Sep 21 2008
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Many readers felt that the heroes of Soon I Will Be Invincible were whiny, insufferable failures. For example, one review said that “the most [the main character] ever manages is some uninspired teenage-esque angst that her character seems much too old for.”
Apr 24 2008
Here are several quotes from the book Soon I Will be Invincible. Which character says them? You have three choices: a mutant cat created in a lab accident, a genius millionaire turned businessman and a whiny teen idol. If you expect this will be easy, you obviously haven’t read SIWBI.
“This is all geek stuff.”
“Maybe you should be at work, then. Spend some time on the streets.”
“He always looks fine. I know you two kept in touch.”
“Darkness? Crime, you mean.”
“You honestly think there’s something behind this.”
“We haven’t seen a serious threat for almost a year. I’m almost bored.”
The first four are from the mutant cat and the last two are from the genius businessman. If you’re wondering why a mutated cat would use phrases like “geek stuff,” you’re not alone. I’d like to note that none of these lines actually came from the whiny teen idol, but most of them sound like they should have.
(You can read our much longer SIWBI review here).
Apr 02 2008
I have overhauled my review of Soon I Will Be Invincible. I cut its length by about a quarter (from 2750 to about 2000 words). It is now down to a hair over 2000 words (instead of ~2750) and Davis was kind enough to reformat it for me.
Apr 02 2008
Mar 31 2008
I’ve already written a standard SIWBI review. My main conclusion was that most of SIWBI is wasted space that fails to satisfy readers or advance the main plot. So what do these wasted chapters do? To answer that, I will summarize and analyze the content and writing of each chapter.
This review will include spoilers.
Nov 18 2007
Many comic book fans expect superhero stories to have a diverse cast. For example, Superhero Nation stars a black superhero and a reptile. (One of our running jokes is that black superheroes are extremely rare and always the first to die). I think that diversity can definitely add something to a novel.
Some reviewers believe that the opposite is also true, that a lack of a diversity hurts a novel. For example, this review of Soon I Will Be Invincible criticizes SIWBI because its cast is too white and straight.
A more serious drawback is the lack of ethnic diversity among the heroes. There are a few comically ethnic villains, but all the heroes appear to be inhuman Other (catmen! Aliens!), specifically white American, or undescribed. This lack of description easily lends itself to “writing in” people of colour, but since white is normally the default for superheroes, readers would have to work against their usual assumptions to do so. It’s also a very heteronormative world. Sexuality likewise isn’t visible in every character, but when it appears, it’s invariably straight sex.
This criticism is well-intentioned but ultimately counterproductive to the goal of authentic-feeling minority characters, I think. Though the industry as a whole probably has a moral obligation to include more minorities on egalitarian grounds, expecting that from individual works will likely encourage writers to insert cartoonish, stereotypical and usually token minority characters. Finally, I believe that diversity-based criticism forces authors to pick between characters that are “too black” or “not black enough”. Let me illustrate that claim with a scene between two black characters, Lash and John.
Even the conversation’s first line creates a sensitivity paradox. When Lash introduces himself to John, should he say something generic like “Hey, man” or something more stereotypically black like “Sup, m’nigg?”
If I choose something stereotypically black, readers will complain that I’m stereotyping blacks. “Blacks don’t really talk that way.” That may be true. I am not black and live in a monolithically white/Asian community, so I don’t really have much experience to evaluate that claim. My main source of information about blacks is media caricatures. Relying on those seems like a recipe for disaster.
I think that many whites would be inclined to think that “Sup, m’nigg!” is implausible for a black character and would find the work weaker on that basis. Do you? If you said yes, I’d appreciate if you could critically evaluate why you think that line is implausible. I’ll give you a minute to do that…
Hopefully, you said something along the lines of the following justifications. 1) “I’m black, and we don’t talk that way.” 2) “Although I’m not black, the blacks I talk with regularly don’t sound like that.” These criticisms are strong because the reader has the experience to challenge my portrayal*.
(*An aside: can any single person’s experiences with blacks, even a black’s experiences, suggest that a black speaking otherwise is innately implausible? Probably not. But let’s accept for our purposes that individual experiences are valid enough).
Someone that’s familiar with black people has the experience to challenge my portrayal of blacks. But I suspect that most comic book readers are upper-middle-class whites that don’t really know many (any?) blacks. I’m interested to see how such a person might argue that my representation is implausible. “I don’t have any evidence to support this, but it just seems implausible that blacks would use a line like sup, m’nigg!” Many would probably look to the back of the book to see if I was black or not and then conclude that I was clueless.
