(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted here illegal.)

I've mentioned this before, but for those who missed it and still don't know, the 1980s and '90s saw within science-fiction the development of what's now known as the "Dark Age;" informed equally by punk and postmodernism, it was a time of brooding introspection in the genre, when such traditional stereotypes as superheroes were psychologically examined to determine both the reason for their existence in the first place and in which ways these stereotypes could be cracked in our contemporary times. And sometimes this resulted in serious projects, such as Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns, one of the seminal titles of this period that helped inspire the term "Dark Age" to begin with; but what has lasted much longer is the compulsion to create comedic material out of such fodder, from classic movies like The Specials and Mystery Men to Austin Grossman's recent and delightful Soon I Will Be Invincible. And now we have yet another example, absurdist author Minister Faust's From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain, which essentially covers the same ground as all the rest -- bored, petulant super-neurotics turn on each other once all super-crime has been vanquished, thus necessitating New Age psychiatric help lest they go too crazy and lose their lucrative commercial endorsements -- albeit to his credit, Faust inventively ties his particular look at this milieu metaphorically to the fate of the US after the end of the Cold War, giving us a confused and increasingly spoiled group of superfriends in the face of a complete lack of supervillains in their egotistical, entitled, all-powerful lives.

But there's a problem with this book, a big problem, which is that once Faust makes his metaphorical point, he has almost nothing else of originality to say; and so how he fills the rest of the novel is by having his utterly banal one-note characters endlessly spout tiresome dialogue reinforcing the one note of their personalities (a Britney Spears superhero who always talks in Valley-speak, a black superhero who always talks like Superfly, &c.), along with an infinite amount of petty arguments within the group therapy sessions constantly being forced on them by their superiors throughout the book. It's essentially 25 pages' worth of story surrounded by 375 pages of corny punchlines (and for ample proof of this, see the unbelievable 165 chapter and subchapter titles [yes, I counted], every single one of which consists of a bad pun involving superheroism); or if you prefer, it's Alan Moore's Watchmen as rewritten by a playground full of 12-year-olds. Dr. Brain unfortunately misses its satirical mark by a wide margin, and it's my recommendation today that you skip it altogether.

Out of 10: 5.8 ( )

From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain is definitely superhero fiction, though perhaps not quite what you would expect to come from that particular sub-genre. The book was a somewhat controversial nomination and finalist for the 2007 Philip K. Dick Award, which is given to an "original science fiction paperback published for the first time." The exact definition of "science fiction" is something that is perpetually being debated. And where exactly do superheros and their ilk fall in the spectrum? Like most things, there are arguments both ways. I first learned about the book when it was glowingly referred to by one of the judges from that year, Steven Piziks, who was participating in the Kerrytown Bookfest's SF panel. Despite almost being tossed aside initially because of the superhero element, it eventually ended up winning the award's Special Citation (basically, it was the runner-up). Not bad for a sub-genre parody.

Although the cover says the book is From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain by Minister Faust, a Canadian author, inside is really a copy of Unmasked!: When Being a Superhero Can't Save You from Yourself: Self-Help for Today's Hyper-Hominids, the newest self-help bestseller by Dr. Eva Brain-Silverman (aka Dr. Brain), celebrity shrink of superheroes and supervillains everywhere. The case study she has chosen deals with her work with a highly dysfunctional superhero team ordered to undergo counseling or risk being suspended from the F*O*O*J (the Fantastic Order of Justice): Iron Lass (aka Hnossi Icegaard), the Flying Squirrel (aka Festus Piltdown III), Omnipotent Man (aka Wally W. Watchtower), Brotherfly (aka André "P-Fly" Parker), X-Man (aka Philip Kareem Edgerton), and Power Grrl (aka Syndi Tycho). The group member's external conflicts with each other are only a mere shadow of their own personal inner turmoil and anxieties. And when Hawk King, supposedly immortal and the leading founder of F*O*O*J, is found dead, the heroes suddenly have even more problems that they need to deal with.

