Extraordinary #2 Review

From indie publisher Grim Crew comes a new volume in their dark superhero anthology, Extraordinary.  Let’s see what I thought of it!

Extraordinary #2

Extraordinary #2 is comprised of 3 stories.  The first, features Stu from Brandon Barrow’s Jack Hammer series at Reasonably Priced Comics.  This tale is by far the most lighthearted of the bunch.  Stu happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time as a concert he’s attended comes under the attack of a new supervillain who uses bad odor to defeat his foes.  Just as Stu steps up to the plate to stop the villain, he finds that sometimes the road to heroism and fame doesn’t quite shake out as you’d expect.  In the second story, we have the second part of a hero named Ravenson.  He’s on the trail of a missing girl, but is everything he’s seeing and doing really happening or are there some more deep psychological issues going on with the hero?  Finally, we pop into the second part of a story about a retired hero who is haunted by the nightmares of his final fight in costume.  He’s been in therapy for the years since, but are those looking out for his mental health really looking out for his best interests?

While I didn’t read the first parts of the “Ravenson” story (written by Martin Brandt and illustrated nicely by Martinho Abreu) or the “Disconnected: Tales of the Sovereign” story (created by Jason Stephens and Eric Boswell), there was enough meat from both for me to understand what was happening.  In “Ravenson”, I found myself immediately intrigued by the clearly disturbed hero.  While the darker side of superheroes never fully appealed to me, this is a case in which I could be swayed to think differently about the idea of a character wanting justice but going about it in the wrong way.  It’s what Batman might be like if he was a real person.  The perception of reality in the more brooding and dark characters would likely twist in a way that would make them see things in an unrealistic light.  It’s a nice study of what these people may actually be like.

The same is true in “Disconnected”.  There’s a realistic twist to this hero who is not only forced into retirement, but also facing the nightmares of his former life.  While war is truly horrible, trained soldiers suffer from post-traumatic syndromes that stick with them for the rest of their lives.  We often see the lighter side of heroes facing the most horrible of situations, so why shouldn’t they also suffer from these psychological issues?  Whether it’s men killing each other in the theater of war or it’s superheroes facing world-threatening battles, there is an equalization of circumstances.  It makes sense and that’s why this story makes for a good read and even adds a bit of realism that I can certainly appreciate.

Of course, there’s also Stu’s story, “15 Minutes”.  Even in Jack Hammer, Stu is a lighthearted character.  In fact, he’s the reader’s way into the story.  He’s the everyman, the normal guy, the dude that isn’t much unlike you or me or even a friend of ours.  That said, if you stand up to a jerk who’s bothering you, the people around you, or, say, even a girl you tried to hit on, who’s more likely to stop that jerk?  The answer is, probably not you or me.  It’s likely another person who isn’t at all involved in your issues with said jerk.  It’s just some person who stops everything before you can become the hero.  In Stu’s case, he’s always been less than a sidekick to Jack Hammer, but he’s been around long enough to be in the shadow of a hero chasing down some pretty bad guys without getting a great deal of credit.  The guy just wants his moment in the sun.  Just like the rest of us.

I will admit that I would like to have read the first parts of the more serious stories, but overall, I really enjoyed what was served up.  I like these type of anthology books and I particularly like Barrows and Brandt’s stuff, and I like what I saw from Stephens and Boswell.  From the art side, I only recognized the always fun art of Ionic.  However, Abreu’s gorgeous work on “Ravenson” instantly made me a fan.

Tags: Anthology Comics Brandon Barrows Extraordinary Grim Crew Independent Comics