Experimental superheroes team up to save New York from itself

What if you suddenly woke up one day and found you had superpowers? That’s exactly what happens to five Wisconsin college students when each rouses to discover that he or she has been gifted with a surprising new talent: super speed, extraordinary strength, invisibility, telepathy or flight. After a few rounds of “What the heck just happened?” the group decides that there’s only one thing to do: form a crime-fighting group!

Even when chalked up to a nice, wholesome sense of Midwestern values, the eagerness of these otherwise typical, cynical twentysomethings to brand each other with code names and suit up in color-coordinated costumes is a bit, well, weird. But the All-Stars really want to do something meaningful with their powers in the only way that society seems prepared to accept it.

But there’s a downside to their new lives. The All-Stars are themselves pursued by the police, since vigilantism is, after all, illegal. If not rigidly controlled, their powers are not only dangerous to others, but also to the bearer. And the rescues don’t always go as smoothly as in the movies. Despite their best intentions, even superheroes are still subject to their own essential humanity and the passion and frailty it implies.

Since this novel begins in the spring of 2001, it’s not hard to see where the plot is heading. The specter of Sept. 11 casts a bit of a sick pall over the narrative even without the foreshadowing supplied by the intermittent narrator. It’s a reminder that in the real world, not all villains can be so easily vanquished.

In the past few decades, the picture of the “superhero” in pop culture has swung between rosy portrait of clean-cut American ingenuity and the tortured view of the lonely outcast. We get a little of both in this story, and it’s probably the most realistic blend of all.