COMICS: Hero Squared

I received an advance copy of Hero Squared this week. (Why? Because I'm awesome.) It came once again to my work address, with the alarming return address: BOOM! Which gave my boss pause, I can tell you. "Tom, why do you have a package labelled BOOM?" (Once I told him what was in it, we actually got to talking about comics, and the ones he had liked in his younger days, such as Green Lantern, Aquaman, and, surprisingly enough, Turok.)

The comic is of course produced by Boom Studios (not the Unabomber, as my boss guessed), and, as with the previous comic they sent me, Zombie Tales, I enjoyed it quite a bit. This is issue #1 in an ongoing series, following the Special which came out earlier this year. You don't have to have read the Special to enjoy this new issue -- the premise is simple, but clever. Milo is an aspiring documentarian/slacker from (let's say) our Earth. One dimension over, though, Milo has become a superhero called Captain Valor. When Captain Valor's Earth is destroyed, he comes to ours, encounters plain Milo, and tells him of the evils of the world-destroying Lord Caliginous. Who, it turns out, is Milo's girlfriend, Stephie -- in Captain Valor's dimension, Stephie went a little mental, on a supervillainous, evil genius scale. Hilarity ensues.

The story is written by Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis, and it's every bit as entertaining as their recently concluded I Can't Believe It's Not the Justice League, or their recently begun Defenders. I've learned a lot about this writing duo since I first wrote about the Hero Squared Special (in which I made a very mean comment about Giffen's cover art, but I stand by it), and I've liked almost everything I've seen. This comic features their traditional rapid-fire banter combined with slapstick, and a little cheesecake for good measure, and, as with the best of their stories, it can blend the fun and goofiness with genuinely dramatic moments flawlessly.

I will say the exact same thing about the art as I did when talking about the Special: enjoyable, but rough. I actually liked it a bit more, this time, though the semi-sketchy quality remains. It works very well with the story; Joe Abraham's facial expressions really capture the back and forth of Giffen & DeMatteis' verbal sparring. All in all, it's a very good comic, well worth adding to your shopping list.