The quote is actually quite realistic; a black professor suggested it to me. That I even have to justify myself suggests how complicated this process is for white authors. I feel uninformed readers will readily disregard any research I do to create an authentic black character. But they would not do so if I were black. I think that those two premises strongly suggest that (many? some?) readers implicitly expect me to stick to white characters.
It’s hard but possible for anyone to create an authentic character of a different racial background. But I’ve concluded that it is essentially impossible for a white author to satisfy an audience with black characters (authentic or otherwise). I think the “sup, m’nigg!” example demonstrates that most of the audience presumes that I, a white person, am not credible when it comes to creating a black character. If that is true, I’d say that the audience doesn’t want a black character from me.
Returning to the conversation between Lash and John, the alternative to something like “sup, m’nigg!” is something less stereotypically black. Readers will complain that I’ve inserted token characters to add superficial diversity. They will likely add that “blacks don’t really talk that way,” a conclusion that might not be supported by any personal experience.
No matter what I do, by including a black character it seems that I have guaranteed that diversity-concerned critics will be upset.
KPhoebe at Girls Read Comics counterargues:
…when writing, you shouldn’t be “seeking to satisfy diversity critics”, but keeping in mind that white, straight guy points of view are a cultural norm, not a reflection of reality. It’s not about satisfying people who criticise a lack of diversity so that they won’t be mean about your work, but an ethical choice to reflect a diverse world. As you point out, it requires extra research and effort, and you’re still almost guaranteed to offend someone, but that’s not an ethically worthy excuse not to make the effort.
Perhaps I conceive of the author’s role differently. I consider the primary goal of a fantasy author to be producing the most captivating and satisfying story possible. Other considerations can follow (like commentary, philosophy and political judgments), but a story that fails to immerse its readers has failed.
How does identifying characters as minorities affect how immersed readers will be? I suspect that it wouldn’t help in any way, at least in any way that I can think of. In fact, I am virtually certain that it will lead some readers to question my authorial credibility, which is a total failure of immersion. “Blacks don’t talk that way!” KPhoebe anticipated that point, saying that “reflecting a diverse world… [is] almost guaranteed to offend someone, but that’s not an ethically worthy excuse not to make the effort.”
Perhaps this is insensitive and/or crude, but I don’t think that reflecting reality is (or should be) a major concern of most fantasy writers. Isn’t the point to rely on whatever aspects of reality you need to tell a story and then fabricate the rest? If you don’t need the element of race to tell your story– and most stories are not about race*– then you probably shouldn’t include it. I don’t think that it’s fair to expect authors to pay a fairly high cost in credibility, time and effort for something that is extraneous to their story.
(*An aside: if you’re interested in writing fiction about racism and/or racial tension, I have some suggestions).
I have concluded (above) that using minority characters virtually guarantees that some readers will think that I’m:
Racially insensitive, maybe even a racist. If I portray Lash negatively in virtually any way, people seem to assume that I’m trying to pass a judgment on all blacks.
Clueless and/or a bad writer.
The alternative to racially identifying characters–leaving it all ambiguous—is much stronger.
Readers will generally interpret unidentified characters in a way that is easiest for them. Returning to the original critique, it’s probably true that most white readers will envision most of the characters as white. But I think that it’s unfair to base your reading experience on what you think other readers are doing.
Listing character ethnicities, particularly for the protagonist, is likely to alienate some portion of your audience.
It’s extremely awkward for a book to mention a character’s race. “I saw Lash, the African-American superhero, sitting there.” “Senor Swagger, you set the bar for all Hispanic superheroes. Eres increible, hombre.” If race is not relevant to your plot, a line mentioning the race of a character will almost always stick out and jar your readers.
Mentioning race is probably warranted if you want to explicitly tackle themes like alienation, persecution and of course racism. But, if you were willing to implicitly address those issues, you have alternatives that are far less costly.
I’d argue that one such alternative is the use of characters that are different in a fantastical way, like mutants and non-humans. If humans persecute mutants in your story, it can be an allegory about racism, heterosexism, etc. The above reviewer didn’t like this option much. “…all the heroes appear to be inhuman Other (catmen! Aliens!)” she said.
I think that using fantastical characters is stronger for several reasons.
First, no one is ideologically attached to preconceptions about how an alien or a mutant cat will act. If my mutant cat acts dumb, no one will assume I’m a closeted mutant-cat hater. In contrast, readers are (understandably) more attached to preconceptions of how they think real minorities will or will not act. Failing to satisfy those expectations is dangerous.
