Fiction Reviews
Fight Me
(2024) Austin Grossman, Michael Joseph, £22, hrdbk, 403pp, ISBN 978-0-241-55594-1
Superhero vs. Supervillain stories are a very visual medium, perfect for comic strip panels or well filmed big special effects TV and cinematic presentation. They are much more difficult to carry off in the purely written word, over a 400 word novel.
Fight Me is a pretty good stab at the genre and often hits the mark, but sadly just a frequently misses its targets widely.
It is an ensemble piece, with a Justice League (DC) / Avengers / X-Men (Marvel) sized line up, with an ambitious epic scale, that seems unsure whether to play as satire or serious.
It is set in two separate years, 1992, and 2015, intercutting between the time periods as the dysfunctional team of heroes tangle with their deadliest foe, a villain so sinister he calls himself Sinistro, (not to be confused with the DC Comics Green Lantern recurring villain, Sinestro).
The point of view is that of Rick Tower, aka, Alex, introduced in his 2015 guise as a college professor who is still secretly Prodigy, a super-strengthed hero when he wears his power amulet and says the magic word, ‘Racclun’. He is getting the gang of heroes back together again after they dispersed after defeating Sinistro, an evil time travelling emperor of the 35th century, who had invaded the 1990’s with a time machine, which may be the only one of its kind. That seemed to wrap up the main 1992 story threads. (we know from the start that the heroes won, due to the dominant flashback structure of the novel).
The new threat is sparked by the apparent murder of Alex’s creator, a cave dwelling wizard who gave him the amulet that granted him his powers in the beginning. Sinestro is just one of a potential rogue’s gallery of potential offenders behind the apparent murder, as lots of villains are named, with only a few appearing, mostly in cameos or as henchman and bystanders.
The switch to young Alex deals with the consequences of bestowing absurdly high fighting gifts on a hormone heavy late adolescent. He almost kills a school bully, and gets arrested after being pursued by older, more professional heroes we sadly see very little of.
Alex is forced into a detention boot camp with other teenage delinquent super-beings including Stefanie, a fairy Princess Of Power from another dimension, a cyborg-girl, groomed as an assassin, called Cat, and a young man who becomes a genius called Doctor Optimal, if he wears a special helmet. As their training, under the enigmatic Potsworth (the best character in the book by far), progresses, the team begin to bond and work together, becoming a team known aptly as The Newcomers. There are moments of high adventure and a lot of humour. One henchman, with magical powers, calls himself Gandalf, not for being anything like Tolkien’s hero, but simply for sheer lack of imagination and a fantasy-saturated role playing fixation. Sadly, he isn’t used much at all.
The problem is the lack of wonder and weak characterization. Characters spend a lot of time looking for one another, in bars and at student parties. Their egos and getting drunk make characters brawl and throw unsubstantiated accusations around. When big set pieces arise, such as a time jaunt to prehistoric dinosaur realms, the battles on space stations, and a journey to the fairy kingdom, no one is amazed or over-awed, and the writer does little to make the reader feel thrilled by it either. They might as well be visiting Basingstoke, let alone outer space.
While readers might be keen to plunge into their training and skill development, the young heroes would rather be free from it, like kids in detention (the book hype that there are parallels with 1985’s The Breakfast Club film are quite apt, but none of Grossman’s characters are as intriguing as the Breakfast Club ensemble. Their boredom actually renders the narrative boring.
By 2015, they seem to have learned nothing. They have had many solo adventures in the intervening years, and now feel as if they have been everywhere and done everything. They see a mystery and get reminded of various previous engagements and namedrops that are not fully shared with the reader. They have become world weary and jaded, with a new level of boredom and apathy. By the time the author reveals the nature of the struggle they are up against it has little to make the reader care much.
Given his importance and how much Alex (Rick) idolizes his mentor-professor, we never see the character even in flashback, so we never really get a sense of why the villain of 2015’s arc really cares about him.
The time machine used by Sinistro, and used by some of the heroes, before the race for its recreation/repair dictates much of the action, is just a McGuffin.
As with comic and movie super-beings, fight scenes are crucial, but here they are rather lacklustre and the characters seem to become interchangeable – one gets beaten down or trapped, another saves the day.
Most impressive is Alex in human form, forced on trial as his collateral victims seek compensation, and in periods where he risks losing his powers and amulet. His fear of being ordinary and dull without his gifts is the only really interesting aspect of him. The other characters are never given such a spotlight.
A big concept novel that never quite attains the greatness it aims for. There is some fun writing (i.e., Gandalf), but nothing here is going to convey the 'oh wow' effect of turning a comic page to show amazing powers in all their glory and consequence.
Arthur Chappell
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