Is it a comic book without pictures? Is it a superhero spoof? Is it a postmodern critique of modern American mythologies and media? Is it a cyberpunk re-imagining of popular power fantasies?

Soon I Will Be Invincible is a novel by a guy named Austin Grossman, published in 2007, about a world where superheroes and supervillains exist and behave pretty similar to how they do in the comics. The bad guys try to conquer the world, the good guys try to save it. Our main characters are Dr. Impossible, a megalomaniacal super-genius who suffers from Malign Hypercognition Disorder, and Fatale, a cybernetic fighting machine who is the newest member of the New Champions, Earth’s most powerful superteam. Will Dr. Impossible’s latest scheme finally succeed where so many others have failed? Does Fatale have what it takes to be a superhero?

I know some comic fans who really don’t like this book much, but I thought it was great fun. The action sequences are fairly few and far between, but when they hit, they’re very, very good. Dr. Impossible’s scheme is appropriately byzantine and complicated, too. The real fun in this one is the characters. They’re simultaneously cliches and intriguingly unfamiliar. Reading about them, what they do, and what makes them tick is a lot of fun.

Let’s take a look at a couple quick excerpts. First, Dr. Impossible reminisces about his own origin:

There are moments in life you just can’t take back. In the terrible slowness of the accident, I got halfway across the room before realizing what I’d done. I had time to look back and read the controls, to see the glass begin to bulge and craze before it shattered, time to notice the sound of my foot scuffing on the floor, and an urgent musical whine from one of the generators sliding up the scale.

A dozen people have gotten themselves killed trying to replicate the effects of that explosion. I turned and saw my future crystallizing out of a volatile green compound, written out in invisible ink. All my life, I’d been waiting for something to happen to me, and now, before I was ready for it, it was. I saw the misadjusted dials and the whirling gauges and the bubbling green fluid and the electricity arcing around, and a story laid out for me, my sorry self alchemically transmuted into power and robots and fortresses and orbital platforms and costumes and alien kings. I was going to declare war on the world, and I was going to lose.

And second, Fatale meets the members of the Champions for the first time:

“We’ve got some new faces here, so let’s make some introductions. I’m Damsel.” The famous face is carefully neutral behind the mask.

They all know one another, but we go around the room anyway. I can’t help but feel it’s a courtesy to me.

“Feral.” It comes out as a breathy cough.

“Blackwolf.” He nods, looking just like his GQ cover. In costume, his black bodysuit shows up that perfect musculature. Almost forty, he looks twenty-five. Genetically perfect.

“Rainbow Triumph.” Rainbow Triumph’s is a bright chirpy cartoon of a voice.

“Mister Mystic.” Mystic’s is baritone perfection, crisp and resonant. I wonder if he used to be a professional actor.

“Elphin.” A child’s whisper but somehow ageless; the voice that once lured naive young knights to their doom.

“Lily.” The glass woman. Her name brings an unmistakable tension into the room. She worked the other side of things for a long, long time. She’s stronger than almost anyone here, and some of them know that firsthand. Now she’s come through the looking glass, into the hero world. I wonder how she got here.

When it gets to me, Damsel says a few polite words about my work on the sniper killings. No mention of the NSA. I stand awkwardly to say my code name, conscious of my height.

“Fatale.” There’s a digital buzz at the back of my voice that the techs never managed to erase. When I sit back down, one armored elbow clacks noisily against the marble tabletop. I don’t wear a mask, but I fight the urge to hide my new face behind the silver hair they gave me. Most of it’s nylon.

It’s a good story, a fun read, and a nice gift for comic fans with a taste for new and interesting prose.

Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman. Go pick it up.

The Umbrella Academy: Dallas #1

It’s the day after the Umbrella Academy defeated the White Violin and the Orchestra Verdammten. The Seance is still an acclaimed hero, The Rumor is still unable to speak, the White Violin is still paralyzed with no memory of what happened, and Professor Pogo is still dead. The Rumor takes her ultimately futile revenge on her brain-damaged sister by making her watch news video of the chaos her attacks caused. Spaceboy is enjoying a little reality TV. The Kraken is back to beating the snot out of criminals. Number Five is losing money at the dogtrack and getting attacked by — and slaughtering — legions of goons from the future. But do any of them stand a chance against… Hazel and Cha-Cha?

Verdict: Thumbs up. More great stuff from Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba. Perhaps the most fun thing about this issue is the flashback to the Academy’s childhood, when they fought the mystically animated statue of Abraham Lincoln from the Lincoln Memorial. The Rumor’s method of dispatching the evil presidential statue is exceedingly cool.

