Literature / Soon I Will Be Invincible

"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... I was going to declare war on the world, and I was going to lose."

— Doctor Impossible

A novel by Austin Grossman about a world where superheroes exist and have been around since World War II. The setting is an Affectionate Parody of both the Marvel Universe and The DCU, and like these two is decidedly in the realm of the Fantasy Kitchen Sink, with everything from magicians to aliens. Most of the characters are Captains Ersatz or pastiches of superheroes and superhero tropes.

The story is told in alternating viewpoints between Fatale, a new recruit to Avengers/Justice League analogue the Champions, and Doctor Impossible, a supervillain who has fallen on hard times and is currently in jail for the 12th time. The great hero CoreFire is missing, and his Arch-Nemesis Doctor Impossible has escaped from prison. Coincidence? ...well, actually, yes, much to Impossible's annoyance. No matter, he has his own plans; it's just going to be harder to implement them now that the rest of the superhero world is trying to rescue the hero he doesn't have hostage.

While the world is fairly insane, most of the characters act like regular people do, making them in effect Straight Men to the bizarre milieu they inhabit.

Characters include:

• Doctor Impossible: A mix of The Green Goblin, Doctor Doom, and pre-crisis Lex Luthor, though with actual powers. He is afflicted with Malign Hypercognition Disorder ("Mad Scientist disease") due to his great intellect, giving him a compulsion to try to Take Over the World. As one of the viewpoint characters, the tales of his Backstory and how he came to be (not to mention the actual day-to-day frustrations and sadnesses of a supervillain) make him surprisingly sympathetic. Some of his plans have included the "Meta-Metavirus" and "The Fungal Menace." He has also attempted to impersonate the Pope.
• Fatale: An ex-NSA Cyborg whose implants come from a Super-Soldier program that never really existed; became a candidate for that program after a near-fatal traffic accident in Brazil. She doesn't remember why she was there, or any of her previous life. Weighs about 500 pounds due to all the metal in her body.
• CoreFire: A Superman Substitute, who is one of the few truly invincible heroes in this world. He and Doctor Impossible are nemeses; Doctor Impossible was the one whose Freak Lab Accident created him, though CoreFire doesn't know this until the end of the book. Implied to be a Jerkass.
• Damsel: A half-human legacy hero, whose weather-god father married a Green-Skinned Space Babe and who leads the New Champions. Something of an ersatz composite of Donna Troy/Wonder Girl (second-generation Flying Brick heroine who in her Troia days had a glowing deflector shield, who spent years feeling overshadowed by her more famous predecessor), Ms. Marvel (Flying Brick with alien DNA and hardass-leader attitude, who spent years feeling overshadowed by her male counterpart), and Starfire (fish-out-of-water humanoid alien princess who feels out of place). But at the end of the book add aspects of Storm and Aquaman, gaining Elemental Powers— which further reflect Troia and Ms. Marvel, who both underwent a Re-Power or two in their long and tangled histories.
• Elphin: A literal fairy who has a magic spear and can control the weather. Fatale, for one, thinks her story is false for most of the book. Seems to be based loosely on characters like The Mighty Thor, who claim to be immortal mythical or religious beings, but people doubt their legitimacy.
• Blackwolf: A Batman Parody with heavy streaks of Ozymandias, whose Badass Normal demeanor comes from autism. Notably, he is far more well-balanced than Bruce Wayne and has a genuinely pleasant personality. Is semi-retired at the beginning of the book, mainly using his Blackwolf persona for publicity. He and Damsel were once married, until the widely publicized breakup of the original Champions.
• Lily: A woman made out of indestructible crystal sent back in time to prevent a horrible blight from destroying the Earth. After she stopped the blight, she became overwhelmingly nostalgic for her quiet childhood, and became a Well-Intentioned Extremist in her quest to bring that future back. Or so she says; in fact, she was originally CoreFire's Lois Lane, and the entire plot was a gambit for her to show up CoreFire and Dr. Impossible.
• Feral: A street-level hero who is a anthropomorphic tiger. Similar to Wolverine in violence, anger issues, and getting smacked around in fights, although the fact he's an anthropomorphic tiger calls back to Mr Tawky Tawny of Captain Marvel fame.
• Rainbow Triumph: Blackwolf's nominal Kid Sidekick, even though they don't get along very well. Has Super-Strength and Super-Speed thanks to implants keeping her alive, but must take medication every few hours or she'll die painfully. Corporate mascot for her father's biotech firm. Would remind one of any of several superheroes under the age of 15, with a little self-destructive child actor thrown in. Most particularly Carrie Kelly (Earth-31 Robin) and, somewhat presciently, Damian Wayne, the current Earth-1 Robin (in that she requires cybernetic/transhuman augmentation from her wealthy parents' corporation to survive).
• Mister Mystic: The resident magician, who is somewhat estranged from the team (he often just pops up when needed and later disappears into whatever magical realm or brownstone he inhabits). Something of a cross between Marvel's Doctor Strange and DC's Zatara and the Phantom Stranger, and a bit of Mandrake the Magician thrown in. Other than CoreFire himself, it can be argued that this is the guy Doctor Impossible hates the most, since Magic can't be explained by the science the Doc holds most dear. It's commented that depending on who you ask he's either the most powerful member of the team or a trick-based Badass Normal, reminiscent of Doing In the Wizard approaches to magical characters.
• The Pharoah: a Harmless Villain who claimed to be the reincarnation of Ramses and had a Thor-like hammer which made him invincible. Dr. Impossible expresses doubt on his Backstory, after the Pharoah is unable to decide which Ramses he was exactly. He serves as a parody of innumerable badly realised comic book villains that were quickly phased out despite their powers, down to his grandiose backstory, silly costume, and accidental copying of an established hero's name.
• Galatea: A robotic woman who sacrificed herself to save the world. Said to have developed something like emotions. Similar to the Vision or the Red Tornado.
• Baron Ether: The oldest supervillain known, having lived for possibly over a hundred years. Committed a plethora of crimes before being caught and put under house arrest by his archnemesis the Mechanist. He's resigned himself to his powerless status but is not above giving Doctor Impossible help when he calls on him. Loosely analogous to Fu Manchu or Ra's Al-Ghul in terms of agelessness, great intelligence, and esoteric nature.

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Tropes:

• Aborted Arc: Dr. Impossible's confrontation with Mr. Mystic just sort of peters out without any real resolution. One minute, Impossible is trapped in some kind of magical dreamscape or something, and the next Mr. Mystic is simply gone and he's free to snatch up the Zeta Gem he came for without any further incident. You might think that it was a trick, and that Mr. Mystic had left a fake gem or something, but no, nothing happens and it's never mentioned again.
• Absurdly Sharp Claws: Feral's claws are apparently capable of rending robots to pieces.
• Action Girl: All the female members of the New Champions (Fatale, Damsel, Lily, Elphin and Rainbow Triumph) take a whack at Doctor Impossible at least once in the course of the story, not to mention a few robots. Kind of comes with the territory of being, y'know, a superhero.
• The Adjectival Supervillain: Dr. Impossible at one point recalls a fight that breaks out between two villains because they had the same epithet; "The Infamous." Their actual names are not mentioned, however.