Second, hardly any readers will assume that alien/mutant characters are meant to reflect on real-life groups unless the author directly makes the connection, like mutants representing Holocaust victims in X-Men. But even when we’re supposed to connect a real-life minority with a fantastical group, we cut the author more slack with his portrayal of the fantastical group. For example, X-Men’s portrayal of a bloc of mutants as vicious terrorists is obviously not meant to say anything about Holocaust victims!
If you’re telling a persecution story, using real-life groups may isolate groups of your readers. Let’s say you’re writing a story about gays facing discrimination. Many of your readers will feel that the discrimination is hopelessly wrong and backwards, but other readers will probably feel that gay relations are immoral or unpleasantly gross. (If your audience is similar to the US electorate as a whole, there is probably even some overlap between the groups). A straight-vs-gay story is virtually guaranteed to upset at least one of the groups. Most gay-themed comic books (Green Lantern, etc.) have “solved” this problem by just cutting out the second group from their target audience. That’s very parochial, both from an ideological and sales perspective.
If you’re writing something to change your audience’s mind about something like homophobia, it probably matters that the people who disagree with you are not going to read it. So you’re preaching to the choir. By contrast, a mutant-vs-human story is less likely to draw in outside baggage, like the audience’s preexisting beliefs about homosexuality. It will also probably be more enjoyable. Most people want entertainment rather than moral guidance when they buy a book. If offering moral guidance is something you’d like to do, using fantastic allegory (like mutants) is a wise marketing move.
The thrust of the arguments I’ve made so far is that using minority characters is pretty much a lose-lose proposition for white male authors– many readers will deem that your characters are too black, not black enough, or both. So I’d like to pivot to a question I get a lot: why have Lash be black?
That’s a good question. I think the author’s comfort level is critical and, at least when I started this novel, I felt pretty confident that I could do justice to a black protagonist. Right now, I’m not sure. My readers overwhelmingly think that Agent Orange, a reptile that works for Homeland Security, is a much better written and more believable character than Lash, the black superhero. In contrast, reviews consistently criticize Lash for being bland, poorly characterized and indistinct.
I think that I generally have done a better job with Agent Orange than Lash because writing a black character is vastly more sensitive and more disruptive to my creative process than a reptilian agent. When I attribute wacky statements (“mammals!”) and bizarre attitudes to Agent Orange, readers generally think it’s funny rather than a sinister insinuation about the federal government or, uhh, extraterrestrial lizards. In contrast, readers give me much less leeway with Lash. One review said I “caricatured Lash as a stock angry black male.”
From most perspectives, I believe that portraying Lash as black has cost me enormously, so much so that I’m actually considering rewriting the first thirty-thousand words to make Agent Orange the main character. Consider that for a second. It seems like it would be easier to write and sell a novel starring a paranoid and frequently delusional G-Rex than to proceed with a black lead. In fact, the prevailing view among our contributors is that we should eliminate him entirely or kill him several chapters into the book, but I don’t think that the situation is that desperate yet. (And, as team leader, I figure that the wait-and-sees have it by a vote of 1.5 to 3.5).
UPDATE: The leader of the anti-Lash faction of our writing staff convinced me to let him write a web-comic based around Agent Orange and a third character (someone who “wouldn’t be a collection of tropes tied together by an ethnicity,” he said). I think that the resulting Agent Black is an interesting and consistent character. This bodes poorly for Lash.
Please feel free to comment and/or criticize! I’d really like to know what you’re thinking.
ADDENDUM 1: A valid diversity critique?
The author of SIWBI, at least according to Wikipedia, said that he had intended to make Feral (his mutant cat) gay but he didn’t feel that was necessary because he’s such a minor character*.
I’m notoriously insensitive. In fact, insensitivity (and sexiness) are my defining traits. But even I’m inclined to think that making the token gay character an animal would have been gratuitously offensive.
Nov 16 2007
Hello. In addition to my normal articles on writing, I now have Writing Case Studies. Each entry will review a book and then describe what writers should take away from what worked and what didn’t from the book.
This makes it a bit easier to describe problems/successes in characterization and plotting that might otherwise be abstract.
So far I have:
I’d really appreciate if you’d like to suggest any novels, particularly ones with superheroes or high fantasy generally. I focus on those kinds of novels because they often have the same challenges and audience expectations as Superhero Nation.
