Jupiter’s Legacy #3 – Review

By: Mark Millar (story), Frank Quitely (art), Peter Doherty (colors)

The Story: A lifetime of superheroing and it’s his children that finally does Utopian in.

The Review: Oh, boy—it’s been nearly four months between issues.  What’s going on, am I reviewing Jonathan Hickman’s S.H.I.E.L.D. again?  Other Image series have taken noticeable hiatuses before, but considering Jupiter’s Legacy is only on its third issue and hasn’t quite proven itself to be a Saga hit just yet, it seems a bit cocky to take these kinds of liberties now.  Millar and Quitely must be banking a lot on their star power to keep readers invested.

I don’t mean that to suggest that Legacy has been poor in quality or anything.  The story stands quite well on its own, even without Millar’s name attached to it.  It only suffers from redundancy, of tapping too much into themes and premises other series have very recently taken on.  Hasn’t the superhero-gone-bad thing been overdone as of late?  Or how about superheroes angsting over their roles and responsibilities in modern world problems?  And the disappointing legacy superhero conflict goes back even further.  How does Legacy set itself apart?

You can pinpoint Legacy’s core problem in Walter, its antagonist.  While he once waxed poetic about using his abilities to save his country from ruin, he comes across as no more than a megalomaniacal manipulator in this issue, the flipside to his brother’s overly rigid adherence to core values.  Walter may ultimately turn America’s (possibly the world’s) fortunes around for the better, but looking at his laundry list of ideas (“Climate engineering, eliminating income tax, underground homes, a ban on all religions…”), at what cost?  His telepathic powers make any claim of merely acting as advisor and counselor a farce; when he asks Brandon what their next steps should be, Brandon replies in a daze, “Actually, I’m not entirely sure…  What do you think, Uncle Walter?”

With that in mind, perhaps it’s best to cease expecting Millar to reveal an overarching point about power and political interference and simply take the series as the usual superhero craziness taken to graphic extremes.  Millar never goes by halves, that man.  A Millar villain isn’t just bad; he revels in his own badness (see Walter taunting a pincushioned Grace before topping her off with an aneurysm).  And a plot to bring down the greatest superhero on the planet involves no less than a massive, nuclear-rigged asteroid accompanied by several dozen bitter superhumans raring to have a go at him.

Yet Millar also has his sentimental side.  The violence of this issue would simply be gratuitous if it wasn’t undercut by some genuine, even poignant, feelings from the characters.  Grace’s death is physically painful to see, but also emotionally painful because of the way it comes just as she and Chloe are on the verge of a much more compassionate mother-daughter relationship.  And how can you not view Millar as having an inherent faith in humanity once you see Hutch’s devotion to Chloe, despite their opposing backgrounds?  Even Brandon’s cathartic outburst in the last seconds of his father’s life has that hot, painful anger of someone who’s been repressed for too long, making the scene kind of moving even as it disgusts you.*

Quitely’s art is what really gives dimension to the fairly straightforward script.  His is possibly the most physical art I’ve ever seen.  You don’t look at a Quitely visual of suffering and get an impression of pain; you feel the severity of it in your gut.  When characters make any kind of movement, you see the effort and strain from their posture to the sinews in their muscles.  Physical damage isn’t represented by vague lines or cloudy explosions; it comes through in hundreds of shards of glass and metal flying apart (and a hapless driver launched suddenly into the air).  It’s exciting, emotive stuff, which is pure Quitely through and through.

Conclusion: Even after reading through the issue and enjoying it, you can’t quite pick out what makes it original.

Grade: B

– Minhquan Nguyen

Some Musings: * And if Walter really is mentally controlling him the whole time, maybe the tears aren’t just from the emotions of the moment; maybe it’s the manifestation of Brandon’s helplessness at what he’s being forced to do.