• Alien Invasion: One of the two alien empires attempted to invade Earth some years prior. Instead of an outright invasion, though, they challenged the Champions to a, well, Combat by Champion. The Champions fought waves after waves of alien cyborg warriors. Then Galatea engaged her Self-Destruct Mechanism and wiped out a large chunk of the alien force, sending the rest packing. It was a Pyrrhic Victory for the Champions, thought, as they were never the same after Galatea's death and eventually broke up.
• All of the Other Reindeer: This is how Dr. Impossible was treated by his fellow students after the accident, mockingly referring to him as "the Zeta Beam Guy" and regarding him as a weirdo to be avoided. Even before that, he was teased and picked on, and he recalls a particular incident when Jason and his friends called him a faggot and laughed at him.
• Anachronic Order: While the main action of the book is told in chronological order, it is often cut up with flashbacks as Dr. Impossible and Fatale recall events from their past that have some relevance to the situation at hand.
• And This Is for...: Dr. Impossible quips "Nelson Gerard says hello" as he delivers an awesome beat-down on CoreFire, using the enchanted hammer of Nelson Gerard, the man CoreFire killed in combat.
• Animal-Themed Superbeing: Blackwolf is a Type 2, much like Batman, with a wolf-themed costume, but little else. Feral could be seen as a Type 1, being a humanoid tiger.
• Antagonist in Mourning: Doctor Impossible attends CoreFire's funeral in disguise.
• Anti-Hero: Several examples, most notably when the superheroes go to the Bad Guy Bar looking for information on Dr. Impossible and the collective reaction is one of "why can't you people just leave us alone?".
• The Anti-Nihilist: Doctor Impossible has transformed into this sort of character. He knows trying to take over the world has, so far, been Sisyphean, only revealed that he's got a pretty empty hole in him (even when he finally gets his revenge on CoreFire, he's incredibly unhappy and jealous that CoreFire's beaten him every time - and that's before he finds out CoreFire doesn't recognize him at all, and they both get one-upped by their former girlfriend - Lily, AKA Erica, the girl they both dated in college, and doesn't have many allies around, but he says there's no option to just sit there and mope - "You keep fighting. You keep trying to take over the world."
• Anti-Villain:
  • And how. Doctor Impossible's character is a Villain Protagonist with strong characteristics of the Anti-Villain. He is clearly and unapologetically a bad guy who's knocked small-time superheroes out of the game and can be a gigantic asshole when needed (although maybe just a little bit misunderstood), every inch an Evil Genius... but in spite of all of that, it's hard to not want him to win. Doctor Impossible's internal monologues paint him as a somewhat sympathetic character - although one could argue that his Backstory is all just a Freudian Excuse. As he even says at one point, "Some days, you just don't feel all that evil."
  • In fact, given the nature of his own self questioning through the story, one reading of the book is that he is on some level aware of both his insanity and the impracticality of his plans. He just really can't help himself, and so ends up justifying himself instead. In that case, he's really more of a sympathetic character who's a tragic victim of Malign Hypercognition Disorder. Who will, of course, take over the world and will kill you if he has to.
    • Once you get a good look into the life of a supervillain, you realise it's not easy to be one. It takes skill, wits, dedication and bravery. Villains have their own inner demons and face their own hardships. Villains too have to fight against impossible odds (Doctor Impossible spends most of the book fighting against impossible odds, in fact). In many ways, it appears being a villain is harder than being a hero. Strong with their public approval, heroes live a life of prestige and date movie stars while Doctor Impossible is rotting in prison, or maybe toiling away at some new doomsday device which he knows will probably be thwarted again, like they always do. But giving up is not an option. "You keep going. You keep trying to take over the world."
  • The heroes of the story also show their imperfections. CoreFire is (allegedly) a Jerkass, Blackwolf is antisocial, Rainbow Triumph is very much like a Spoiled Brat, Damsel struggles with Becoming the Mask, Feral drinks, Elphin can't relate to human society, Fatale is somewhat of a mild Shrinking Violet among other things. The point is that they are all flawed characters, regardless of their "hero" or "villain" titles.
    • Ultimately Dr. Impossible is a more sympathetic character than the heroes (typified by CoreFire) in that they can chose not to act like jerks, but he can't choose to be sane. It's obvious that Lily's sympathy lies more with the Doc, though CoreFire proves that he isn't a natural Jerkass - just painfully oblivious.
• Arbitrary Skepticism: Fatale believes that Mr. Mystic is really a magician, but is convinced that Elphin can't possibly be a real fairy. Dr. Impossible, meanwhile, flatly disbelieves in the existence of magic, despite the fact that part of his plan depends on exploiting a magical artifact (and it really bugs him to have to do that.).
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking – Doctor Impossible’s first rap sheet of crimes - Bank robbery, racketeering, blackmail, and countless zoning and regulatory violations that resulted from building his first supervillain lair in his suburban basement.
• Bad Guy Bar: The Champions visit a low-end villain bar to squeeze the patrons for information...and come off looking like Jerk Jock school bullies. Later, Doctor Impossible goes to a slightly more upscale Bad Guy Bar, held in a secret location that changes every so often to avoid the heroes - this time, it's an abandoned, half-completed strip mall somewhere in the Midwest.
• Badass Bookworm: Doctor Impossible, who notes that while his accident left him super-strong and superpowered, he tends to fight via gadgets and robots and wishes to rule over the Earth with a major emphasis on science.
• Badass Cape: Doctor Impossible, with Lampshade Hanging about the advantages and disadvantages.
• Badass Normal: Blackwolf is pretty much the living embodiment of this, able to take down any other Super Hero despite the fact he has no powers - just autistic focus.
• Bald of Evil: Doctor Impossible once shaved his own head back in high school. He wasn't technically a supervillain yet at that point, but he already had the grandiose dreams and thirst for vengeance. Call it foreshadowing.
  The cut hair covered the floor, and piled up on my shoulders like ash. I watched myself becoming someone else. One day you wake up and realize the world can be conquered.
• Barrier Warrior: Damsel's source of invincibility is indestructible forcefields.
• Batman Parody: Blackwolf is a Non-Powered Costumed Hero who's one of the most famous superheroes in the setting alongside a Superman Substitute.
• Beast Man: Feral is this, although he is described as a bit more beastlike than most examples, with a more catlike posture and a tendency to crouch.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: One way to read Blackwolf and Damsel's relationship is this. This is basically confirmed at the end, when Fatale sees them making out after the final battle.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Elphin is a cute little fairy girl with a friendly personality and quirky manner of speaking. She will also mess you up something fierce in a fight.
• Big Damn Heroes: For a moment, it seems like CoreFire will pull this... but nope, Doctor Impossible utterly destroys him too. In the end, it's Lily who pulls a Big Damn Heroes when the Pharoah's hammer power finally runs out.
• Big Entrance: Spoofed when Dr. Impossible goes to an Abandoned Warehouse to meet other villains; he has to hide outside in the bushes while changing from his street clothes into cape and mask before entering.
• Bitter Sweet Ending: Despite his plan ultimately failing, the last chapter sees Dr. Impossible about to break out of jail and start a new plot. The bitter part comes when you realize that he hasn't changed at all, and is still ultimately a slave to his Malign Hypercognition Disorder.
• Blessed with Suck: Many characters are shown to have powers that come with a steep price. Fatale's cybernetic enhancements have seriously crippled her social life, Damsel's weird half-alien biology results in frequent vomitting, Rainbow Triumph's enhancements require constant medication to keep her from dying, and Feral's tiger physiology gives him severe lower back pain from trying to stand upright all the time. Doctor Impossible has super intelligence, but it comes at the cost of a compulsion to Take Over the World, despite being well aware of how unlikely he is to ever succeed.
