The Avengers have a cool-sounding but confusing superhero team name (what’re they avenging??); Justice League sounds hella corny but perhaps appropriately so for a team headed up by Superman; Project Superpowers though is by far the (green) lamest, most naff-sounding superhero team evarrrrr! But, credit where credit’s due: I wasn’t bored with this book like I usually expect to be, and almost always am, with the likes of Avengers or Justice League.
There’s nothing new about the story - it’s essentially the first Avengers movie. All-powerful alien bad guy rocks up with an alien army to fight in New York while superheroes gotta work as a team to stop them, all while bad guy wants a MacGuffin, which, I shit you not, looks exactly like the tesseract.
In fact there’s almost nothing new here at all. The bad guy, who, continuing the tradition of crap names, is called P:andora, and yes the tesseract is the box he’s after (geddit: Pandora’s box - face plant), and he looks almost identical to Marvel’s Gorr the God Butcher. Planes fall from the sky, so Samson gets to re-enact the memorable scene from Superman Returns where Superman catches a plane on the nose, bringing it to rest safely. And most of the heroes are less famous versions of Iron Man, Hulk and Doctor Strange (Scarab, Samson and Green Lama).
But I did a test after reading this book and waiting a bit before reviewing it: could I name all the characters without looking them up? And I could - all except the American Spirit which I wrote as the American Flag, though, to be fair, it is a fucking American flag and it’s alternately referred to as the Flag and the American Spirit. I found myself paying more attention to the characters because I don’t know them at all so I wanted to see what their powers and personalities were like - the novelty of the team helped. I liked that, instead of the usual inane superhero drivel (Spidey’s never-ending tiresome quips, et al.), while he was fighting Samson was ranting that more people needed to read books (they do)!
Obviously it helps that Rob Williams is a decent writer who can make a scenario this played-out and unoriginal seem fresh, as well as this being an intriguing set of unusual characters who aren’t so well known. And I really enjoyed Sergio Davila’s art - skilful, detailed, beautifully eye-catching and cinematic. I’m amazed this guy isn’t getting more work at either Marvel or DC - he’s really top class.
Project Superpowers, Volume 2: Evolution is by no means a standout superhero team book - there are too many familiar elements here for that, and that ending was much too neat and quickly resolved - but it’s also not boring. There are enough interesting scenes and characters to keep you turning the pages which is pleasantly surprising when it comes to this kind of comic.
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