I haven’t been reading recent Warren Ellis comics, mainly because I want to read the whole story and because I still haven’t finished reading Transmetropolitan. But this is a very recent series and it is concluded, so I jumped at it.

This actually feels like a continuation of his Authority work at Wildstorm, only it’s very openly about politics. There are two levels to this story.

One is all about the heroes and their powers. This story starts in the present, but things go bad very quickly, but there is a whole history behind how these people got power and what happened to them. These flashbacks are presented in black and white, so that it’s very clear when they take place.

The other level is obviously about American politics. The story starts with John Horus killing the president of the US and wanting a new election. He doesn’t think of himself as evil, on the contrary he judge the president to be a criminal, all he wants to do is to make USA a better place.

That single act spawns many political discussions, between his fellow superheroes, between soldiers, government people etc…. all very interesting debates, though it’s clear what most people think.

There is a little mystery about Tom, but I saw that twist coming from the beginning. One of the problems I had was that there wasn’t one character that we could follow from start to finish, someone we could latch on for this world. It started with Tom, but as soon as everybody else was introduced he disappeared.

Other than that, I really enjoyed this series, it had both plenty of action as well as high brow discussions about morals. The art by Juan Jose Ryp is very detailed, especially in gory scenes. Sometimes though it’s a bit confusing, I can’t quite understand what is going on. But overall it does a good job.