• Book Ends: The book begins and ends with Doctor Impossible in custody, thinking about how to escape.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday:
  • Dr. Impossible created Fatale. He only realizes this when he finally recognizes his handiwork - and after spending most of the novel analyzing the team and barely glancing at the newest member, and he spends the entire novel unable to remember her name, and glosses over what his original purpose for her was. At the end, this is reversed: he's spent his entire life waiting for the moment when can triumphantly reveal to CoreFire that he is his nerdy classmate from high school. The big reveal comes...and CoreFire doesn't remember him at all, and initially thinks it's Dr. Impossible's old professor.
  • Corefire's entire life post-accident is this. He doesn't even remember his old girlfriend until she expressly reminds him she exists. It's not that he's a jackass, it's that his life is just that hectic and he tends to spend it moving from one emergency to another.
• Book Ends: The story both begins and ends with Dr. Impossible in jail, planning his next scheme for when he escapes.
• Bullet Time: How Dr. Impossible describes his enhanced speed—time seems to slow down when he concentrates, enabling him to react much faster than a normal person. It's not quite enough to dodge bullets, though.
• Cannot Spit It Out: Fatale to Blackwolf (and vice versa), Doctor Impossible to Erica/Lily.
• The Cape: CoreFire is this in the eyes of the public, but most characters who know him personally describe him as a Jerkass. From what little we see of him directly, it is obvious that he is at least insensitively oblivious to others.
• Captain Ersatz: Most characters, to some degree, though there's always at least one twist. The entire plot is essentially Superman vs. Lex Luthor... and the winner is a superpowered Lois Lane/Lana Lang.
  • In addition to others noted elsewhere on this page, minor character Regina's backstory appears to be a riff on The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe.
• Cardboard Prison: Goes with the territory.
  • Dr. Impossible starts the book in prison because of a play for world domination. This is at least his thirteenth spell inside.
  • An interesting version of this occurs with Baron Ether, who is confined to supposedly isolated house arrest for the remainder of his life by his Arch-Nemesis the Mechanist. He never breaks out but people keep breaking in to talk to him. Lampshaded by him at one point:
    "I don't know how you people keep getting in. I think the Mechanist must be a bit out of date."
• Card-Carrying Villain:
  • Doctor Impossible defines himself as a world-conquering supervillain (twelve attempts and counting) who will be feared and respected by all. For all his intelligence and creative power, he cannot imagine living his life any other way...which is a bit sad.
  • Baron Ether. Doctor Impossible describes him as one of his greatest villainous role models. The Baron clearly sees the world in terms of the struggle between superheroes and supervillains, and he knows which side he's on.
    Baron Ether: [to Doctor Impossible] Do it, boy. Beat them hollow.
• Chance Meeting Between Antagonists: Dr Impossible is in street clothes, having a cup of coffee and reading the paper when several members of the New Champions run across him and a battle ensues.
• Character Development: Averted with Dr. Impossible, who at the end of the story continues to scheme and plot global conquest, having seemingly learned nothing. Fatale plays it straight, however, seeming to finally come to terms with her own self-doubt and realizing that she has truly been accepted into the New Champions. This may be the key difference between heroes and villains.
• Charles Atlas Superpower: Blackwolf is a Non-Powered Costumed Hero, yet has the distinction of being the only person to ever knock CoreFire out... or so he claims.
• Cheap Costume: To protect his secret identity during the above-mentioned chance meeting, Doctor Impossible fashions a mask from a napkin and tape. Not exactly his most fantastic disguise.
• Chekhov's Gun: The Pharoah's hammer. First mentioned in passing in Chapter 5, as Doctor Impossible wonders what Pharoah is up to these days. It's the reason for CoreFire's disappearance, and the weapon Doctor Impossible uses to defeat and capture the New Champions. The mystery of the Hammer's origins are thought of several times throughout the book, but no-one solves it before the end. The astute reader may put together the hints to realise it is the Hammer formerly owned by Sean, one of the other Elfland children. It is stated to be not-quite-magical, was found in the woods behind a housing development (the same place the Elfland kids returned to reality), and is also a weapon capable of defeating Core Fire just like the Scepter of Elfland.
• The Chessmaster: Deconstructed. The Champions assume that everything is going according to Dr. Impossible's plan and that he is always several steps ahead of them. In reality, he has no idea what happened to CoreFire, was taken completely by surprise when they confronted him in the coffee shop (he barely managed to escape by the skin of his teeth), and was generally just trying to avoid them altogether. The only time he managed to keep ahead of them was in collecting the items he needed for his Doomsday Device, and that was only because they had no idea what his plot was.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Lily, a former supervillain warily accepted into the New Champions despite several previous trips through the Heel–Face Revolving Door, is constantly treated as if she'll eventually backstab the team, especially when she claims to not have seen Dr. Impossible at CoreFire's funeral and doesn't show up for the fight afterwards.
• Clark Kenting: Deconstructed. This is attempted unsuccessfully by Dr. Impossible, much to his frustration. To be fair, he knew he might be spotted and chastises himself for making such a foolish mistake.
• Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: Damsel's forcefield acts as a full-body mood ring.
• Conqueror from the Future: Minor villain Polgar, the President of the United States in an alternate future, who comes back to take over when he is deposed. One of Blackwolf's theories about Dr. Impossible is that he is a past version of Polgar. This is probably a Shout-Out to Kang the Conqueror, the Ur-Example of this trope, who was previously (and erroneously) thought to be a future version of Doctor Doom. Lily's backstory is a variant - she came from a Bad Future to stop the apocalypse that wrecked Earth's ecosystem, then decided that she liked the quietness of the blighted earth better and missed everyone she grew up with in that timeline, and became a villain to Make Wrong What Once Went Right.
• Continuity Drift: There's a bit of this with the backstory. For example, Impossible mentions at one point that his Freak Lab Accident was in 1976, and he spent many years Walking the Earth before becoming a villain. So how did he and CoreFire have fights in the 1970s? And just when was CoreFire's lab accident? It was several years before Impossible's happened, so why wasn't CoreFire able to join the Super Squadron, which didn't break up until 1979? For that matter, how did Impossible hold the Squadron off "for years" if they'd already retired? Of course, it's entirely possible that all this is just a Stealth Parody of Comic-Book Time and Unreliable Narrator.
• The Corruption: Baron Ether's experiments have left him with some increasingly inhuman mutations.
• The Cowl: Blackwolf serves this roll, in contrast to CoreFire's Cape.
• Create Your Own Villain: Inverted. Dr. Impossible is responsible for both CoreFire and Fatale's origin stories, although neither is publicly known.
• Cut Lex Luthor a Check:
  • Doctor Impossible has made billions over the years, but the high costs of increasingly elaborate lairs and world domination schemes means he has very little to show for it. He could have done so much more if he applied his mind to legitimate work. He does wonder "whether the smartest man in the world has done the smartest thing he could with his life."
  • Then again, he has Malign Hypercognition Disorder, which means: he's an evil genius. Apparently, being an evil genius is a mental disorder that inevitably comes with Impossible's level of intellect, so he can't help himself.
    • Amusingly, he finds being forced to pull off his latest plot on the cheap without an elaborate base, doomsday device or minions rather nostalgic.
  • Played straight with the former Laserator, who turned his back on his supervillain career and became a successful legitimate scientist.
