and the newest member of The New Champions, the premiere superhero team on the planet. Her side of the story is taken a bit more pessimistically as she constantly struggles with the practical issues that come with being a cyborg woman. She needs part replacements for high-end technology that can’t be picked up at a Radioshack, her body is in constant pain as her organic and synthetic parts reject one another, she needs alternate power sources to survive, etc. On top of all that, she doesn’t have any memories from before she became a cyborg. She assumes that she was part of a secret government conspiracy to create the perfect soldier, but even if she was, all the evidence was swept under the table a long time ago. She’ll never get to know if she signed up or volunteered or what her life was like before the procedure, and she’ll never get to live a normal life now.
The supporting cast of characters are just as interesting. They are just as diverse and anachronistic as you’d expect a superhero world to be. The beginning of the book actually gives a really insightful breakdown on every super-powered and paranormal being on the planet. They consist of aliens, mutants, monsters, gods, mad scientists, and even a single-celled organism. This really does a great job at establishing that the world is pretty much par for the course for superhero worlds while also setting the tone to playful and witty. Most of these characters are expys of Marvel and DC characters but others are pretty unique to the setting. Elphin, for example, is a fairy warrior and the last of her kind. She has been around since the 10th century and her fairy physiology gives her magical powers but also a weakness to Judeo-Christian symbolism.
The book establishes from the first chapter that it primarily draws its inspirations from the older, more whimsical ages of comics rather than the overy-cynical and complex modern age. But that’s not to say that the story lacks depth or cynicism. It examines the genre’s absurdities but has fun with them by pointing them out to the audience but often still playing them straight for comedic effect. It manages to deliver a healthy dose of both parody/satire and dumb fun by juxtaposing modern character tropes with older narrative tropes. There are scenes of characters giving reflective soliloquies about their internal struggles, but there are also scenes of high-flying battles where villains monologue about their plans to take over the world to the heroes who couldn’t stop them if they never knew what they were up to.
The story has heart and intrigue but doesn’t take itself too seriously. It lovingly panders to pulpy superhero tales of good versus evil and, in my opinion, that’s the best part. In a world where every superhero property has to be revisionist and cynical in order to stand out, it’s refreshing to see a story that takes a chance on defying trends set by Invincible, The Boys, Watchmen, etc by taking the genre back to form and still remembers when reading superhero comics in the tree house used to just be fun.
