Superpowered corrosion

Stan Lee's oft-repeated line from Amazing Fantasy #15, "with great power comes great responsibility" is one of the superhero genre's most iconic phrases, one that's helped to define and direct not only Spider-man, but tons of other vibrant superheroes and creators who've followed. It's a line that draws a line in the sand for heroes: you can use your powers for good, or for ill.

Those stark contrasts work well in the pages of a comic book, but the real world doesn't break down as easily into black and white moral sides. Life is complicated, and there are few people who fall into straightforward categories. Good people do bad things all the time, and bad people are sometimes virtuous. That dynamic is at the core of Austin Grossman's latest novel, Fight Me, a time-jumping story of four superheroes who're trying to figure out their place and their powers as they get along with one another as they work to solve a mysterious death.

It's a book that I've been waiting for: years ago, Grossman's debut novel Soon I Will Be Invincible blew me away with its serious take on superheroes, years before the tidal wave of the Marvel Cinematic Universe or DC Expanded Universe films that took over movie theaters. Rereading it before digging into Fight Me, I found that it held up exceptionally well, 17 years and untold numbers of CGI superhero fights later.

In that story, Grossman introduces us to two intriguing characters: Doctor Impossible, a scheming, genius criminal who's tried to take over the world many times, only to get foiled over and over, and Fatale, a woman who was turned into a cyborg after a horrific accident and who's been moonlighting as a gun for hire for the US. Government. When Doctor Impossible escapes from prison, and a superhero named CoreFire goes missing, she's invited to join a superhero team called The Champions.

Through their two stories, Grossman explored the tropes and themes of comic book superheroes in a grounded way, while never losing sight of what really makes these stories so much fun to read. Doctor Impossible is focused on world domination, while the Champions are a colorful array costumes and powers. While comics arcs like Marvel's Demon in a Bottle or Civil War played with serious, grounded issues like alcoholism or the role of government oversight, it's not always the first thing that comes to mind.

Grossman plays his superheroes as real, complicated people: Fatale tries to find her place in this new team and her various members have their own complicated pasts and relationships that form an uncomfortable set of personalities and dynamics that they have to navigate as they work to find both Doctor Impossible and CoreFire. It's an excellent read that explored how superheroes were just as prone to the issues that most folks deal with.

More than a decade later, Grossman has returned to the superhero genre with a new book, Fight Me, in which he takes another look at how people with incredible abilities cope with the power that they have at their disposal. It's not exactly a sequel to Soon I Will Be Invincible, but it's set in the same world, and there are some neat references here and there.

In the mid-1990s, Alex Beekman's teacher leads him to a cave and gives him a magical amulet that allows him to transform into Prodigy, a superhero who's nearly indestructible, before vanishing, leaving him without guidance beyond doing good with his powers. After a fight at a school social goes terribly wrong, Andrew is scooped up by a government agency placed in a group with a couple of other teenage misfits: the super-intelligent Jack, a supersoldier named Cat, and an exiled fae princess named Stefanie. Thrown together into a team called the Newcomers, they work to figure out their powers as they're tasked with trying to track down a time-traveling supervillain named Sinistro.

Along the way, things go wrong, and Prodigy goes into retirement. Alex becomes Dr. Rick Tower, a bland English professor teaching at a college in New England, watched by the government to make sure that he's staying out of trouble. When a communicator blinks to life and he discovers that the teacher who gave him the amulet has been murdered, he's pulled back into the superhero life and into contact with his former teammates to try and figure out what was behind the killing.

If Soon I Will Be Invincible is Grossman's take on a superhero origin story, Fight Me is his take on the superhero team, and along the way, explores how a person deals with superpowers and how their personal moralities aren't quite as straightforward as we've seen in comics over the years. Teenager Alex goes through the usual motions of a superhero origin story: an ordinary kid who's suddenly imbued with powers. He does what most kids do: goes out into the woods and explores the limits of his abilities, and when he's confronted by a group of his fellow students at a school dance, he does what any immature person would do: he ends up transforming into Prodigy and fights back, putting his assailants in the hospital and leveling the school.

