Headscratchers / Soon I Will Be Invincible

• Why does Damsel complain about being an alien, or about Corefire being racist? She's mostly human, she's practically a clone of her dad, with a few things from her mother.
  • ...You're new to the world of racism, aren't you? Racism is humans treating other humans, who are only slightly different than they are, as less human. And did you miss how Damsel is throwing up all the time?
    • I assumed the throwing up thing was to imply she was bulimic.
    • Racist aren't born, they're usually made, usually when a person is young. Somehow, I can't see a situation, where Jason's parents constantly warned him about the dangerous extra-terrestials down the street. Probably he was just turned off by her angst and self-loathing.
    • Racism, or indeed prejudice, isn't always tied directly to being told specifically to hate this group when your young. There are several reasons Corefire could have be prejudiced against her: she's "unnatural," there's something disgusting about her creation, she's "other." (Which would be kind of hypocritical, yet totally meshing with the story's themes, if you think about it). In the end, it could just be petty revulsion of something unknown or different. It wouldn't be anything new, depressingly enough.
  • Racism doesn't have to be about a group considered "inferior" but also a group which considers itself "superior" is racist. Also "purity" and "not mixing races" is often important for them. Of course there is also the old truth that most racists are irrational idiots.
  • Also, doesn't EVERYONE know/think that Damsel is a half-alien princess? If anything he should have been finding out how close to human she really is.
  • We never see the story from CoreFire's point of view: he may be xenophobic, or prejudiced, or sexist, but we only have Damsel's assertion that it is so. It is for example possible that Corefire felt there was something creepy and wrong about have sex with the daughter/clone of his childhood hero and role model.
  • There is a real chance Damsel is just rationalizing. She calls CoreFire a "racist" because he finds her origins to be full of squick and a complete wood killer. I'm not sure you can categorize being part alien or a gender flipped clone in the same box as ethnicity in terms of the contemporary demand for tolerance.
    • Maybe not racism but still bigotry. Perhaps Damsel picked up on the latter, couldn't bring herself to ask Corefire about it, and assumed he was squicked because of racism rather than speciesism or "ew, clones".

• Two facts taken together just don't gel. Early in the book, Doctor Impossible notes that, once you get familiar with her facial structure, Lily does in fact look like a person that came from the future that she said she came from. Yet Fatale says that her face is the same as it was when she was Erica. So what was it?
  • My theory is that this is a joke on the Continuity Drift found in comics and how characters have different background stories, depending on writers/story needs/etc.
    • Or it was Doc Impossible convincing himself of what he wants to believe.
    • Doctor Impossible may have mistakenly thought he'd spotted a trend in future people. Lily is also transparent near to the point of invisibility. He probably never actually looked that closely.

• Why does Impossible make a huge deal about hiding his identity when he's been in prison for a few years? I doubt they let him wear his mask the whole time in there.
  • Doctor Impossible erased all records of his identity beforehand.
  • There's a bit of a contradiction in Doctor Impossible's logic. At the start of the book he declares that villains can't bother with secret identities because it cheapens their work if they can just take off their mask and walk away from their crimes. Yet all throughout the book he goes to great lengths to hide his face. It might be less about hiding a traceable criminal identity as hiding his identity as a failed graduate student.
  • Or it could be a "Style Thing" after all he did swear he wouldn't be taken down in "Street Clothes". He has some kinda weird self standard when it comes to his Supervillain Persona.
  • It's because he's out of uniform. As he puts it himself when recovering his costume: "I wear the flag of a country that never existed and the uniform of its glorious army, spreading forth the dominion of the invincible empire of me." To be out of costume is to literally not be himself, and one of the most crucial steps to reassuming his proper identity is covering his face because the face is the most identifiable part of a person.
  • Aside from the other reasons, Dr. Impossible wants to shock his nemesis Corefire with a dramatic reveal of who he is, which wouldn't work if Corefire can just look up his identity.

• Why is CoreFire surprised when Dr. Impossible mentions Erica? Apparently he kidnapped her a good number of times, so shouldn't CoreFire assume that's where he knows her from? He's seen them together before!
  • Also, yes, everything on this page can be explained by Continuity Drift.
  • It's possible he does remember. It's just been so long since Erica became Lily that he doesn't really care about her any more. The same thing happens to Doctor Impossible at the end of the book.
  • I have no idea how much amnesia is involved in returning from the dead. He certainly doesn't seem to remember the results of the last time he fought a guy armed with that hammer...
  • How many girlfriends has CoreFire had? How many Designated Victim-types has Impossible kidnapped to lure his Arch-Nemesis out? At one point he mentions he got bored with kidnapping Erica and when on to other targets — even kidnapping a puppy was enough to draw CoreFire out.
  • CoreFire is a Jerkass, so he can't fathom why his non-superpowered ex-girlfriend would count for anything.
    • I don't think that's strictly the case, sure CoreFire has some Jerkass tendencies, but who among us doesn't? His entire life post-accident has been a case of But for Me, It Was Tuesday as he moves from one crisis to the next. He doesn't even have a Secret Identity anymore because he never had time to use it.

• Why did Doctor Impossible try to hide his identity with a napkin in the big fight with the New Champions? He didn't have a mask in prison, he's probably been scanned down to the subatomic level, and the Feds would clearly have a photograph of him without his costume. Heck, even a couple in the diner recognized him.
  • Well, part of his Internal Monologue is about how he sometimes couldn't help himself: building Domesday machines, spouting one-liners; heck he had trouble preventing himself from explaining his plan at one point. Maybe wearing a disguise when fighting heroes was one of those things he felt was necessary... or he just couldn't help himself.

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