Nov 15 2007
This review will focus on two questions. One, is “Soon I Will Be Invincible” worth reading? Two, how can SIWBI improve your writing?
SIWBI is a first novel about a cyborg and her superhero team trying to stop a supervillain from taking over the world. Although it has some redeeming qualities, I would recommend it only for writers.
Other reviews have been mixed. Here are some Amazon excerpts, edited for brevity.
“This book reads more like a first draft than a published work.”
“This excellent novel reminds me more than anything of The Unforgiven in its deconstruction and reconstruction of its genre.”
“Most dismayingly, the two narrators sound remarkably similar, except that Fatale’s utterly flat sections lack the occasional moments of inspiration that sparingly pepper Dr. Impossible’s narrative.”
“Absolutely delightful.”
“The heroes don’t even take part in the fight that beats Impossible, yet the book wants you to feel like they’ve proved themselves at the end.”
SIWBI is not unreadably bad. It was, however, poorly executed and suffers from many flaws common to first novels. These are the lessons authors should take away from SIWBI:
As you can see, SIWBI stumbled in many ways. But I think that its characterization was the most fatal of these.
By my count, within the first thirty pages we were introduced to twenty named characters and three super-groups. Most of the characters parrot (but usually doesn’t parody) a popular comic book character. These characters are so thinly-developed that you can differentiate them by remembering who’s Superman and who’s Batman. For example, let me run down the eight main characters.
1) Fatale. She’s the main protagonist and one of the two narrators. She’s a female cyborg and former NSA assassin, obviously based on Black Widow. That wouldn’t have been a problem, if the author had provided any personal spin or commentary on BW. Instead, we get a bland character that does very little throughout the story. She does a lot of watching and ruminating, but neither her perspective nor her voice are interesting.
2) Dr. Impossible. He’s the villain and the other narrator. He comes closer to parodying Dr. Doom, but Dr. Doom is virtually self-parody to begin with. Impossible is more interesting than Fatale, but still isn’t nearly developed enough to drive a story.
3) Blackwolf, one of Fatale’s teammates. He’s a millionaire (or billionaire*) martial-artist without any superpowers. He’s clearly a clumsy homage to Batman. But where’s the parody? (One review says that Blackwolf is a successful Batman parody because… he’s autistic! Uhh, what’s the connection?) And, unlike Batman, Blackwolf does virtually nothing.
*Fatale describes him as a millionaire on page 21 but a billionaire on page 60. It looks like poor editing.
4) Corefire, another teammate. He’s mostly Superman with a bit of Reed Richards. The main difference between Corefire and Superman is that he’s a human transformed by a science experiment. Dr. Impossible was his college rival (paging Dr. Doom…). Corefire is dead at the book’s start but still affects the plot more than any of the other heroes.
5) Damsel (Wonderwoman)
6) Feral (Beast, minus the intelligence). This character annoyed me the most because he sounds like everyone else, which is especially unforgiveable for a mutated cat.
7) Mr. Mystic (any magical hero)
8) Elphin (Sir Justin)
9) Rainbow Triumph (Dazzler)
Fatale’s group has eight characters, hardly any of whom do anything. You might wonder what actually does happen. We learn a lot about another supergroup that has literally no bearing on Dr. Impossible’s villainous plot. Dr. Impossible gets beat up by another supervillain, who… just lets him go and then never shows up again.
Inexplicably, we learn the origin story of one of the other supergroup’s heroes. Incidentally, it’s a bizarre and hilarious play on the Chronicles of Narnia. But the only reason the author could possibly have wanted to spend a chapter on that character is because he’s setting himself up for a sequel.
In conclusion, the characterization was awful. But the lack of originality and flavor was also truly disappointing.
SIWBI’s cover looked so promising and fresh. But the book is painfully bland. Usually, most superhero stories go something like this.
Isn’t there supposed to be something more? For example, the Incredibles and Spiderman had interesting themes about family and responsibility. The Matrix and X-Men 2 had great action. But– even for a novel– SIWBI had boring action scenes.
First, it only has three superfights. Second, these fight scenes have far too many characters (see how big that cast is?) Third, the villainous plot is absolutely lame. That’s frustrating because Dr. Impossible muses about his past attmepts to seize world power, including armies of mushrooms and termites and stuff. Termite armies would have been epic compared to his banal scheme.
Even beyond the action, the story was just very bland. Many stories sell interesting and fresh worlds, but SIWBI’s is very generic. Let me try to illustrate that with its portrayal of the government. Each superhero story has 4 ways to show (or not show) how its superheroes interact with the government.
