Radiant Black, Volume 2: Team-Up Review (Kyle Higgins, Marcelo Costa)

With Nathan out of action, it’s down to his bestie Marshall to take up the mantle of Radiant Black and battle the mysterious glitchy Radiant, with the help of the other coloured Radiants he’s recently met, and find a way of saving Nathan’s life. Also, Radiant Pink’s origin story.

The second volume of Radiant Black is a very disappointing follow-up to the decent first book. No part of this book’s story was at all compelling or fun to read. The first couple issues are just one long dumb superhero punch-up as the sub-Power Rangers throw colourful lights at one another pointlessly until they don’t - I couldn’t have been more bored.

One of the aspects of the first book that I found appealing was Nathan struggling to figure out how to become a successful writer. With Nathan in a coma for most of this volume, that aspect is completely missing in the book and the focus instead is on his dreary friend Marshall who lives a completely empty existence where he’s either at Nathan’s bedside at the hospital or failing at his retail job. Marshall’s just not an interesting character to spend time with.

He’s also weirdly concerned with being liked by the world at large and spends a lot of time trying to make people fans of Radiant Black, as well as make money off it. Like all of the characters in the book, Marshall isn’t particularly likeable. Kyle Higgins keeps throwing in references to COWL, his terrible Image series from 2014 (you haven’t heard of it for a reason), and the world at large seems to have oddly quite easily accepted the existence of colourful superheroes.

I didn’t really get what that whole sequence in the Tron-like world of the giant Radiant was about - it felt like a neon-coloured therapy session more than anything - or how it turned things around for Nathan. There’s also too many characters in this series considering how we’ve barely begun the story. There’s a new character who’s a supply teacher who’s involved in some black market Radiant stuff or something introduced towards the end - eh, I didn’t care.

Speaking of not caring, we get Radiant Pink’s origin for no reason. Like Marshall, she’s another boring protagonist. She’s a Twitch streamer who stumbles across the Radiant after looking for a replacement mic - it’s such a convenient and uninspired origin.

I’d hoped the second volume would at least be as good as the first book, if not better, but it was a complete fail unfortunately. It abandoned the things that made the first book unique and, rather than attempt anything original, leaned heavily upon genre tropes instead. I didn’t find it the least bit entertaining and the second book was so bad I think I’m going to abandon the series entirely - don’t bother with Radiant Crap, Volume 2: Team-Up.