In a film or comic, this might have been played off as a learning opportunity, a moment where a trusted mentor tells him that he has a moral obligation to use those powers for good. Here, Alex is detained by a government agency that's used to scooping up superhumans, and told that he's got several strikes against him. His companions are also similarly under scrutiny, and they're given an opportunity to redeem themselves: specialized training where they can learn to use their powers in a somewhat responsible way, under the guidance of an agent/mentor who turns out to be more complicated than they thought.

Grossman jumps between the early to mid 1990s and 2015, watching as the characters come into their powers and later deal with the death that pulls them back in. That time jump is essential (and made all the more fun when it becomes clear that time travel is an important part of the plot), because we get to see how these characters come to terms with their powers. There's an important moment early in the book when Alex is questioned about the incident that landed him in the hands of the government: what did he really feel when he beat those kids to a pulp? Some gratification and pleasure at them getting what they deserved?

Later, as the crew gets together to try and figure out who's behind the murder, we learn more about what's driving each of these characters, and how their respective powers and connections to one another figure into how they're moving forward to attain their goals. That sounds a big vague, because I don't want to spoil how this unravels. But I will say that when push comes to shove, they're willing to do what it takes to get what they want. This is the sort of moment where superheroes are often forced to confront this temptation to take the higher, moral road, but in Grossman's hands, it's a dilemma that barely registers.

These sort of power dynamics is something that I've thought about quite a bit over the years. Vermont has a weird reputation for having some high rates of embezzlement from town officials, often people with positions of access to money and little oversight who just slip into theft because they can. At the same time, we've seen a wave of politicians go from being super critical of Donald Trump to becoming some of his more fervent supporters: it's easy to abandon one's principled stances when it becomes clear that they're an impediment to staying in power. Superhero stories are the modern day morality plays, portraying clear-cut ideas of right and wrong. Absolute good and bad do exist in the world, but it's sometimes easier to recognize that when you're watching from afar.

Those ideas are percolating throughout this story: the rigid moral stances of the X-Men or the Avengers, but once Grossman's superheroes fly into action, they're often confronted by the fact that they're people who haven't necessarily sworn an oath or who're fighting on behalf of a morally-driven higher power. They're people, making decisions as they come up against each issue and antagonist.

Superhero stories have exploded into even greater popularity since Grossman released Soon I Will Be Invincible and across film, television, comic books, and novels, creators have explored the nature of superpowers from every angle, from the mythic, epic and earnest depictions, to grim, cynical, and depraved takes. If there's a thread that ties these stories together, it's in how their respective creators are exploring how their characters come to and use their powers. Are superpowers corrosive, or do they clarify one's purpose and inner morality?

Finding that dividing line between good and evil and all the shades between has been the fodder of plenty of creators over the years, and in Fight Me, Grossman paints a picture of what a world with superheroes might plausibly look like: one where one's conduct isn't necessarily something that's informed by one's internal moral compass, but by the external forces that buffer them. It's a world that isn't too unlike the one we're living in now. Indeed, there are powerful people operating around the world every day: politicians, tech barons, billionaires, world-famous fantasy authors, often acting with impunity because they can. It's not a good thing for the world.

In many ways, that is what makes Fight Me is so compelling: it highlights the importance of that inner sense of morality that guides superheroes, why it's important for Ben Parker to whisper that famous line, and why believing that there are good and bad sides to the world is a healthy way to exist as we move through the world. We should do well to learn from our fictional heroes and live up to their examples, as Alex often tries to do throughout his journey. Grossman's book, like Soon I Will Be Invincible, is a compelling and enlightening look at the decisions we make with the power we have, while also serving as an antidote for superhero fatigue if you've grown tired of the latest round of Marvel films in theaters.