I really wanted to like this book. I mean, come on, the premise is hilarious. Super humans (and non-humans) are going to have super problems and they're going to need exceptionally talented therapists to put them back together. Unfortunately, it just wasn't as good as I was expecting and hoping it to be. The author pokes fun at and parodies all sorts of stereotypes but in doing so relies too heavily on those stereotypes. Almost every main character is written with an accent which was amusing at first but I found it to be more distracting than anything else. And for something that's supposed to be a self-help book, it gets too caught up in the narrative for me to be entirely convinced. Not all is bad, however. There are some genuinely funny bits. I particularly enjoyed the absolutely outrageous and absurd names, histories, organizations, and powers of the superheros and supervillains.

Ultimately, I thought the book fell flat, though I know of plenty of people who really enjoyed it. I'm still trying to make sense of the ending. Perhaps I was trying to take From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain too seriously, or maybe I just wasn't in the mood, but I really felt like I had to slog through the book. While I like to think I'm fairly knowledgeable about comics, I'm not particularly well versed in superheroes. Therefore, I probably wasn't catching all of the references and parodies, which could have been part of the problem. So, while at times amusing, From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain just didn't work for me.

Experiments in Reading ( )

A satire, looking at superheroes and the aggrandisement of media shrinks, as well, presumably.

Faust seems to have some background in the comics from which these come, and the book certainly owes a debt to the Giffen and DeMatteis Justice League along with Robert Mayer's Superfolks novel.

In fact, there's an explicit nod to the former in the form of L-Raunzenu (i.e. L-Ron).

The dysfunctional superteam undergoing therapy has analogues of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Spider-Man, and... Dazzler. Yes, that is right. One of the characters is a graduate of the 'Alison Blair Institute for Advanced Disco Studies'. Now your average novelist wouldn't get that, certainly.

He's taken the character everyone has heard of and are the most famous (and even naming one X-Man, to cover the other famous group, although the guy in question is more Malcom X, not a mutant man from the future).

So for those familiar with the form, a lot of this will be a little on the tedious side. So will the psychological technobabble inbetween the story. Although part of the author's point may be that it IS supposed to be annoying.

The main plot deals with the death of the leader of the Fantastic Justice group - a man that appears to have been somewhere between Captain Marvel and Dr Fate, Egyptian style. Very powerful, together, and not in need of high profile shrinks. Hence now dead.

It appears that it is likely murder, and conspiracies within their organisation erupt cause conflict to erupt.

http://superprose.blogspot.com/2008/0... ( )

I approached this book with a mixture of excitement and trepidation. On one hand, the idea of superheroes undergoing therapy is interesting, and great for comedic potential, but in the wrong hands, it could be a terrible foray into stereotypes and too-broad humour.
Thankfully, the author managed to avoid all of that, creating a book that is simultaneously a critique and love letter to comic book heroes, while at the same time lampooning self-help books as well, and providing some contemporary political commentary. Taking the format of the notes of a therapist to post-humans, Faust tells the story of heroes in therapy, dealing with their own convoluted back stories and family histories, while at the same time asking the question of what happens to someone after they've won all of their battles and faced all their demons.
The characters are all a lot more fleshed-out than I would have expected for something like this, and the plot fairly engaging as well (although there are a couple of bits where the internal logic of the story is a little held up by the therapy-notes format of the book). Overall, though, a good book if you're a fan of superheroes (although, as a warning, the author is what some might characterize as a 'black militant', and this informs some of the characters and their interactions). ( )

The latest trend I've noticed in my reading has been superhero fiction. From the Notebooks of Dr Brain is the second such book I've read lately (Soon I Will Be Invincible was the first), and a third (Leaper) is on my to-be-read list. Does three in close succession make a sub-genre? If so, I'm enjoying it.

Notebooks wasn't as good as Invincible, but it was still pretty good. The plot gets a little muddy in the middle, but Minister Faust pulls a good ending out of the stew at the end. I really liked the ambiguity of the ending here - much better than Invincible. ( )