Blue Beetle #33

The Teen Titans are helping Blue Beetle and Peacemaker watch over a “Day Without Immigrants” protest in El Paso. Emotions are high — and for some reason, that’s when a bunch of Dr. Polaris’ magnetically-powered goons show up to attack all the protestors. Once everyone realizes this is just a diversion to distract everyone from Dr. Polaris’ real scheme at White Sands, how is Jaime, with his established weakness to magnetic fields, going to handle the magnetic villain all by himself?

Verdict: Thumbs up. I found myself wanting to dislike this, but there’s just too much good stuff. Peacemaker worrying that he hangs around too many kids, Kid Devil enthusing over breakfast tacos, more great patter from Paco and Brenda (and namedropping Hellboy, too!), Wonder Girl getting off an unusual number of good one-liners, and Jaime once again using science to defeat bad guys.

Wonder Woman #26

The Greek gods return to Olympus to find that it’s been creatively defiled by Darkseid’s New Gods. Elsewhere, Diana Prince and her team of agents from the DMA respond to an emergency call at a shopping mall to find a lot of destruction and a lot of dead or dying civilians. When Wonder Woman investigates, she finds something calling itself Genocide, something that appears to be a god, and it effortlessly beats the snot out of her.

Verdict: Ehh, not sure yet. Wondy getting her butt kicked is rare enough in this comic — are they going to come up with something good to go along with it, or is this just another cheesy tie-in with “Final Crisis”?

Forrest J. Ackerman has died at age 92.

Fan as in fanatic. Fan as in fancier. Fan as in fantasy lover. Forrest J Ackerman, who died Thursday at 92 of a heart attack in Los Angeles, was all these things and many more: literary agent for such science fiction authors as Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, A.E. van Vogt, Curt Siodmak and L. Ron Hubbard; actor and talisman in more than 50 films (The Howling, Beverly Hills Cop III, Amazon Women on the Moon); editor of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine and creator of the Vampirella comic book franchise. But each of these trades was an exponent of his educated ardor for science fiction, fantasy and horror, and his need to share that consuming appetite.

The Scifipedia, an online biographical dictionary, defines Ackerman first as “American fan.” That’s good enough. As much as almost any writer in the field, he created a devoted, informed audience for speculative fiction. If he didn’t coin the term “sci-fi” — Robert Heinlein used it first — then by using the phrase in public in 1954 he instantly popularized it (to the lasting chagrin of purists, who preferred “SF”). Forry, as everyone called him, was the genre’s foremost advocate, missionary and ballyhooer. His love for the form, stretching back more than 80 years, godfathered and legitimized the obsessions of a million fanboys. His passion was their validation. He was the original Fanman.

I wrote about Uncle Forry just a month ago, when it looked like he’d be leaving us in days. As it turns out, the cards and well-wishes from his own legions of fans helped him rally for an extra four weeks.

If you’ve ever been to a convention, whether for comics, horror, sci-fi, Star Trek, you name it, you’re one of Uncle Forry’s kids. If you’ve ever dressed up in costume as a character from fiction, you’re one of Uncle Forry’s kids. If you’ve ever spent an evening geeking out with friends about something awesome in a comic book, in an old science fiction story, in a horror movie, you’re one of Uncle Forry’s kids.

Mugs up, folks. Here’s to Forrest J. Ackerman.

Another Friday, another pointlessly violent interlude of pain and suffering. But enough about your typical workday — it’s time again for FRIDAY NIGHT FIGHTS!

Our superpowered brawl tonight comes courtesy of the Elongated Man in January 1965’s Detective Comics #335, in the story “Break Up the Bottleneck Gang!” by the great Gardner Fox, also-great Carmine Infantino, and the great-but-not-as-well-known-as-Fox-and-Infantino Sid Greene:

Spacebooger spins you right round, baby, right round.

Madame Xanadu #6

Nimue is trapped in a cell during the French Revolution. Unable to get to her youth-restoring potions, she’s growing older and older by the minute. Desperate to save herself, she casts a spell to summon Death herself — as in Morpheus’ uber-cool goth sister from Neil Gaiman’s “Sandman” series — to persuade her that it’s not actually her time to die.

Verdict: Thumbs up. First, because Death is such an impossibly awesome character. And second, because Amy Reeder Hadley draws such impossibly awesome pictures of Death.

Birds of Prey #124

The Calculator has betrayed the Birds of Prey to the Silicon Syndicate. Luckily, they have some backup — namely, Black Canary, Manhunter, Green Arrow, and Speedy. But the more significant battle is back at Oracle’s HQ, where the Joker has come calling again, having finally realized that the girl in the wheelchair was really Barbara Gordon, the girl he paralyzed all those years ago. Who’s going to come out on top in this rematch?

