Irredeemable review #1

This comic from Boom! opens with a bang as a superhero and his family face the fury of the Plutonian, hero turned villain. It continues with his terrified longtime teammates interrogating one of their own - the Plutonian's sidekick, Samsara - for as much information as possible on a man they never truly knew. There's a flashback in there, but this comic is basically two scenes. While one is all action, and the other mainly talk, they're equally gripping. And one of them contains a great little twist.

Mark Waid writes up a storm here, using his long experience of the superhero genre to get in, get out and leave the reader wanting more. His characters are familiar superhero types without being distracting full-on homages. The only thing I didn't like was the name of the antagonist. The Plutonian? Try saying that after a half of shandy.

Peter Krause, whose work I've not seen since Jerry Ordway's terribly underrated Power of Shazam series, does a wonderful job. His character designs make me curious about these people, and his storytelling choices are spot-on. It's just a shame that with three different covers to fill Boom! didn't see fit to let their regular artist actually draw one.

Oh, and the logo's very boring, looking like a tweaked mechanical font rather than the gorgeous creation letter artists such as Todd Klein could have come up with.

Never mind though, this is a terrific debut issue - it feels like Brian K Vaughan's Runaways nodding in the direction of Alan Moore's Miracleman. Try it.

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