Supurbia #1 and Super Crooks #1

Supurbia
Story by Grave Randolph and Art by Russell Dauterman

This mini-series didn’t particularly appeal to me at first. As it began to fly off my shop’s shelves, my interest piqued and I grabbed a copy to read. We’re introduced to a small group of individuals living in the same suburb and members of the Meta Legion (similar to the Justice League): blonde ex-villain Helen Heart, blonde wife/business woman Alexis Fritsche, house husband Jeremy Metzger, army wife Ruth Smith, newly wed nurse Eve White and retired vigilante Tia Jenkins. As the characters come together and we start seeing their complex relationships with each other, I was sucked in. A party is thrown for the newlyweds and quickly, you can see the superhero clique gathering and challenging each other and as the non powered group gets to know each other, we get insights to the darkness lurking in their relationships with each other. Betrayal also lurks around the corner and I’m sad to say the comic ended way too early but left my yearning for issue #2.

Art was fantastic and extra points for hot man on man sex, three pages in. It wasn’t detailed or anything like that but good if you’re into that kind of thing ;) I like the wide-eyed innocence of Eve White Dauterman draws her with and I like the flirtatious bad girl we get with Helen Heart. Everyone looks beautiful but with their own flaws but I think my favorite panel is near the end when Even realizes that she’ll be continually saying goodbye and fearing for her new husband’s life, perhaps something she didn’t think about before her marriage.

My vote is pick it up if you can find it!

——————————————————————————————————————

Super Crooks #1
Story by Mark Millar and Art by Leinil Yu

Anything by Mark Millar (Kick-Ass, Superior, Civil War) deserves a glance. Anything that’s drawn by Leinel Yu? Even more so since he’s one of my favorite artists (check out his cover on Avengers X-Sanction #1). Accolades of the creators aside, the comics introductory panels didn’t really pull me in. Badass superhero stops some perpetrators, led by Johnny Bolt, from a robbery on a train. There’s one beautiful punch to the face, but otherwise, not much to see before we get to the minimalist two page title spread until we get a five-year time skip. Enter Las Vegas where an ex-villain is playing roulette and wins 10 times in a row bringing his winnings to 12 million. The higher-ups of the casino are not pleased and immediately set about to find who is helping him win. They don’t have to search far when they find a psychic sitting in the parking lot and both are dragged to the control room and Walt, the psychic, is killed. The scene switches to Johnny Bolt reuniting with his former fiance (his heist was on the day of their wedding) who honestly, doesn’t seem to want anything more to do with him when old guy who was cheating at roulette shows up. As Johnny and Kasey brainstorm on ways to help old guy, they come to a conclusion: find a country with no superheroes and pull the biggest heist of their careers. Sounds like an excellent plan (heavy sarcasm). The characters are interesting but I feel I’ve read this same story many times before. I expected something fresh from a writer I love.

This whole comic was very meh. I was just kind of like, REALLY, this is the BEST idea to come up with you guys!? (talking to the superheroes not Mark Millar) Art was gorgeous as always but I can’t expect sub par from Yu anyway…I’m just sad he didn’t have better story to work with.

I’d leave this on the shelf. If you read this, what’d you think?