Verdict: Thumbs up, entirely because of the Barbara-vs.-Joker fight. The rest of it was pretty forgettable.

Tiny Titans #10

We got a bit more focused story this time, with Supergirl and Batgirl as our two main characters. They’re gonna go hang out with the Titans, but they’ve forgotten to feed their pets! So Streaky the Super-Cat and Ace the Bathound head off to look for them. They barely miss their owners at Titans Treehouse, then it’s off to Gotham for a picnic, where the girls get grossed out by Kroc eating garbage and take off to Metropolis. But there, they have to deal with Bizarro who eats potato chips much too noisily. Will Streaky and Ace ever catch up to their owners and get their dinner?

Verdict: Thumbs up. At least partly for this:

That’s the “Tiny Titans” version of Killer Croc. And one of the sound effects is actually “GARBAGE!” That’s just plain awesome.

PS238 #35

Tyler Marlocke has finally been cured of his alien xenovirus, thanks to a transfusion of Susie Finster’s superpowered red blood cells. Unfortunately, his clone has gotten superpowers – and he’s being piloted by an angel and a demon who can’t agree on how to make him fly and are willing to make him look good by turning innocent people into supervillains for him to defeat. In fact, every time he uses his powers, something bizarre and unexpected happens. What’s the cause of all this? It seems that the parents of half-demon/half-angel Malphast have decided they’re willing to upset the natural order just to see their son…

Verdict: Thumbs up. This one is always lots of fun. I got no idea how they’re going to clear up all the problems with Tyler and his clone.

Marvel Adventures: Super Heroes #5

Obviously, our focus in this issue is on Dr. Strange, Master of the Mystic Arts. He’s cruising the various interdimensional realms of magic (lugging a cup of Starbucks coffee. Niiiice.) when he discovers that something has been eating the fabric of reality. Bad news. Who’s his perfect ally to solve this cosmic problem? Apparently, it’s your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. After helping Spidey take down the Vulture (Who knew magical crimefighting involved stripping the Vulture down to his underwear? And how will I ever erase that particular image from my brain?), Strange recounts his origin for the Webslinger, magically enhances his webs to allow them to seal the holes in reality, then it’s off to a bunch of floaty magical dimensions, where they tangle with a bunch of monsters called the Zakimiya — newborns, actually, starving for the raw energy of the universe and spawned from an adult monster of incalculable power. And when they finally meet up with that impossibly powerful monster and his awful, awful haircut, can Spidey’s ability to monologue like Dr. Doom save the day?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Lots of fun bits of characterization here. I love Dr. Strange’s morning mug of mocha, as well as his very personable optimism. And Spidey’s over-the-top arrogant monologues at the end of the story (“How DARE you awaken ME, the completely awesomely cool SPIDER-MAN from my SLUMBER OF EONS. I am TEMPTED to release more than this MERE MOTE of my TRUE POWER!”) really are completely awesomely cool.

Marvel Adventures: The Avengers #30

Tigra has been hired by a mysterious stranger to tail the Avengers and find out all she can about them. She trails Bruce Banner through a grocery store, Storm and Giant-Girl to a sidewalk cafe, Captain America to an assembly at a local elementary school, and the whole team to a knock-down, drag-out battle against the Griffin. Will Tigra finally step out of the shadows to help? And who was the mysterious figure who hired her?

Verdict: Another thumbs up. Marvel’s kid-friendly comics are some of the best out there, and they make great reading for anyone, either adults or kids. Tigra comes across as an incredibly appealing character, part investigator, part wide-eyed fangirl.

It’s time to start thinking about Christmas shopping, and that means it’s time for me to start recommending some stuff you can get for the comics fan on your gift list. We’re gonna start off with something I recommended last year — Marvel’s Essentials and DC’s Showcase Presents.

These are, without a doubt, the best bargains in comics, hands down. You get about 500 pages of comics, all for about $17. They’re often called “phonebooks,” ’cause that’s about how thick they are. They’re black-and-white, and the paper quality isn’t top-notch, but these are comics that are designed to be read, not just collected and stored away in mylar.

Even better, these collections can be divided between early works, like the first appearances of the Flash, the Punisher, Green Lantern, or the Fantastic Four, and rarities that haven’t previously been collected due to low demand, like “Tales of the Zombie,” “Enemy Ace,” “The Astonishing Ant-Man,” or “Aquaman.” The variety of comics offered in these is really astounding — you get superhero comics, war comics, Western comics, horror comics, sci-fi, fantasy, you name it. You get major characters and minor characters, and some of the greatest artists and writers in the biz. They don’t have many romance comics yet, but whenever some flunkie at Marvel remembers how many romance comics Stan Lee and Jack Kirby worked on back in the ’50s, we’ll probably get some collections of those, too.