• Damsel in Distress: Doctor Impossible complains about how kidnapping the same woman repeatedly gets kinda boring after a while. And she never realises who it is, which hurts.
  • Subverted: If you read carefully, especially near the end, it becomes clear that Erica (Lily) knows damn well who Doctor Impossible is - she just never admitted it.
• Dark Age of Supernames: Minor character Bloodstryke is an obvious reference to these.
• Death Is Cheap: Corefire. He's a Superman Substitute, you didn't honestly think he would stay down, now did you? He was actually put into a coma, but not like the others could tell.
  "You really are new to this, aren't you? There's no way he was going to stay down for long."
• Decon-Recon Switch: Of the superhero genre.
• Diabolical Mastermind: Dr. Impossible. Less so than he used to be, but he can still make a few phone calls and have a sniper with a raygun assassinate someone in Russia.
• Did Not Get the Girl:
  • Dr. Impossible defeats CoreFire, and then Lily - Erica, the woman they both loved - defeats him. Before she goes, she fill in some of their story, kisses him and leaves. Ultimately, she chooses him, but stays with neither.
  • Fatale takes a shine to Blackwolf and her to him, but returns to his ex-wife Damsel in the end.
• Disability Superpower
  • Blackwolf's uber-planning and analytical skills are due to a form of autism.
  • Several of the other heroes are also shown to suffer adverse effects from their abnormal physiology (Feral's back problems, Damsel's digestive problems). "There's a fine line between superpowers and a chronic disease." Fatale notes that you have to live with these powers, the cyborg parts or half-human biology or whatever every day and not just when they come in handy.
  • Malign Hypercognition Disorder.
• Divorce Is Temporary: Damsel and Blackwolf make out after defeating Doctor Impossible.
• The Documentary: "Titan Six", an unauthorized DVD which tells of the rise and fall of the first Champions team.
• Does Not Know His Own Strength: Dr. Impossible comments he has never quite adjusted to his enhanced strength after the toilet handle in his hotel bathroom breaks off in his hand. And he's one of the LEAST superstrong characters in the book.
• Doomsday Device: Discussed at length, as each of Dr. Impossible's previous plots always involved something that could end the world - if not the galaxy, if not the dimension, if not multiple dimensions... of course, his latest plan is no different, even if it's not very original.
• Egopolis: Dr. Impossible's plans to rename New York City. He also shows his appreciation for Baron Ether's inspiring career by musing about naming some other city 'Ethergrad'.
• Everyone Went to School Together: Dr. Impossible, CoreFire, Damsel, Blackwolf, and even the character supposedly from the future, Lily. Impossible lampshades it, commenting that a surprisingly high percentage of his classmates ended up on one side or the other of the superheroics game. He's not sure if it was selection bias (the school was for gifted students) or there was just something strange about the place.
• Evil Laugh: Well, of course. "...the error of opposing...Doctor Impossible! Ahahahaha hahahahahahahaaa!"
  "He who laughs last laughs longest, and I happen to have a really good laugh."
• Evil Plan: Obviously, Doctor Impossible is busy with this. He's tried many before, and tells us that this takes real brains. Deducing the scheme and putting a stop to it, in his opinion, is the comparatively easy part.
• The Fair Folk: Elphin seems to be an odd combination of Disney fairies and this. On the one hand, she is cute and bubbly and a bit flighty, but on the other hand, she is a vicious warrior, Titania is specifically mentioned in her backstroy, and iron is listed as her weakness.
• Fantasy Kitchen Sink: There's a scene with a magician fighting space aliens with the help of a robot and a fairy.
• Fight Clubbing: Supervillains and minor heroes have underground gladiator battles; Dr. Impossible got his start brawling in such a tournament in Bangkok, billed by barkers as Smartacus, Count Smackula (no relation to Count Spankulot) and other stage names.
• Flying Brick:
  • CoreFire has flight, immense strength, and toughness to the point of invulnerability, not to mention his Eye Beams and "zeta sense".
  • Damsel can fly, and while she is not quite as strong or tough as CoreFire, she still outclasses nearly everyone else. Some of her toughness comes from her visible, always-on force field.
  • Stormcloud, Damsel's father, was one of the world's first Flying Bricks. He flies, he's strong, and he's tough enough to be labeled "invulnerable" (and unlike CoreFire, he doesn't have any known Kryptonite Factor). Plus weather control powers.
• Foregone Conclusion: A Troperiffic tale of a card-carrying supervillain trying to Take Over the World while a team of heroes tries to stop him? Really, we know how it's going to end. The fun is in the journey.
• Fragile Speedster: Elphin is this compared to most of the rest of the cast—she's fast and agile enough to throw her spear and impale Fatale's leg before the later even knows what happened, but was vulnerable enough to receive a nasty welt from a rubber bullet moments earlier.
• Freak Lab Accident: Both CoreFire and Doctor Impossible were created in two separate incidents; at least 12 people have died trying to replicate Doctor Impossible's accident.
• Friendless Background: A major component of Dr. Impossible's Freudian Excuse for becoming evil, or at least his rationale.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Dr. Impossible, and a good deal of his motivation stems from getting his arch-nemesis to acknowlege that he was never just a nobody.
• Full-Conversion Cyborg: The majority of Fatale's body is cybernetic, due to a horrific vehicular accident she suffered while on vacation in Brazil. She originally joined the NSA because they were the only ones who could afford to pay for the upkeep her body requires, but she joins the newest iteration of the Champions because Black Wolf can also afford to keep her in one piece.
• Genius Bruiser: Dr. Impossible is a good deal stronger and tougher than the average human. But he's still nowhere near as strong as any of the heroes who have superhuman strength as a main power and he only uses his super-strength when backed into a corner or caught by surprise; it's never part of his main plan. Presumably Dr. Impossible's toughness is just one of the Required Secondary Powers needed to survive his fights with superheroes.
• Half-Breed Angst: Damsel's parents weren't even biologically compatible — her mother was closer to a fish person — and it took some major genetic tinkering to even make her. While technically an Opposite-Sex Clone of her father, Stormcloud, with some of her mother's DNA added in, she's still alien enough she failed the blood test to join the Super Squadron, which didn't accept off-worlders, a personal dream of hers. She has superpowers but requires medication to keep her body from tearing itself apart due to the conflict of her designer genes.
• Half-Human Hybrid: Lampshaded; Damsel, one of the Half Human Hybrids, reveals that she was made in a test tube, because her alien mom couldn't have a baby with her human dad because "she wasn't even a mammal" and she has several problems with her biochemistry.
• Heel–Face Revolving Door:
  • Too many times to count for Lily.
  • At the end, Dr. Impossible muses "I still don't understand her role in this, whether she's a hero or a villain, or exactly what. I make a note to ask her".
• Heel–Face Turn: It's unclear if Lily was every really sincere about turning good, or if she was planning on sabotaging them. In the end, she quits the New Champions in a huff, but still helps them out when it looks like Dr. Impossible is going to finally succeed.
• Here There Were Dragons:
  • Fatale points out that there was a Golden Age of superheroes in her time, followed by Silver and Bronze ages each not quite living up to the glory of the last, and suggests that she's part of the "rust age".
  • Poor Elphin's Backstory is being ordered to stay behind when the rest of the fairies returned to Arcadia, leaving her to watch the world move on.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Galatea, dead as part of the Backstory.
