Jupiter’s Circle is a spinoff prequel to Jupiter’s Legacy, focusing on the first generation of superheroes, The Union, in the late ‘50s. The book’s divided into three two-issue stories focusing on the lesser-known characters like Blue-Bolt, The Flare, and Skyfox. It’s also incredibly mundane and continues Mark Millar’s no-hitter streak that is his Millarworld line of books!
The one thing Jupiter’s Legacy had that made it worth checking out is the thing that’s missing in Jupiter’s Circle: Frank Quitely. Quitely unfortunately only provides the covers to the series - the interiors are drawn by Wilfredo Torres and Davide Gianfelice. Then again the art is so dull and unexciting, it’s a good fit for Millar’s dreary scripts.
The stories: Blue-Bolt is in the closet and is being blackmailed by J. Edgar Hoover into disclosing his superhero buddies’ secret identities; The Flare is having a midlife crisis and leaves his wife and family for a much younger woman; Skyfox loses his fiancee to Brainwave and the pair fall out.
They’re soap opera plots! Corny as hell, poorly written, and completely uninteresting stale stories. The fact that they’re superheroes is almost incidental and the cheesy superheroics are brushed over quickly, much like the characters themselves. They wear the costumes but what are their powers? Blue-Bolt has a magic tube or something, The Flare… nope, and Skyfox… also nope! They can all fly, I think? Maybe they’ve all got super-strength? Such imagination! And those names are garbage - “Brainwave”, “The Union”, “Teen Scene”? That’s embarrassingly shitty even by Millar’s standards.
Aside from the Quitely covers, there isn’t a single redeeming quality to any of this crap. Jupiter’s Circle, Volume 1 is Mark Millar’s latest bowel movement in a long line of turds - definitely worth ignoring!
Jupiter's Circle, Volume 1
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