Let’s face it, the economy is in the dumper, and folks are looking for good ways to trim down their holiday spending. These collections are perfect for that — they’re extremely affordable, and each one has more than enough reading to keep comics fans happily reading for weeks. The comics fan on your list gets some classic stories they’d never get to read otherwise, and you get a nice little break for your pocketbook, too.

Marvel’s Essentials and DC’s Showcase Presents. Go pick some up.

Justice Society of America: Kingdom Come Special: The Kingdom

Again, whoaaa there, DC, let’s try to get those titles a little under control, a’ight? Less is more, ya know?

The blessings of Gog are showing their downsides more and more. Sand is able to sleep through the night, but he’s lost his predictive dreams that let him prevent murders. Dr. Mid-Nite has his regular sight back, but he’s lost his special sensory abilities that made him such a great doctor. Starman is sane, but he’s really unhappy about that. Damage is handsome again, but his vanity and egotism have gone out of control. And Citizen Steel hasn’t been granted his wish yet of being able to hug his nieces and nephews again — and I hope he doesn’t, ’cause all of the other wishes haven’t really turned out well.

What else? Stargirl and Atom-Smasher give Damage a stern talking-to, which he completely disregards. Cyclone is wearing a witch hat now, which seems a little goofy but still kinda cool. Starman has a new and fairly unpleasant job. Sand learns that Gog’s presence on Earth has a pretty darn good chance of destroying the planet. And Gog craves what all gods crave.

Verdict: Thumbs up, mainly because it finally feels like the story is moving forward. This storyline has gone on way, way too long, and I hope they get it wrapped up very soon, and with as few characters needlessly killed as possible.

Captain America #44

Bucky’s past as the Winter Soldier, a brainwashed Soviet agent, are coming back to haunt him. Batroc the Leaper is causing trouble, and a mysterious Chinese villain appears to have Bucky’s number.

Verdict: Thumbs down. I like the way they’re handling Batroc as something other than a buffoon, but right now, this is an espionage comic, and most espionage comics just don’t interest me.

The Brave and the Bold #19

The Phantom Stranger brings Hal Jordan to a private hospital that’s housing a bunch of children who were deformed during a drug trial. One of the children has begun writing in a wide variety of languages, many of them completely alien, many of them telling about far-distant catastrophes and galactic disasters. GL and the Stranger travel to Sector 3897 to assist the Green Lantern there with cleanup from a disaster that destroyed a city. It soon becomes clear that the disaster was caused by magic — magic connected to the deformed children on Earth, according to the Stranger.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Green Lantern and the Phantom Stranger aren’t the most obvious team that pops to mind, but they do seem to go together fairly well. I also like the details of the planet GL and the Stranger visit — very strange, very alien, ver much unlike Earth. And the cliffhanger at the end is excellent — I am eagerly awaiting the next issue of this one.

Batman #681

In this issue, Batman doesn’t actually die.

Ooops. Was that a spoiler?

Well, it wasn’t much of one. Did anyone really believe DC Comics was going to kill Batman at the end of the “Batman R.I.P.” storyline? Nah, of course not. Still, the story is okay. We start out with Batman straitjacketed inside a coffin, Nightwing about to get lobotomized, and Robin under attack from the Club of Villains. Luckily, the Club of Heroes makes an appearance to save the Boy Wonder, Nightwing escapes pretty easily, the Joker proceeds to scare the holy howling heck out of the Black Glove stooges, and there ain’t a straitjacket or grave in the world that can keep the Dark Knight buried.

In the end, it all boils down to Batman vs. Dr. Hurt. Is he Thomas Wayne, Batman’s father? Is he an actor driven mad? Is he the Devil himself? We don’t hear anything for sure. And then there’s a fight, a shooting, a helicopter crash. Jezebel Jet gets her comeuppance, the Joker gets his ride run off a bridge, Le Bossu can’t escape justice. Batman goes missing, but dead? Definitely not.

Verdict: Thumbs up. The best moment probably comes early in the issue, with the return of the Club of Heroes. The Joker terrorizing Dr. Hurt’s domino-masked guests is also pretty good. If I have any disappointments with the story, they are, first, that this turned into yet another event, with Bruce Wayne disappearing, a new Batman taking over for a few months, and then Bruce returning again not long after that. Second, wow, is there anyone left in Gotham City who doesn’t know that Bruce Wayne is Batman? Commissioner Gordon knows. Everyone working with the Black Glove knows. The Joker definitely knows, and that’s gotta be pretty scary news, right?