And Then I Read: IRREDEEMABLE Volume 9

Images © Boom Entertainment, Inc. and Mark Waid.

Mark Waid’s character The Plutonian is essentially Superman gone very bad indeed. His character Max Damage is a villain trying to do good. Both their stories take place in the same universe, on the same Earth, so it was inevitable that they’d face each other. That’s what this book is leading to. It’s also about how they became linked in tragic childhood events, why things turned out as they did for each of them. In the present, Plutonian is being lectured by two very powerful beings. Are they his parents? In a parallel track we see the origins of Max Damage as told in flashbacks and letters. The big confrontation promised on the cover never quite happens, though earlier ones do. I’m guessing there’s another volume coming!

The art by Diego Barreto and Marcio Takara is great: solid superheroics, good storytelling, and fine character work. It leans a little more toward the cartoony end of the realistic/animated scale than some of what’s come before, but I think it works quite well.

Recommended.