• Hidden in Plain Sight: Much of Doctor Impossible's angst is due to CoreFire never realizing who he is. Turned around, too, when Lily is revealed to be Erica Lowenstein, who he had been angsting about never getting attention from. Although she was almost completely transparent, so he had a good reason to not realize it. The latter is especially poignant, since it's what primarily motivated Impossible. (This doesn't stop him from going right back to plotting after The Reveal. Evil habits are hard to break.)
• Hollywood Autism: Blackwolf is just about the most social and well-balanced autistic you could hope to meet.
• Homemade Inventions:
  • The first hero Dr. Impossible fights is a part-time vigilante in "homebrew" Powered Armor. Which Impossible proceeds to rip to shreds.
  • Dr. Impossible himself manages to build a new power staff, a device capable of producing forcefields, flight, energy blasts, etc... all from components bought at a local Radio Shack.
• Hope Spot: Dr. Impossible comes so very close to winning, but he still lost in the end. Dammit.
• Hybrids Are a Crapshoot: Damsel is the daughter of a superpowered human and a Green Skinned Space Babe. They weren't at all biologically compatible - she was the product of years of lab work and needs medication to stay alive.
• Ignored Epiphany: Dr Impossible realises that getting everything he wanted doesn't make him feel any better, but at the end of the book is plotting his next escape and the continuation of his schemes — he just can't help himself. And yes, "Soon I Will Be Invincible."
• I Just Want to Be Loved: Dr. Impossible kept kidnapping Erica in part to get at CoreFire but largely in the hope that she'd eventually figure out his true identity and finally reciprocate his unrequited love. it's eventually revealed she knew exactly who he was but kept quiet because she didn't reciprocate, among other reasons.
• Immune to Bullets: Impossible takes several shots and just shrugs them off. Lily has nothing but a small scratch... from a depleted uranium chain gun round. Subverted by Fatale; her armored parts are rated against depleted uranium rounds, but the rest of her is normal flesh, and she realizes that a bullet in the wrong place can still kill her.
• Improbably High I.Q.: Discussed by Dr. Impossible. He has an IQ of over 300, and it's true. He is the guy at the furthest end of the bell curve, that's why intelligence is his superpower.
• Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain:
  • For all his genius and resources, Doctor Impossible is a comic book evil mastermind played dead straight, his cape and boots, his robot minions and his deathtraps faintly ridiculous in the cold light of day. And, since Status Quo Is God, the heroes always win, making him quite literally a loser.
  • The (villainous) Pharoah fills the trope in a different style, The 'Hammer of Ra' makes him extremely powerful... but his silly costume, pretentiousness, laid-back nature, and made-up Origin Story mean that he isn't taken seriously by heroes or villains. Probably the only character in the book who doesn't regard it all as Serious Business.
• Informed Attribute: Blackwolf is autistic, because we are told he is.
• Insistent Terminology: Pharoah spells his name wrong, but apparently convinced everyone (or at least Impossible) to spell it his way.
• Irony: Impossible tracks down the joke-villain Pharoah's hammer so he can fight off CoreFire, finding it (and the Pharoah) at the centre of a spreading patch of ice in Costa Rica, from the CoreFire/Pharoah battle. Later, Lily tells him that she once did go to the future and saw the world-destroying Blight of her fake Backstory: it started at the hammer in Costa Rica, and by removing it for his evil plan, Doctor Impossible inadvertently saved the world.
• Island Base: Doctor Impossible's main lair.
• It's All About Me: Part of Dr. Impossible's character flaw. He believes that Corefire is motivated primarily by their feud back in college, that he stole the love of his life from him, and that his primary motivation is to sabotage his efforts out of a childish feud. In reality, Corefire doesn't recognize Dr. Impossible at all and was only ever trying to stop him from taking over the world, and only briefly dated the girl that Impossible pined over for most of his life. Impossible believed he was the most important person in his arch enemy's life, never realizing he was never as important as he thought he was.
  • Lily gets this as well. Her entire plan was to show up Dr. Impossible and Corefire for treating her like The Damsel and the Disposable Love Interest. However in the climax, Corefire reveals he only dated her for a short time and never gave her much thought afterwards.
• The Jailer: Silver Age hero The Mechanist does this to his nemesis Baron Ether. Apparently, the Mechanist was so concentrated on keeping Ether from getting OUT, his systems are not very effective in keeping Dr. Impossible and others from getting IN.
• Jerk Jock: CoreFire, even before his empowerment. At least according to Doctor Impossible. Blackwolf says "CoreFire was a jerk" at one point, and Damsel calls him a "Fucking racist." It is implied that he broke up with her when he found out she was only half human. It's a bit more complicated than that: Dr. Impossible actually, though grudgingly, admits that when they did talk, CoreFire did come across as an okay guy. Impossible describes him not as a bully, but one of many people who went with the crowd, and if the crowd didn't like someone, he went with it. Fatale says he's surprisingly shy - though she wasn't exactly meeting him at his best moment.
• Just Between You and Me: One of the chapters is entitled "But Before I Kill You".
• Karma Houdini:
  • Lily gives Doctor Impossible the coordinates to the Pharoah’s hammer. Telling a known felon where he can find a weapon generally is frowned on, but nothing comes of it.
  • Doctor Impossible has a hand in having a minor operative killed at one point, but the author kind of glosses over this since the book makes him a sympathetic character.
• Kryptonite Factor: It is repeatedly mentioned that CoreFire has a vulnerability to an alien rock called iridium. It is assumed to be involved in his disappearance. It isn't.
• Lamarck Was Right: Damsel eventually inherits her father's weather control powers.
• Our Fairies Are Different: Elphin is over four feet tall, but otherwise subverts the trope, being exactly the stereotypical cute, Winged Humanoid type of fairies most frequently seen in fiction.
• Large Ham: Doctor Impossible seems compelled to put on one hell of a show for the cowering public. His internal narration is a lot more subdued. In fact, at some points he seems almost annoyed at having to trot out the stock hammy phrases when he's fighting the superheroes.
• Legion of Doom: Doctor Impossible notes that the more powerful and dangerous a supervillain gets, the more trouble he has working with other villains. He remembers an attempt of the world's greatest villains to form a team to stand in opposition to the Champions; they can't even pick a name before they break down into in-fighting.
• Lethal Joke Character: The Pharoah looked ridiculous and wasn't very smart, but with the hammer, he was at the level of CoreFire and Damsel in terms of invulnerability.
• Lightning Bruiser: Most of the main characters, including, unusually for a Mad Scientist, Doctor Impossible himself. His prison break scene involves him easily overpowering two overconfident superhumans.
• Love Hurts: Fatale notes a lot of tension in the team, especially after the two leaders - who still work together - publicly broke up, which caused the dissolution of the previous incarnation of the New Champions. Impossible has a lot of unrequited and what-if love for his partner-in-crime, Lily - and it turns out she's actually CoreFire's high school sweetheart and Impossible's one time crush and the Lois Lane to both of them after their empowering events. The entire plot is basically Lily's way of getting back at the both of them for being such pompous jerks who treated her more like a prize than a person.
• Mad Scientist: Doctor Impossible, of course. Also, his mentor Baron Ether.
  "I remember those nights, planning technologies that didn't exist yet, outsider science, futurist dreaming, half-magical. The things I could do outside the university setting, now that I didn't have to wait for the pompous fools at the college! I was building another science, my science, wild science, robots and lasers and disembodied brains. A science that buzzed and glowed; it wanted to do things. It could get up and walk, fly, fight, sprout garish glowing creations in the remotest parts of the world, domes and towers and architectural fever dreams. And it was angry. It was mad science."
