Broke and feeling like a failure, aspiring young writer Nathan Burnett moves from LA back to his parents in smalltown Illinois to regroup and figure out what he’s doing. And then, on a night out with his snarky best bud, they stumble across a blue glowing mini black hole - and Nathan’s world is suddenly changed. Now he’s a superhero: Radiant Black!
Power Rangers/Ultraman writer Kyle Higgins teams up with artist Marcelo Costa to create his own robot-looking superhero series, and their first volume of Radiant Black isn’t radiant bad.
I liked the failed writer angle the best because that felt the freshest part of this otherwise fairly derivative story. It was compelling to see what happens when someone fails at achieving their dreams and how they cope with that, as well as showing what it takes to actually be a professional writer and the sheer grunt work of getting words on a page every day.
It’s all very well for us consumers to read so much without realising how difficult the creation of these books actually are and what someone who wants to do it has to go through to get there. It felt very genuine and honest and a welcome and unusual aspect to write about in a superhero comic.
And the story of Nathan getting superpowers isn’t boring - it’s a slickly-told origin - but there’s too much here that’s been done before. It’s every superhero origin story, again. So Nathan and his bestie Marshall come up with superhero names, geek out about the powers, slowly learn what it’s all about, etc. There’s also an evil Radiant, Red, and the two go through the motions of the obligatory superhero punch-ups. It’s too many cliches.
The Power Rangers comparisons are really highlighted towards the end of this one and the mini black hole that is the Radiant looks a lot like Shanhara from Valiant’s XO Manowar. And the character designs as well are very Ultraman/Power Rangers-y.
I liked how the Radiant started to change the way Nathan thought so the alien language started integrating with his mind and Higgins does switch things up in the final act regarding who you think the main character of this series is - the Radiant isn’t wedded to the one person like Venom. And Red’s origin story also isn’t bad but, like Nathan’s, wasn’t that amazing either.
Marcelo Costa’s art is as competent, kinetic and flashy as it needs to be for a superhero comic and he’s done the best he can with Radiant Black’s design to make it distinct (although the comparisons keep coming to me - at one point the Radiant looks like GIN-GR, a character from another Valiant series, Unity). Eduardo Ferigato drew most of the fifth issue and I liked his art even more.
In some ways Radiant Black isn’t like most superhero comics (the failed writer/struggling to find a purpose angle), and in others it’s identical to most superhero origins (finding your feet with the new powerset, etc.). As such, I found it to be a fairly middling first volume. Readable, never too boring, interesting at times, bland once the generic superhero stuff kicks in - overall, it’s a fine start to what could be the best robot-looking superhero series Kyle Higgins has written yet (which makes sense, to save his best stuff for his creator-owned work).
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