Model 1: the government is completely absent from the story. The heroes tie up criminals and readers assume the police will come along eventually, but we never see them. One variation of this is that the story mentions that the government has deputized the heroes. We can call this 1-a. It’s a simple and generic way to make the heroes feel more sympathetic than supervigilantes without getting bogged down in politics.
Model 2: the government is a mild antagonist. For example, in Spiderman, the police aren’t villainous but they get in the hero’s way. Usually, there’s at least one friendly cop.
Model 3: the government is a villain, like in X-Men. This is interesting, but it often gives the story an ideological, anti-American edge. These stories frequently feel cartoonish. Government agents (and usually the public) are usually portrayed as dystopian, bleak, hateful carciatures.
Model 4: the government is a protagonist. This is very rare. The Hood used two minor FBI agents and Superhero Nation draws heavily on government heroes. (Did you know that the KKK Act makes it a federal crime to commit a felony with a mask on? Take that, evil-doer).
SIWBI goes for option 1-a, mentioning offhandedly that the government is OK with the heroes doing their thing. That’s fine, if generic. Maybe no one else cares about the government! But it feels like every aspect of SIWBI is the equivalent of 1-a writing, an easy and conventional way to build a comic book world. You can’t develop every aspect of your world, but no aspect of this world is notable.
In conclusion, the story created high expectations with its fresh title and front-cover and then completely failed to meet them.
I also found the narration to be problematic. Each chapter was narrated by either Fatale or Dr. Impossible. They monologue a lot. Sometimes SIWBI’s monologues parody comic books, but usually they felt like weak storytelling.
Another problem was the perspective. Fatale is a poor choice for narrator.
I’d also like to mention the voice problems. This story is told from the first-person perspectives of a male megalomaniac and a cyborg superheroine. These characters should not have sounded at all alike.
There were a few chapters where I read through a page or two and found that I had actually mistaken the identity of the narrator. In one case, it took five pages.
Your readers should know quickly and without any doubt who is narrating each chapter. If your readers can’t identify the narrator by the second paragraph, you need to start rewriting. Readers hate it when they don’t know who they’re listening to.
You have several ways to fix voice confusion.
SIWBI tried (unsuccessfully) to identify the narrator by putting a graphic about the size of a pencil eraser at each chapter’s start, a laser pistol for Impossible and an eye for Fatale. These graphics were too small to notice and I’m not sure why I would associate a laser pistol with a supervillain instead of a cyborg, or an eye with a cyborg instead of a villain.
The story’s characters also tended to sound alike. Let me offer you a multiple choice quiz. I will give you five sets of lines from the book. Who utters them? Your choices are A) a mutant cat created in a lab accident, B) a genius millionaire gymnast-turned-businessman, and C) a whiny teen idol. (This should be easy, right?)
“Maybe you should be at work, then. Spend some time on the streets.”
“He always looks fine. I know you two kept in touch.”
“Darkness? Crime, you mean.”
“This is all geek stuff.”
“You honestly think there’s something behind this.”
“We haven’t seen a serious threat for almost a year. I’m almost bored.”
The first four are A and the last two are B. If you’re wondering why a mutated cat would use phrases like “geek stuff,” you’re not the only one. Notice that none of these lines actually came from the whiny teen idol, but pretty much all of them could have come from her.
Finally, I’d like to talk about the badly unfocused plot. As a rule, you should only bring in as many characters as necessary. Each additional character is a liability.
To paraphrase, redundant characters are reader kryptonite and should be removed. But how do we identify those characters? Any character whose function/role in the plot can be performed by other characters is redundant.
SIWBI hit readers with eight characters whose only purpose was to represent a type of superhero. For example, Mystic is the magical superhero and Feral is the mutated animal superhero. That’s a bad reason to add characters! Even if these characters were used well for parody– and they certainly were not– extra characters are a liability. If you absolutely needed, say, a Feral to parody Beast, then it would make more sense to mention him as a bit character once or twice. He should not have been in Fatale’s supergroup.
A much better SIWBI would have had 3-4 characters on the superhero team.
That leaves us with a core of three protagonists: the narrator, status quo, and the comic/foil. That’s elegant and flexible. You can go Harry-Hermione-Ron or Laurence-British society-Temeraire. Three is easy, but a “core” of eight protagonists is completely unworkable. I don’t know if His Majesty’s Dragon even has eight characters.