• Mass Super-Empowering Event: Several, but the most notable was World War II, which revealed, awakened, created or empowered a lot of metahumans, especially those in Europe.
• Mix-and-Match Man: Damsel, who's a gender-swapped clone of her father.
• Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: Doctor Impossible, duh! Though he does have a regular doctorate. He was a post-doc grad student when he had his little accident. He was just a laughingstock because of the whole Zeta beam thing, so he couldn't do anything other than minor research.
• My Greatest Failure: In his first of all those failed attempts to access the power of the Zeta Dimension, Dr. Impossible actually created his own arch-nemesis.
• Neck Lift: Rainbow Triumph does this to a mook to intimidate him. It's Justified by her having Super-Strength, while being Lampshaded at the same time by Fatale. She notes that it isn't a good move in terms of actually hurting someone and can only really be used for intimidation.
• Nepharious Pharaoh: We have the supervillain named The Pharoah, who dresses the part complete with fancy headdress, gold body glitter and make-up. He wields a powerful hammer (either magical or advanced alien tech) that, when he says a word, makes him powerful enough to face off against the resident Justice League expies by himself. He also claims it's his mission to restore the glories of Ancient Egypt and that he is the reincarnation of Ramses. The problem is he doesn't know which Ramses he's supposed to be, can't read hieroglyphics, and barely knows any more about Ancient Egypt than your average person. Dr. Impossible suspects he's either delusional or outright lying.
• New Powers as the Plot Demands:
  • Dr. Impossible's Power Staff. What can't it do? It can fire energy beams, absorb energy, create a force field, make him fly, make him invisible to cameras, neutralize laser tripwires, spray knockout gas... At one point, he bemoans that he's never mastered the art of building things small, but he does himself a disservice. He has a massive arsenal built into something the size of an umbrella, largely with parts from Radio Shack.
  • This is more justified than in most cases of the trope. Dr. Impossible knew exactly who he was fighting and their limitations and what defenses to expect. It isn't a surprise he knew exactly what he would need to build into the staff for it to be the most useful based on previous encounters.
  • Doctor Impossible's complaint about never mastering the art of making small things was a complaint about his personal lack of subtlety, not ineptitude. He could and did make lots of very small, precise things. His issue was that he tended to build 40 foot tall robots and similar oversized items which got a lot of attention, which tended to lead to his defeat.
• New Superpower:
  • Damsel, near the end of the story, suddenly gains water powers, thanks to the radiation and sunlight from her mother's world further developing her.
  • CoreFire gives Fatale new information on her cyborg systems, hinting at unknown abilities. Perhaps she'll be able to make her built-in clock stop blinking!
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Dr. Impossible unwittingly saves the world by taking the Pharoah's hammer away from where it was warping the local landscape, and would have created "the Blight" of Lily's (supposed) future.
• No Biochemical Barriers: Subverted; it's eventually revealed that it took years of lab work to create Damsel, and even then she still has to take medication due to her biochemistry problems.
• Noodle Incident:
  • Many of Doctor Impossible's previous Evil Plans, "The Meta-meta Virus. Army of fish. Army of fungus." In keeping with the comic book theme of past arcs, continuity nods, and mythology gags that a reader just picking up an issue wouldn't catch, there are many of these scattered through the book - an alien gladiator coming to challenge CoreFire, a cthon invasion of Chicago, several alien invasions, personal threats to each member of the Champions (such as a fairy curse for Elphin and a demon Mister Mystic humiliated far too many times), named superheroes who are only named and aren't expounded on further, breaches into other dimensions, worlds, and timelines...
  • Much more darkly, whatever the hell happened to the hunters who found Elphin. It wasn't pretty.
  • Whatever happened at Mayfield Sanitarium. "We all know how badly that situation ended." No we don't, Doctor Impossible.
• Nothing Can Stop Us Now!: Doctor Impossible realizes saying things like that are just Tempting Fate, but at the denouement, with everything going his way "It feels so good, I just have to say it." Needless to say, it's all downhill from there.
• Oblivious to Love: Oh, so many. Fatale glosses over Blackwolf's subtle suggestions and hints until their sexual tension comes to a boil when Fatale strips nearly naked for one of Blackwolf's scans to see what's installed in her.
• Official Couple: Deconstructed with Damsel and Blackwolf, as the stress of being the Official Couple was one of the things that drove them apart. Reconstructed towards the end when they reconcile, in part because Blackwolf reminds Damsel her non-human origin never mattered to him.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten:
  • Doctor Impossible's Battle Blimp; "No-one ever lets me forget that thing." Still, it got everyone's attention and put the Doctor "on the map".
  • Also before he got his own superpowers, he was only known as the "Zeta Beam Guy" whose Disastrous Demonstration created CoreFire.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted. There are 2 characters named Pharaoh (or close to it), and Dr. Impossible notes that people keep confusing the two, as the supervillain named Pharoah was treated as a walking joke.
• Our Vampires Are Different: "Bloodstryke", a supervillain who used to be an accountant, until his father's death made him realize his bloodline had a curse. The appendix notes that he's not actually a vampire - it's the armor he wears that makes him think he's one.
• Out of Focus: Mainly due to Fatale's POV and her main interactions, most of the Champions don't really get much more than a skimmed over backstory and a few lines throughout the entire story.
• Phlebotinum Rebel:
  • Fatale, who was apparently reconstructed as part of some scheme of Doctor Impossible's, though it's never revealed to what ends. Dr. Impossible says he'd have gone through with it, but the software engineer who helped him ratted him out to the cops, so he quickly wiped out all the evidence. He just didn't bother to destroy the completed cyborg.
  • With some (plot irrelevant, but interesting) foreshadowing thrown in for good measure. When she first joined the New Champions, there were obvious parallels between Galatea and Fatale, including the fact that she was given Galatea's old room. Once she discovers that she's Doctor Impossible's creation, Baron Ether's disjointed ramblings reveal that Galatea was his creation, also turned Good.
• Playing with Fire: Nick Napalm, a supervillain who started out as a lawyer before developing his powers and becoming a Pyromaniac.
• Punny Name: With a faint aftertaste of Steven Ulysses Perhero: Mister Mystic's real name is William Zard. Wi-Zard.
• Rape as Backstory: Implied to be Elphin's case. A band of hunters found her after she wandered through the woods in a daze. Whatever they did to her, someone found her covered in their blood as she was found walking down a highway later, nude.
• Red Herring:
  • Fatale, using her powers to eavesdrop, uncovers disturbing hints of masochism, bulimia and drug addiction among her teammates, which are all later revealed to actually be part of the prices they've paid for their powers.
  • CoreFire's vulnerability to iridium is mentioned several times, and seems to be an obvious Chekhov's Gun. In the end, it has no relevance to the plot.
• Reed Richards Is Useless: Played with— there are mad-science super-technologies that can save human lives, but they come with dreadful side effects and they're mostly in the hands of supervillains anyway. Blackwolf's fortune largely comes from the ethically dubious practice of reverse-engineering and patenting salvaged supervillain tech.
• Replacement Goldfish: One of the more subtly creepy elements of the story is how Fatale is used by the Champions as this for their lost robot partner Galatea.
