Broken Frontier

Dynamic Man strikes back at Green Lama, Fighting Yank, and the Terror but elsewhere more heroes emerge.

The plotting/writing team of Alex Ross and Jim Krueger continues to roll on. In hindsight they have already packed so much action and plot into these first few issues it comes as some surprise to realize they are only on the third one. The trend continues as this issues follows the characters already introduced and brings in some new/old faces as well.

Dynamic Man has sent shock troops to attack the heroes at Shangri-La. Thanks to tracers planted on the Terror, the once hidden city is now exposed and the peaceful inhabitants are no match for soldiers. It falls to the Green Lama, the elderly Fighting Yank and the Terror to pull together long enough to save the innocent.

Meanwhile, Samson reveals to the Silver Scarab that he was never trapped in Pandora’s Urn but instead suffered a different fate… a fate that has left him changed. Elsewhere the ‘Devil continues to make a new friend and ally, Hydro helps the out-of-control Flame, V-Man and an amnesiac Masquerade appear in a plague-ridden city and Mr. Face pops up elsewhere. At every turn though there are strange happenings, heroes who are not quite themselves, and powers out of control. The urn may be smashed and the heroes may be back but that is only the start of much bigger problems.

As was said before, Ross and Krueger are packing tons of plot into each issue. The good thing is that this keeps the story moving at a breakneck pace, constantly increasing the levels of tension and excitement. The bad thing is that there seems to be gaps in the story. For example, considering where the Shangri-La heroes were last left in issue #2, opening this issue in the middle of a melee in disorienting. Likewise, the Flame’s story does not flow as well as it could and seems to have large gaps. While these may seem minor quibbles they are distracting enough to pull this reader out of the story.

The art by Carlos Paul holds up well under the frenetic action. Paul’s work continues to tighten up and he handles the action sequences and the character moments with a solid sense of realism and place. There are a couple of panels, however, where the facial expressions do not match the dialogue to jarring effect. There is also at least one place where a character’s anatomy does not look quite right.

Overall, in an era of decompression, having a sweeping, expansive story that actually feels compressed is a nice change of pace. Despite some plot gaps and a couple of odd panels from the art, this issue stands up well and deepens many of the mysteries already in place. Project Superpowers is more than just the resurrection of a group of Golden Age heroes; it is an exploration of the humanity behind power.