There were three reasons that I knew I had to read this book when I first came across it. One, the bulk of the action takes place in Toronto (and on a plane flying to Vancouver), so it was very familiar to me, in the same way that Scott Pilgrim was. Two, the main character's name is Tom. And all of his friends are superheroes. This hits pretty close to home. And three, Tom's love interest is a superhero named The Perfectionist, who simply makes things perfect with her mind. And if that's not a description of my wife, I don't know what is.
There's a lot of anguish in this book, and lot of sadness. I was concerned that it would be a tough read. But it's actually a really beautiful love story, and I let out a little gasp of happiness when I read the last sentence and put the book down. In a time when superheroes are everywhere, it's nice to see something like this book that takes them and makes them blatantly the metaphors that they actually are, and still manages to tell a lovely story. The superheroes in this book are superheroes only in that their identities are wrapped up in a single aspect of their personalities or bodies. The Perfectionist. The Amphibian. Hypno. The Dancer. There's a couple of things I think we have to take from this. First, all of us are good at something. All of us have some ability that we take pride in. I think I'd have to be called The Rememberer. I can remember ridiculous details of events, books, shows, whatever. It's a pretty useless power most of the time, but sometimes it's the most important power. That's what these characters are. On the other hand, it could also be a critique of the way that we tend to essentialize people, in that we define them by a single quality and ignore all others.
But I don't want to critique the book right now. I loved it, and it made me happy, and I would gladly read a comic about Mr. Kaufman's heroes, and their friend Tom.
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