• Retired Monster: Baron Ether, now too old and too mutated to really conquer the world, is kept in check by his old nemesis. Regardless of his retirement status, he helps Dr. Impossible with his plans. The Pharoah faded into obscurity without being defeated although he was detected, and accidentally killed, before the narration starts.
• Ridiculously Human Robot: Galatea, who reportedly fell in love (the book doesn't say with whom) and later chose to make a Heroic Sacrifice to save her teammates and the Earth from an alien invasion. She also looked human enough to pass for a non-robot (at least among superheroes, who tend to look a little different from ordinary humans in the first place).
• Robot Girl:
  • Galatea, a heroine of unknown origin, Rainbow Triumph, a highly advanced cyborg given augmentations to save her life from a degenerative disease, and Fatale, a military cyborg with amnesia.
  • Fatale says some unflattering things about the trope, pointing out that an Impossible Hourglass Figure isn't really likely when you have to have a miniature fusion reactor inside you.
• Rookie Red Ranger: Fatale, the newest member of the team.
• Rumpelstiltskin: It's not the best telling of the story you've ever heard. In fact, it might be one of the worst. But it's definitely one of the most memorable!
• Running Gag: Pharoah's misspelling of his name.
• Schoolyard Bully All Grown Up: According to Doctor Impossible (and complaints from Blackwolf), CoreFire. Of course, since their perceptions are colored by later experience it's a bit more nuanced than that, with Impossible admitting that CoreFire wasn't that bad.
• Science-Related Memetic Disorder: Doctor Impossible and several other supervillains are diagnosed with Malign Hypercognition Disorder, which strikes the very brightest minds on Earth, compelling them to become Mad Scientists and try to Take Over the World. As Doctor Impossible says in the narration, it's not known why being in the top 0.001% of brains makes you evil, but it's inevitably going to make you unusual.
• Secret Identity: Many characters are only ever referred to by their codenames because their real names are not publicly known. Special mention goes to Dr. Impossible himself, however, since even though everyone knows his face and history, he has somehow managed to keep his real name concealed, despite multiple trips to jail. Towards the end, Lily refers to him by his first name, Jonathan.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Lily's Backstory is that she was sent back from a Bad Future to do this, succeeded, then decided that she preferred the Bad Future and is now trying to Make Wrong What Once Went Right. None of it's true, of course. The story of the future apocalypse is true, but Lily turns out to be contemporary, not future-born, and Lily prevents it easily by way of having CoreFire and the Pharoah fight. It's all a ruse to keep up her supervillain antics. It's also a deconstruction of the genre's tendency to constantly retcon origin stories.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: It seems like the book is setting up a final showdown between Fatale (the rookie member of the superteam) and Dr. Impossible (the Evil Genius so powerful that his crimes are tried in the World Court). After all, they're the two viewpoint characters. Instead, Impossible takes her down almost instantly (with a remote control, no less!), and she and the rest of the team spend the climax of the book in a prison cell. In fact, examination reveals that her absence from the plot would have changed more or less nothing. Her actual role in the book was to provide an "outsider" perspective on the superteam, and thus prevent both Continuity Lockout and As You Know.
  • Alternately, her role was her own storyline about her goals and Character Development, entwined with but separate from Dr. Impossible's. A Rookie Red Ranger might be in need of Deconstruction just as much as an Anti-Villain.
    • The entire book is, really, a "Shaggy Dog" Story as Doctor Impossible learns absolutely nothing from his experience. The entire story is less a subversion of superhero stories but an analysis of the way they have No Ending. Doctor Impossible will continue trying to take over the world and he'll lose every time because that's the way he, as a comic book villain, was designed to act. Likewise, Fatale doesn't get in the way of the "iconic" Blackwolf/Damsel romance but gets shuffled to the side.
• Shout-Out: Along with the obvious Ersatzes, the Backstory for Regina bears a striking resemblance to The Chronicles of Narnia. It even includes the part of the Narnia story that causes a Broken Base within the fandom - one of the chosen children being excommunicated from it for vague and unfair reasons.
• Smug Super: CoreFire, according to Blackwolf, Damsel, and Dr. Impossible. Damsel's father, who comes in to admonish the Champions for not being able to track down Dr. Impossible, and according to Blackwolf, really hates people who aren't flying bricks.
• Soaperizing: Much of the story is built around Fatale and Impossible's rumination on superheroics and supervillainy behind the scenes - the day-to-day lives, the emotional voids, the little stories that never make it to the public, the in-fights, the daily rituals...
• Stock Phrases: Doctor Impossible is full of them, and seems pathologically incapable of not using them while in public. His internal narration, on the other hand, is perfectly normal and constantly asks why he's always belting off cliche liners.
• Strong as They Need to Be: Dr. Impossible describes CoreFire this way, stating that if something was big and heavy enough that he couldn't break it, then he could wear it down. He even slowly pulled a planet out of orbit.
• Superman Substitute:
  • CoreFire has the Flying Brick powers and role as Earth's main superhero. Main difference is that he's a human who got powers from a Freak Lab Accident instead of being an alien.
  • Damsel losing her powers under a light that mimics the sunlight of her mother's home planet is a reference to Superman not having powers on his homeworld due to the red sun.
• Super-Senses: Loads of them.
  • Fatale is loaded with scanning devices that let her look inside people and eavesdrop on her roommates.
  • CoreFire has an ill-defined "zeta sense" which is probably just Superman's vision powers.
  • Damsel has micro-vision.
  • Mister Mystic has some vague magical perceptions.
  • Dr. Impossible can see most of the spectrum with some concentration.
• Super-Soldier: Fatale's original purpose was an enforcer for the NSA before being canned for "psychological issues."
• Super-Speed: Notably Go-Man, a Golden Age super-hero who 'moved faster than the speed of crime'.
  "[I] built a whole new class of defenses to deal with his ability - trip wires, gases, immobilizing foams, areas of the complex that could seal instantly if I even suspected he was inside them. Then I'd pour everything I could think of - poisons, sonic vibrations, mutant bees - until something worked, until he fell unconscious and stopped moving, precipitated out of the air like a spirit."
• Super Team: The New Champions are central to the story. The original Champions broke up after Galatea's Heroic Sacrifice and have reformed only recently with most of the original core members and a few new faces. They were originally a government-sponsored team, until they resisted the government's attempts to use them for political purposes. The resulting scandal resulted in the Champions cutting their government ties. Another oft-mentioned team is the Super Squadron, formed during the so-called "Golden Age" (shortly after World War II) and defunct after The '70s. The Super Squadron and the original Champions nearly came to blows, when a member of the Super Squadron pulled a Face–Heel Turn, which was the beginning of the end for them. Damsel, a member of the Champions, is the daughter of Storm Cloud and step-daughter of Regina, members of the Super Squadron.
• Superhero Origin: Virtually everyone, including the villainous Doctor Impossible. Talking to heroes and villains in this world is high risk.
  "I’ve spent enough time around superheroes to recognize the look on her face. She’s going to tell me her origin."

  — Fatale, on her meeting with Regina, Crusader of Elfland
• Superhero Sobriquets: Every major character has one. They are listed in the character files at the back of the book.
• Superhero Trophy Shelf: The Champions headquarters has this, which becomes an important plot point when Dr. Impossible breaks in to steal one of the trophy's as a component of his Doomsday Device.
• Supervillain Lair: Doctor Impossible has had a few of these (He goes back to his last one, on an island in the Pacific) and at one point is nostalgic about his first one, which was in his basement.
• Switching P.O.V.:
  • Dr. Impossible has the odd-numbered chapters and Fatale has the evens.
