Reviewer: Chris Nuttall
Story Title: One Fine Day

He’s back. When is he going again?

Writer: Howard Chaykin
Pencils: Marco Turini
Inker: Marco Turini
Colorist: Guru-Efx
Letterer: VC's Joe Caramagna
Cover Artist: Greg Land
Published by: Marvel Comics

Those with long memories of reviews on this site will remember that, six months ago, I reviewed the first issue of Squadron Supreme – or, rather, the first issue of a reimagination of a reimagination. I knew and loved the Supreme Power/Squadron Supreme created by J. Michael Straczynski and I was heavily critical of the version produced by Howard Chaykin. Squadron Supreme worked, in general terms, because it took iconic characters from DC and imposed them into the real world. Hence Hyperion (Superman), Nighthawk (Batman), Blur (The Flash) and so on. When the series was cancelled on a cliffhanger, I was very unhappy, not least because Chaykin didn’t provide any actual resolution for the cliffhanger.

What we got, in the six issues of Power to the People, was the insertion of Marvel’s iconic characters, in the form of Iron Man, Captain America, Spider-Woman and the Fantastic Four, only degraded in ways that would shock a fan of kinky porn. (We got quite enough of THAT from the Ultimates, thank you.) Oh, and we also got Ultimate Nick Fury and a handful of other superhumans. In the famed line from the Goon Show, very little happened, but it happened suddenly. The only thing of great interest was the return of Hyperion at the end of Issue #6.

(BTW, in the unlikely event of anyone from Marvel actually reading this, I didn’t buy those issues. I read them in my LCS. If you don’t produce good stories, don’t expect anyone to actually buy them. I never bought anything from the adverts you run either.)

Which leads neatly into the events of this issue.

Squadron Supreme’s great charm, among other things, was that it interposed the reality of modern-day politics, including Presidents Carter to Bush, into the superhuman. Hyperion actually served as a US secret weapon in the Gulf War. Instead, the main focus of this issue is Hyperion’s return to America, his meeting with the female President (I wondered if this was a dig at Hilary, but she seems to have a very different personality), the attempts of the ‘permanent government’ to bring him into a plot to take over the nation…and his casual declaration "why stop there?"

Uh oh.

Now, I can buy a comic book that works within its own internal logic. Superman vulnerable to Kryptonite? Fine…as long as you don’t change that in the next issue. I can accept that a man can fly if said man works within his own rules. Squadron Supreme does not. Ultimate Nick Fury, a war criminal, would not be given a new SHIELD, let alone as much power as he collects in the new storyline. Why not give all of his lines to General Alexander instead? While we’re at it, why not discard the whole Ultimate Power series completely and do a great service for mankind? So many promising plot threads are casually discarded – such as the mystery of Hyperion’s origins – and so many tedious and unordinal threads are kept.

To be fair, there are moments when the book actually becomes enjoyable – provided that I put aside everything I knew about the previous and much superior series. There are even moments of wry humour in the text. The problem is that it just doesn’t live up to the previous series. Judging from the solicitations, the next few issues will see a proxy war of DC and Marvel, fought out through the respective versions of their iconic characters…and DC will lose.

(Unfortunately, it is Marvel that has lost out with this series, but…)

The artwork is a curious mixture. There are moments when it is very good, and moments when it is distinctly substandard. It is definitely more in line with Ultimate Power than Supreme Power.

In conclusion, although this issue was actually of a far higher standard than the preceding six, it doesn’t hold the attention. I have never read anything else by Howard Chaykin, but if he had written something completely new, it would have been much better than this. Supreme Power/Squadron Supreme could have been Marvel’s answer to Planetary. Instead…

Whatever is happening with Marvel these days?

Three out of Five