Supreme Power 1

This feels very much like a comic not designed for those who haven’t read previous series. I know this world is based on the JLA pastiche Marvel introduced decades ago, but I am totally out of touch about recent events. Turns out the Superman type, Hyperion, tried to take over the world, and now the big poster boy is the Green Lantern type, Doctor Spectrum. This comic is mostly a study of him, and one that reads very like the recent new Venom: Doctor Spectrum is in the army, is sent on missions abroad, and struggles to keep control over the sentient gem that gives him his power.

It’s a decent enough introduction to one character (do the rest still exist?), but it’s hard to care much about someone who was a copy of GL and now is set up so like another major Marvel character, and until a last page telling us that Hyperion is not gone from Earth, as generally believed, there isn’t actually a story here, which is surprising in a four-issue series – it needed to start with a bit more impact and excitement, for me, whereas it reads as careful and slow. There is a fight scene with a Syrian superbeing, but this is uninteresting and badly done.

This is mostly down to some lazy artwork featuring very poor layouts and flow. In the fight scene, it’s impossible to tell what makes the bad guy go “Arhhh!” as the battle turns or what he is pleading for on the next page, and it seems just one blast from the gem wins it, so it is hard to understand why the battle lasted a few pages. This is followed by three panels of the President speaking, which are duplicates with glum, almost ashamed, body language that no competent politician would allow to last so long if not resigning in disgrace, especially when the words are authoritative, even triumphant. Soon after we get three pages of Doctor Spectrum talking to a psychiatrist: I sometimes think that pages of just dialogue are a good test of an artist, and these are completely dull and with very little expression. I did rather like the extravagant colouring, credited to Sotocolour, when Spectrum uses his powers – must have taken ages, and it looks fresh and original.

This feels like a mainline, mediocre comic, scripted with some skill if little apparent concern to grab an audience, drawn with no real grasp of telling a story or showing character. Of no great interest.