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Highlander meets The Boys. There's something about JMS' ideas and themes that always pull at the tragically heroic heartstrings, making a silver age homage such a good fit.

There are two things that throw me a bit off this book:
1) JMS is doing a lot of exposition--which is fine--but it's done via walls of text on panel. It would be find here and there but the density slows you down. I almost wonder if this is where a more crafty letterer could have found a better way to present the same amount of copy while helping you stay visually engaged with each panel.
2) the art... it's not bad, but it's from a Liefeld/Jim Lee inspired era where everyone looks the same. The women especially, ugh, it's practically a requirement to wear pencil skirts to the point that every female is just the same set of clingy thighs on each page. Maybe it's unfair to criticize the art this far into the future where even superhero books feature all manner of pencil styles, but it does feel like the distinctiveness of the story isn't particularly enhanced by the art. ( )

Graphic Novel Book Club February 2016

I still love JMS and I still got goosebumps at the end of this graphic novel, when it broke off the first third of the story he'd planned to write. I got to reminisce a lot about the situations I was in when I was first reading this, when it was his first jump back into producing anything (after the pause following the sudden cut-off from Jeremiah).

A lot of this was reworking old groundwork for me. Rereading the story I'd already read, piecing together memory and a reread. Which is, indeed, what pushed me on to read the rest of the series, too. ( )

Irredeemable is my favorite comic ever, bar none. I'm pleased to see that Straczynski of all people was doing something similar a few years earlier.

I'll always really respect the work he did on B5, even if it was cheesy sometimes--serialized TV with a start, middle, and end planned. Sheridan was a real boy scout, since this was before serialization, and before the real rise of the anti-hero.

This isn't about B5, but it made me think I'd like to check out JMS's original series, because I bet he planned it as meticulously as he did the show.

Fantastic beginning. Conceptually really interesting. Information is doled out in small, appropriate morsels. JMS isn't afraid to have a "this changes everything" moment.

But for the guy who wrote Ivanova and Delenn, the female characters here are pretty weak, figuratively and literally. We have Patriot, Bright, Pyre, all big, buff, Justice League types, and this far in the story the most prominent female specials are Chandra--the most beautiful woman in the world, to anyone looking--and Stephanie Maas, whose abuse as a child created a split (powered) personality. Neither is what I would call a great female heroine. No fliers or invulnerables yet.

Also, Poet has potential but he spent an awful lot of time brooding and letting his Cool Guy Hair flow behind him. I find him pretty annoying as a protagonist. But we'll give it time. ( )

An interesting twist on a tried and true premise. Art style was decent if a bit rushed at times, the dialog was nothing terribly special, and overall the treatment of women is fairly normal. Very tense cliffhanger ending though so I will be picking up volume 2 asap. ( )