What happens when a superhero comes out of retirement? This six-part superhero miniseries from Comixtribe has just reached its halfway point, and as the first man to bear the title of The Standard deals with the death of his successor, the going is grim but oddly heartening.
Written by John Lees
Illustrated by Jonathan RectorThe children of Sky City are going missing, and Gilbert Graham has come out of retirement to find them. His search takes him into the city’s sewers, where a terrifying threat awaits. Is this old-fashioned superhero prepared to face the darker villains of the modern age?
The Standard’s successor, the sidekick formerly known as Fab-Lad, was very much a 21st century kind of superhero: he did everything he could to stay in the public eye, even starring in a reality show. But the second Standard is now dead under decidedly mysterious circumstances – and the case that was plaguing him, the disappearance of a little girl, remains unsolved. As the old Standard takes up the search, he finds something very sinister lurking under the streets of Sky City.
As dire as it all sounds, there are also moments of humor in here – most of them playing off the contrast between the criminal world the Standard remembers fighting, and the one that’s facing him now. His most formidable enemy, after all, used to be The Skunk – a “supervillain” who wanted nothing more than to make people smell bad, and never intended to kill anyone. His most sophisticated weapon was his arsenal of puns, whose true and complete awfulness make reading the flashbacks that concern him a real pleasure.
This contrast makes the Standard’s adventures in the present day all the more compelling. This is a superhero who’s out of his depth and doing the best he can regardless, and in that respect you could almost read this comic as an antidote to “Danger Club”. In that (excellent) comic, the older generation has disappeared, leaving their brilliant but outnumbered sidekicks to fight and fail left and right. Here, a faint ray of hope shines through as it comes clear that the older generation – the original standard of heroism – never really went away. It’s an optimistic message presented with a surprising depth of emotion, but no saccharine wheedling, and as things stand we’re not quite allowed to forget that there is still lots of room for things to go wrong.
Jonathan Rector’s art, meanwhile, is bold and bright, swinging between wholehearted imitation of classic cape titles during the flashbacks and a slightly more modern look, all the while doing something unique. The broadness of the facial expressions and poses is always played straight, and in a book that’s clearly about comics and their history, this unwillingness to wink is refreshing. Then there are the just the nuggets of awesomeness that come up all across this issue: the Skunk’s iconic and impractical costume, the sheer eerieness of the goings-on in the sewers, the none-too-subtle awkwardness of an old man in a spandex suit. It feels strange to praise an art style for being utterly on-the-nose, but that’s what’s going on here: Rector’s building on an established, classical style and doing it flawlessly, and with an eye for the most important and nostalgia-inducing details.
As the story moves forward, resolving a major part of the overarching plot and clearing the way for the Standard to begin superhero-ing anew, it’s starting to feel a lot like a fable. There’s something interesting going on here, something about innocence and cities and what it means to be a hero, and as it blends humour and introspection and an eye for the details that distinguished the comics we grew up with, “The Standard” sets a new standard for meta superhero stories. This is some fine comic-making, and it will be a treat to see how it all turns out.
Final Verdict: 8.5 – Buy
