In celebration of my own personal week, I’m going to recommend a truly random book, that I found randomly on a random trip to a random comic shop.
OK, It wasn’t. it was my normal shop, I promise the rest is true though!
When you’re under the weather, with a cold, the flu, or whatever, you ever wonder what it would be like to be a super hero who never gets sick? Like Superman, maybe? For poor Tom Morelli, that’s all he has.
Tom is a very sick individual. He suffers from a dozen major illnesses, from diabetes to hemophilia, to Monomyelic Amyotrphy, a degenerative nerve disorder that has robbed him of the use of his right arm. And in order to…not die, he has to receive daily shots from his mother. In the butt.
Poor guy.
He’s also quite lonely. He has no friends, and he’s bullied. He’s repeatedly referred to as “Gimp.” At more than one time, he considers suicide as a means to end the suffering.
Then he meets a girl. She’s new in school, and doesn’t know about his various conditions. She asks for help home, and he’s more than happy to oblige. Ignoring his alarm to take his meds, he walks her home.
He immediately spews blood and collapses on the floor. Right after he leaves her sight. It’s really quite horrifying. He ends up in the hospital, having really bleak nightmares. His mother and he do not speak on the way home, and he just goes to bed.
Later, during what he believes to be a dream, he again considers suicide, but decides instead to walk home. He is then hit by a truck.
Remarkably, he’s fine. Why wouldn’t he be? It’s a dream, right? Turns out, probably not. He then discovers he has super powers(most notably super strength) but most importantly, he can use his right arm again!
The book is about how a sickly person might react to getting super powers, so I’ll leave it there. Kelley Puckett, a writer who formerly worked on projects like Batgirl, puts together a beautifully told story in the space of eight issues. The characters are believable, with their own flaws. His mother, who could have easily been a stereotypical controlling mother, is instead a fully fleshed out woman, upset by her lot in life, but desperately trying to take care of the one person she has, her son. Tom himself is never perfect, and lives and breathes just like a real teenager. He has the most difficulty fitting in with powers, and even without.
It’s also the best told stories that can progress without a word being said. There are whole pages with no speech, and sparse usage of narration boxes, and you understand exactly what’s going on. From the loneliness 
Tom’s mother feels to the alienation Tom himself experiences, you can’t help but connect as these two deal with first the sickness, and then the strength.
And I don’t think the art could have been done any better. The coloring is intentionally done in mostly ugly pastels(which I’m told was a mandate for the DC FOCUS imprint), but it works really well for setting the tone of the book. It’s not super realistic like some of us have come to expect. But I wouldn’t have it any other way. I love artists like Ethan Van Sciver, but if he had done it, I don’t think it would have been half as good.
To end, what I said at the beginning was true. I picked this up on a whim one day, and I read it, and it completely blew me away. I felt like I had been hit in the gut by the sheer humanity of a book about super powers, that I thought it was well worth the $9.99 price tag. It’s an utter steal. You can even find it on amazon for a lot cheaper.
Is there anything else I can say about this book? I think anyone can relate to this book in one way or another, and it should be read by more people. If only it weren’t canceled after only 8 issues, we would have more written just like this. And you should be reading this. And when it’s on amazon for as low as $2.25, how can you go wrong. Just think, for less than what you paid for that 563rd Dark Reign tie-in, you can treat yourself to this little gem.
