Review:
In the world of this series, a mysterious light called "the flash" hits near Pederson, Illinois sometime in the 1960s. Sometime later, the 113 children conceived in Pederson around the time of the flash started showing evidence of superpowers. After some panicking and scrambling, the group as a whole was sent to a special camp where they would spend most of their time until they turned 18, going to school, being tested and evaluated, and learning about their powers.
Several decades after the flash, Peter Dawson, a special whose primary power is invulnerability is found murdered, suffocated to death. Peter wasn't the first special to be killed - and whoever the murderer is is likely affiliated with the specials group somehow, because they seem to know everyone's weaknesses.
The bulk of the main story is told by John, also known as the Poet, one of those 113 "specials." John has always kept himself apart from the other specials, believing himself to be the only one who can stop another special if they go bad, and it seems as though his abilities are now needed. Who's killing the other specials, and why?
Which makes it sound like this might be a murder mystery featuring superheroes, but that isn't really the case. Instead, the comics explore the lives, relationships, and psyches of multiple specials, as well as how various governments and individuals reacted to them. The specials eventually realize their overall purpose, but it takes a while to get there.
I bought the first few issues of this series when they first came out, but I didn't have the money and memory necessary to keep going to the store at the right time to pick up individual issues. I think I stopped reading about four or so issues in.
This series' premise and the way it handled superheroes probably doesn't seem all that special now, what with the existence of Heroes, The 4400, and The Boys, but I recall it seeming really original at the time. It was exciting to finally get my hands on an omnibus copy that would let me read the full main story in one go.
This series was at its best, I think, when it focused on particular specials for extended periods of time. Sure, it was cool and interesting when the scope was widened to a worldwide and, eventually, cosmic level, but I found I wasn't nearly as interested in the reason behind the flash as I was in the lives of Matthew Bright, Jason Miller, Lionel Zerb, and more. Unfortunately, the time needed to tell the larger story meant that some of the characters that interested me didn't get as much page-time as I might've liked. The side stories at the end of the compendium helped somewhat, but still.
There were a lot of characters, and at times it felt like it was harder to keep people straight than it should have been. Some of that was, unfortunately, due to the artwork. John and Randy were easy to mix up, and guys with brown or blond hair who were easy to tell apart on one page weren't always easy to tell apart a few pages later.
Overall, I'm glad I finally got to read the full series (I think - for some reason, even though everything I find says that this volume has the entire main story, the compendium says volume 1 on it). While parts of the story were harder to follow than they should have been (Joshua's secrets were so coyly handled that I had to double check online to make sure I wasn't misinterpreting things), and the specials' fixes for various domestic and international problems occasionally seemed a bit simplistic, there were a few really well-told tragic stories in the mix as well.
While getting this compendium volume was the easiest and most cost-effective way for me to read the series, this 1000+ page monster was physically challenging to read. In order to keep from breaking the spine or hurting my wrists, I usually relied on a setup that involved a pillow on my lap and multiple arguments with my cat. Even then, as careful as I was, I still ended up with the first few pages of this volume detaching.
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