Halcyon #2

Written by Marc Guggenheim and Tara Butters
Art by Ryan Bodenheim

It feels like there aren't all that many new angles to approach a superhero world with, but Guggenheim and Butters have found a unique take on things - a world where superheroes have become obsolete.  Okay, that's been seen before, but not where it's happened through natural progression or evolution - people have just stopped doing bad things.

The various heroes of this world are struggling with finding a place for themselves.  Some have embraced the new status quo, while others struggle to find a reason or explanation behind the changes.  There is some suggestion that this world's equivalent of Dr. Doom, Oculus, may have something to do with it, but that feels like a red herring.

While I like this approach, and love Bodenheim's art, the problem with this comic is that the characters are not developed enough to be differentiated on the page.  There's the scene where the Batman-analogue tracks down another character, and I had no idea who anyone was throughout the scene.

This series does have a lot of potential, and I hope it's better able to rise to it as it continues.

Halcyon #1

Written by Marc Guggenheim and Tara Butters
Art by Ryan Bodenheim

A comic by the writer of Resurrection, and the artist of Red Mass For Mars is a no-brainer purchase for me, and although the first half of the comic made me nervous, I'm happy to see that my instincts were correct once again.

The comic opens with a number of short scenes which try too quickly to establish a number of superhuman characters.  They mostly fall into the usual archetypes - there's a Captain America figure, a Superwoman, a Batman, and so on.  It's a few too many characters coming at the reader too quickly, although the situations they are in serve the purpose of filling in the reader to the fact that crime in the world has dropped precipitously in a very short span of time.

It's an interesting concept - that the superheroes, a team called Halcyon, are the ones most concerned with a drop in crime.  There's also something going on with the Dr. Doom figure, a guy called Oculus, but we're not too sure what that is yet.

This comic reminded me a little of titles like The Authority and the classic Squadron Supreme mini-series.  Bodenheim's art is very good.  It comes off here as something of a mix of Bryan Hitch with Frank Quitely.  I think he's going to be an artist to watch in the next couple of years, depending on how quick he is (I'm not sure whose fault the delays on Red Mass were - his or Hickman's).

This is an interesting new title, and it deserves some attention.