Project Superpowers Omnibus, Vol. 1: Dawn of the Heroes

Project Superpowers

by Jim Krueger, Alex Ross (Artist), Carlos Paul (Artist)

From the dawn of the 20th Century came a new chapter in mankind's history, unleashed during a time of great war and destruction. It was the beginning of the Age of the Superpowers, yet with the closing of the Second World War, this new spark seemingly flickered and died. Now the story can be told of the great lost superheroes — men and women with incredible abilities who changed the course of mankind forever, and who had been thought lost...until now! This book includes: Project Superpowers Chapter 1: #0-7, Project Superpowers #½ (Never before collected!), Project Superpowers Chapter 2: #0-12, Over 500 pages of story + more than 50 pages of bonus material by Alex Ross himself!

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Superheroes

505 pages, ebook

First published September 24, 2012

About the author

Jim Krueger is an award-winning filmmaker, video game developer and New York Times best selling comic book author.

Reviews

[Chad · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's an interesting concept. Take a bunch of public domain characters from the Golden Age and bring them back now for a Crisis type event. The story does suffer from using way too many characters. There's got to be at least 50 to keep track of which gives most of them short shrift. It's worth a read if you enjoy the Golden Age.

[Steven · Rating 2 out of 5]

An interesting if derivative read -- elements of Miracleman, elements of Watchmen -- that suffers from a periodically incoherent narrative that keeps on throwing in handsful of new characters at intervals, has some notably atrocious dialogue every couple of pages, and features some occasionally weird art, especially when it comes to female characters (there's an apparently contagious case of volleyball butt running through the whole thing to go along with the breasts bigger than characters heads.) Unfortunately Alex Ross' storytelling isn't quite up to his painted art, and Jim Krueger's writing skills seemed limited. I don't think I'll be checking in for the third chapter.

[Michael Emond · Rating 2 out of 5]

It looks like a lot of effort was put into this 12 (plus) issue series but it was an example of trying to stuff 10 pounds into a 1 pound bag and not caring where everything ended up.
You have A LOT of heroes and you have a lot of ideas but in the end you have to ask - was I entertained? Did I care about the characters? Was there a driving narrative to the story that made me excited to go on to the next issue? The answer is "no".
Because you have so many characters (and there are way too many characters) and they aren't well developed there is no real connection to them. Sometimes Marvel or DC can get away with this because we already know their established characters but when you are reintroducing these heroes from a forgotten era it doesn't work. Also, let's face it, these heroes are from a bygone era because they weren't that great even at the time.
Because the ideas were so fast and furious the story became a muddled mess trying to lob a few over the top morals at us (nobody walks away from a war virtuous - we were fools to think we could).
It reminds me of the quagmire of "events" that DC and (especially) Marvel kept throwing at readers. They were big! They were filled with heroes! But in the end they were just chaotic and the bigness of the event meant you couldn't connect to the story or care about the characters in it.
Alex Ross is a wonderful artist - but all his ideas end up like this. He doesn't know how to connect emotionally to the readers and Jim Krueger (the scriptwriter) doesn't help ground the ideas like (as an example) a Kurt Busiek does.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fun read, admittedly I was extremely unfamiliar with the characters since I started reading comics well after this group of characters particular hey day. So I can't really comment on if they're true to their original portrayal or not. But what I saw looked interesting and a few reaction were probably given the circumstances that got the story rolling. If I had one real complaint, and honestly it's .more of a personal nickpick, is that after what they call chapter one (this is an omnibus btw so) there's a caption that says continue the story in the individual titles that launched out of the Initial I guess it was a mini once we got to chapter 2 or the start of the ongoing things felt a little disjointed at part because I'm sure they expected you to read everything to get the full tale. But outside of that it was an enjoyable read and would recommend if you wanted a superhero tale outside of the Marvel DC norm.

[ISMOTU · Rating 5 out of 5]

I quite enjoyed this series when it was first released and it was fun to revisit it in collected form. Alex Ross and Jim Krueger bring back a bevy of public domain superheroes in a modern tale that plays with Greek mythology and the "man out of time" trope. There are surprises and interesting takes on some characters that were originally fairly one-note and generic. Taking the lead from Ross' redesigns, Doug Klauba, Stephen Sadowski, Carlos Paul, and Edgar Salazar bring these heroes and villains to new life.

[Alexander · Rating 4 out of 5]

This graphic novel is a project indeed. Bring together a bunch of characters, which were completely unknown to me and create an interesting story. Project accomplished. Some of the characters have depth and invite you to follow their stories.
The omnibus gives you the main storyline but it feels like something's is missing between chapters 1 and 2 ( I don't know if some issues should have been added, it is already a pretty big book).
The art is very good, I would really like to view some of the splash pages in oversized format.
Looking forward to read the next volumes.

[Harold Pridemore · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great art great story

[Christian Lipski · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really couldn't get a handle on the heroes' or the author's stance. Were they pro-war, anti-war, etc. The quotes along the way were muddling too, with an almost tyrannical leaning at times. In the end, the characters were all very surface-level, and I couldn't connect with them.