Science-fiction is the theme this time out (as supplied by Susan at Color Online), and I get to kill two birds with one stone because I can write about a book I’ve been meaning to talk about ever since I finished reading it a few weeks ago. It’s a prose book too, not a graphic novel.

From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain is a superhero novel by a guy who calls himself “Minister Faust.” He’s a Canadian radio talk show host and political activist, in addition to being a teacher and author. His debut novel, The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad, was up for several major sci-fi lit awards.

Brain is in the grand tradition of Watchmen and Kingdom Come, as it tells the story of superheroism in a world where it has become an outdated concept. It’s written in the style of a self-help book by the title character, an ordinary human who has been assigned to diagnose a team of prominent heroes, the Fantastic Order of Justice (FOOJ), by their corporate masters to determine their ability to do their jobs. The heroes are surface analogues of familiar characters (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Spider-Man) mixed with more original ones. In this world, all the big super-villains have been defeated years ago, and Dr. Brain’s book-within-a-book is written for post-modern superheroes looking for renewed purpose and direction. Using the FOOJ members under her care as examples, she pontificates in overwrought psychobabble and hilariously contrived metaphors to make her diagnoses. During her therapy sessions, a prominent hero dies suddenly and unexpectedly, and one of her charges suspects foul play. The deeper Dr. Brain is drawn into the investigation, the more she learns more about her patients, and as you might expect, there’s a big confrontation at the end – though it doesn’t unravel nor resolve the way you may think.

Faust has created a rich and multi-layered world in Brain. Unlike Watchmen, it feels more like a parody – for example, the heroes have ridiculous powers and names, like the Flying Squirrel and Omnipotent Man – but like Watchmen, the devil is in the details, and underneath the surface analogues, these bickering heroes have long histories, complex motivations, and individually-tailored personalities. As for Dr. Brain herself, like Norman McKay in Kingdom Come, she provides a human perspective on the world of superheroes, but unlike Kingdom Come, hers is not an “everyman” role; she has a very unique worldview, and sometimes her outlook on events diverges sharply from the way you or I may perceive them.

And her psychobabble has to be read to be believed. Here’s a sample:

Nothing is more terrifying than facing the ultimate archenemy, Death, and its horrifying henchman, Grief. Maturity means recognizing the inevitability not only of combating these foes, but of our inevitable defeat at their hands… Because you are a hero, your identity is based on exceeding limitations; therefore, the awareness of such inescapable defeat is a mental kidney stone that not even you can pass during the urination of your psychemotional processing. Death is a barrier even you can’t smash down, fly over, phase through, or disintegrate with your maservision.

THE ENTIRE BOOK is written like this.

The “Rorschach” character in Brain, to go back to the Watchmen analogy, is a militant black hero named X-Man (get it?). Before he joined the FOOJ he was part of a small group of black heroes, and his serious, Afrocentric attitude is in contrast to another black hero in the FOOJ, Brotherfly, a jive-talking hip hopper with a more devil-may-care approach. The two don’t get along – think Huey and Riley from The Boondocks – but X-Man’s black-power stance is slowly revealed to be a facade hiding deep-seated issues, and Brotherfly turns out to have more to him than meets the eye. Indeed, all the heroes in Brain are like this; multilayered, with secrets that belie the images they present to the world. Dr. Brain herself, though, is different. With her, what you see is what you get – and never is that point driven home more than in the ending.

There’s a lot for the average superhero fan to enjoy in Brain. It takes the basic elements of Watchmen and Kingdom Come, combines them, and then recontextualizes them through the Dr. Brain character, and as a result it feels both familiar and fresh. Because Dr. Brain is an unreliable narrator (a fact even X-Man points out in the story!), you’re forced to look past her dogma and pay closer attention to what’s going on. While I found this level of storytelling fascinating, I thought things unraveled a bit towards the final third. Everything was one big revelation after another, all given equal weight, and the big confrontation was a bit difficult to follow in places. Plus, it wasn’t as satisfying as I had hoped it would be. Still, it’s the final chapter that saves the book, giving you that “Ooooooooh, so THAT’S what it’s all about” moment. Brain is absolutely worth reading if you’re any kind of superhero fan. (Thanks to Jane for recommending it to me!)