Superior #1 Review

Writer - Mark Millar
Pencils - Leinil Yu

The love affair with Mark Millar has been on for a long time now, and for good reason, with the limited series 'Civil War' for Marvel breaking sales records and changing the Marvel Universe completely. Then we got 'Kick-Ass', a great series about being a superhero in real life. It was raw and had an in-your-face style from the first issue, and it's not surprising the film adaptation was a huge hit as well (even if it deviated from the more poetic narrative of the original material). Then we were given 'Nemesis', a series based around the question "what if Batman had decided to be a villain instead of a hero?". With blood, guts and swearing left, right and centre, Millar went further into the hack/slash story, and while drowning in violence for violence's sake, it still worked.Now 'Superior' is on the table, and if pre-order numbers are anything to go by it's going to be another best selling series for the Scottish author; but is it any good? The short answer is yes, with a little niggling factor at the back of your brain asking "why though?".

'Superior' revolves around the life of Simon Pooni (an unfortunate name for the fictional character and the real dude he's named after, courtesy of an eBay auction for charity), a young American kid with Multiple Sclerosis. Simon's life sucks, he gets picked on, he only has one friend and he went from basketball superstar to severly handicapped in the space of about a year. The comic opens in the cinema, as Simon and his best/only friend Chris take in Superior 5, introducing the hero of the book. From here we get to see how crap Simon's life is: bullies, disablity and what he was before. But as Simon goes to sleep the story changes. Think space monkey, magic wish, Superior. Yeah, that'll do it.

The story of 'Superior' really hasn't moved along yet, with the characters being introduced and the situation set up. The idea of a space monkey is interesting to say the least, but i'm not sure about the "magic wish" part. While this book seemed to be a more "family-friendly" title, the characters indulge in a bit of profanity which is understandble (don't we all?), but it was a bit jarring to see it when I thought this would try and break away from the reality of 'Kick-Ass' and 'Nemesis' and go into the realm of whimsy.

All I can really say about Yu's artwork is that it is spot on, with every character easily definable and the back drops of city streets looking amazing.

All in all the issue was interesting, but the only reason I'd want to keep buying it is to see and learn more about space monkey. I'm really not interested in Superior as a hero. Sorry Mark Millar.