Crime type superhero books have really been making a huge impact in the last couple of years and by writers who a very well-known for doing traditional comics. But it’s hard to pinpoint where this all began. Mostly these books take the superhero model and basically say, “ok what if something went wrong.” Well you’d have a very distorted person with powers.
Hey speaking of “Powers” even though I didn’t put it in the title that’s another perfect example. Brian Michael Bendis personal comic series is on it’s third volume now AND according to Brubaker it’s just been picked up as a TV series by FX I think. The series features a police detective who has decided he’s done with the whole superhero way of life. You may recall a very SIMILAR theme in the animated movie Megamind. This theme is just in the air.
Brubaker stands at the time of the crime superhero dogpile and has got multiple projects in the movie works. But Incognito just finished and what he did with 6 issues and copious after notes is unequaled. And the art? Super gritty.
Those books mentioned in the title are pretty well known, but now that I think about it Peter Milligan had a series about 2 years back that had a bunch of Cold War folks reactivated to finish the cold war. They were government lab rats and had all the traditional brain washing to make sure they were with the program. Talk about messy outcome it! It’s to be expected. Think about Frank Miller doing that second Dark Knight where Superman had basically become a Presidential watchdog.
And then there was Absolution written and created by Christos Gage, who’s all over the place lately. His book was about police officers who had been given powers but they were very much still cops-until one of them went bad¦
But really the gold standard right now is the combo books of Irredeemable and Incorrigible by Mark Waid. It’s just so good. The premise is basically Superman gone wrong. Except Waid’s guy is called the “Plutonian.â€It’s an amazing dual series; one book features a bad guy gone good and the other features a good guy gone bad. There are overlapping characters of course and the art is the weird non-DC or Marvel simple style. But seeing this situation unwind from 2 perspectives is a very novel idea. Actually this writer is so good either book could have worked alone.
And if you weren’t paying attention you might have missed a book called The Mighty which technically a DC book but it was so weird that I HAVE to mention it. It was basically just like Irredeemable in premise but the execution was totally different-and minus all the humor and featured a hero called Alpha One.
The boys, of course, is in a class by itself. Garth Ennis is known for his frank, if not downright, brutal, take on things and he didn’t cut any corners here. I think the series was supposed to only be limited, but once it started unwinding and the fans started buying they decided to keep it going. It’s got everything; violence, humor, good story, good art. It’s A +. Plus the star of the series was modeled after Simon Pegg.