  • This is an important part of how the world of Heroes and Villains plays out. What was, for Dr. Impossible, a narrow escape calling on all his resources after he was jumped in the street, is a humiliating defeat at the hands of a collected and hyper-competent enemy to the supers and a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown of the heroes to the media.
  • In the audiobook, the chapters are read by a man and a woman, respectively. The only time this changes is in one Fatale chapter, where she keeps hearing a recording made by Dr. Impossible. The recording portions are read by the male narrator with his voice slightly altered to make it sound like a recording. For bonus points, J. Paul Boehmer's reading makes him sound very similar to Dwight Schultz, the perfect voice for a Mad Scientist.
• Swiss-Cheese Security:
  • Dr Impossible actually steals a Plot Coupon out of the New Champions headquarters. He reflects on the lousy security, saying it's because heroes rely on their own reputation to keep villains away. If someone gets in anyway it'll just mean a fight — as most heroes are Blood Knight types they've no objection.
  • The Mechanist's jail for Baron Ether only appears to be good for holding the Baron in. Various villains get in and out to visit him.
  • Blackwolf's access password is "Galatea", one of the first passwords anyone breaking in would try.
• Take Over the World: The MO of Doctor Impossible, including six different Doomsday Devices.
• Taking the Bullet: Jason became CoreFire after throwing himself in the path of the Zeta Beam to save Erica. This Heroic Sacrifice at what was supposed to be a moment of triumph when the nerdy college kid would finally outshine the Jerk Jock only increases Impossible's hatred for CoreFire.
• Theme Naming: The chapters focusing on Doctor Impossible are entitled with villainous Stock Phrases.
• They Called Me Mad!: Dr. Impossible lampshades and deconstructs it, showing what kind of past and psychology someone who could truthfully say that would have to have.
• Thou Shalt Not Kill: Zig-zagged. Dr. Impossible states that murder is a line that even most villains won't cross, but it's suggested that some heroes, including Elphin, Feral, and the Chaos Pact, might not have much of a problem with it. It is later revealed that Corefire killed the Pharoah - though not deliberately. This has the odd effect of suggesting that ONLY heroes are willing to kill.
• Time Travel: Faithful to the comics it deconstructs, the book mentions lots of time travelers, although none takes place during the story.
  • Lily has been up and down the timeline in her origin story. While her story about hailing from the future is fake, she really did travel there once.
  • Baron Ether was once accidentally stuck in the Cretaceous period until he could build his own time machine.
  • Dr. Impossible once travelled back to the Third Punic War to help the Carthaginians win. However, the Champions traveled back as well and stopped him.
• Title Drop: The penultimate paragraph of the book, giving it a surprisingly upbeat ending.
• Too Clever by Half: Dr. Impossible, and he's aware of it, narrating about it from the start.
• Troperiffic: It's basically a catalog of superhero comic tropes.
• Twisted Ankle: Lampshaded in Erica's tale of how she became Lily. She ran and stumbled "like I always did" and fell into a vat of chemicals instead of being caught by the villains.
• Unknown Rival:
  • Doctor Impossible's lifelong dream is to finally defeat CoreFire and reveal himself to be none other than the inoffensive little science geek who CoreFire was sort-of friends with in high school, and whose Love Interest he stole. He finally gets the chance towards the end of the book, resulting in... a blank stare, and sheepish admission from CoreFire that he has no idea who he is.
  • On a broader level, neither Dr. Impossible nor CoreFire manage to figure out who Lily actually is and totally fail to even recognize how completely she's played them both.
  • Fatale with Damsel, especially after she becomes attracted to Blackwolf. Fatale worries constantly over what Damsel is thinking about her, when it's likely she's oblivious to Fatale snogging her ex and has more important things to worry about, being team leader.
• Unreliable Narrator: Impossible's emotions and prejudices often color his perceptions and recollections, though to what degree is unknown; for example, he often thinks of CoreFire as an "imbecile", even though in a high school for the gifted, they both were at the top of their science class and competed for the same awards.
  • This is eventually revealed for practically every chacter in regards to Corefire. Nothing is really known about him, and every bit of damning statement made about his character is contradicted by another piece of backstory that shows it may not be true (Dr. Impossible calls him an imbecile despite being in the same advanced classes as him in college. Damsel calls him a racist despite the fact he was in a relationship with Galatea. Blackwolf calls him a jerk despite Blackwolf being... well.. Blackwolf...)
• Ur-Example: In-universe, Baron Ether was the first known supervillain. He made his villainous debut in Victorian Britain, and finally retired in 1979.
• Villain Protagonist: Doctor Impossible narrates half the chapters. Fatale is effectively the co-protagonist, but Doctor Impossible gets a bit more emphasis (11 chapters to her 10, including the first and last chapters; also, the "I" in the book's title clearly refers to him rather than Fatale).
• Villainous Friendship: Doctor Impossible and the Pharoah's relationship is somewhere between being the best of friends and Vitriolic Best Buds, and a pair who mostly tolerate each others' company because it's them against the world. Yes, the Pharoah is an absolute idiot, but he's still Impossible's friend, and he seems as eager to make the Champions respect the Pharoah as to make them respect himself.
• Villains Act, Heroes React:
  • The Champions even say that "He's an evil genius. We're not going to out-guess him."
  • Dr Impossible reflects on how villains prefer research and planning, while heroes have little patience for this, preferring to just slug their way out of a crisis. After he uses the Hammer of Ra to batter CoreFire senseless, Impossible reflects that maybe there's something to the hero approach after all.
• Villains Out Shopping: A street-levelling fight breaks out after Blackwolf spots Doctor Impossible relaxing at a coffee shop. Just before, the Doctor thinks, "Some days, you just don't feel all that evil."
• Villain Team-Up: Dr. Impossible discusses why these often don't work out, as supervillains rarely cooperate well. This doesn't stop him from trying on a few occasions, but in the end he winds up working alone again.
• We Can Rebuild Him: At least two.
  • Fatale was on holiday in Brazil when her body was massively damaged by a dump truck.
  • Rainbow Triumph was born with a degenerative disease that would have killed her, if not for the fact that she was the daughter of one of Gentech's top executives. R&D and Marketing keep layering in new technologies, leaving someone quite a bit less than human.
• Who Dares?: Almost a Catchphrase for Doctor Impossible. At one point he reflects that it's a silly thing to say, but it's all part of being the supervillain.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: "Malign Hypercognition Disorder". The most intelligent people in the world are compelled to become supervillains, even though they could do better legitimately. Dr. Impossible treats it like a job, putting on a Large Ham persona, while the real him quietly suffers and wonders if he'd ever done anything right, or done anything meaningful.
• Wonder Woman Wannabe: As mentioned above, Damsel is more of an expy of Wonder Girl but she's the world's main Flying Brick superheroine alongside more blatant expires of Superman and Batman.
• You Can't Thwart Stage One:
  • Dr. Impossible has a few encounters with the Champions, together or individually before while he's still trying to put his Evil Plan together, but the final battle doesn't happen until he's in his lair with his Doomsday Device, having announced his intentions to the world.
  • Also when the Champions attack Doctor Impossible's lair, he's ready for them and manages to capture them all. It doesn't last.
• Zeppelins from Another World: Dr. Impossible concedes that his Battle Blimp was a bit much, but it sure put him on the map.
• X-Ray Vision: Damsel can see through certain walls.

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