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FindingJane
Apr 23, 2016FindingJane rated this title 3.5 out of 5 stars
The life of a sidekick has been explored in other books, to rather telling effect. This one is just a little different because the sidekick, well, isn’t fully trained yet. And his superhero (known as a “Super”) doesn’t want him. Oh dear. The Sensationalist (his code name) doesn’t have powers that he thinks are really great. All of his senses are hyper-tuned, making him capable of smelling what a person’s had for breakfast hours after he’s eaten, picking out conversation through solid walls and able to see a newspaper in fine print from across the room. Most people would think these are great powers and could think of all sorts of nifty applications for them. But Andrew Bean (his secret identity) spends a lot of time internally moaning about how useless his powers are and envying other sidekicks who can punch through steel or turn their skin into granite. He could warn his Super if the man was about to walk into a room filled with poison gas but all Bean can think about is pointless it would be if he’d be able to tell that a supervillain ate tuna fish for lunch. Bean could have come off as being useless, whiny and lacking in imagination. But the author surmounts this potential problem by handing him a Super who’s a lazy, self-pitying alcoholic and giving Bean have a wry sense of humor. (If things are going tough, it must be a Tuesday. Guess he just can’t get the hang of Tuesdays.) There’s a conspiracy at work. Supers are disappearing and an old gang known as the Suits (clever) has just been sprung from prison. From there, the action is rather sparse—most of it happening at a distance and seen at a remove on television. What the author makes significant is the interaction of the sidekicks who must act without their Supers, Bean using his powers in a positive way and the unraveling of a mystery that happened years ago and is just playing out in the present. The revelation about the so-called bad guy is a shocker but the motivation is not. Good can be hard to pin down and evil equally so. At times, it seems as if Bean doesn’t care about upholding the light of justice and would just like a little fame, glory and recognition. Entirely human desires but not exactly heroic. Whatever else Bean aspire to be, right now, he’s just an ordinary human kid…and sometimes he wishes he was just that. “Sidekicked” takes the reader behind the mask and the spandex and gives us a lot more to chew on than your typical summer blockbuster. It’s meant to be for adolescents just barely into their teens but adults who are tired of the latest Spider-Man reboot might give this a try. They’ll be pleasantly surprised at how human superhumans can be.