Book Review: Supreme Power, Volume 3: High Command

Spoilers!

When a god-like being decides to not play by the constraints of your sandbox anymore, don’t be upset if more than sand gets in your eye. After a five-month layover, I finally read the conclusion to the Supreme Power comic book series, and it didn’t disappoint. I reviewed the first volume here and the second volume here. The third volume is 2005’s Supreme Power: High Command, released by MAX comics, an imprint of Marvel Comics. Written by J. Michael Straczynski, with art by Gary Frank, and ink by Jon Sibal and Mark Morales, High Command continues the gnarly, grisly storytelling about Mark Milton aka Hyperion, an unmoored Superman-inspired figure. Mark isn’t bound by the government anymore, though; in other words, he knows they’ve been lying to him to make him the “perfect citizen.” The government also been lying to the public, who doesn’t know Mark is of alien origins.

Where we left off from the second volume is Nighthawk (the Batman-like figure who hunts down racists and Nazis in particular) trying to bring Stewart Stanley, a Black speedster, and Mark, together to hunt down a suspected superpowered serial killer, who has been killing largely Black sex workers. The government used material from Mark’s alien ship to experiment on convicted murders in prison. One of those people, Michael Redstone, was a National Guard washout who became a serial killer. What a macabre, but fascinating story beat: what if a serial killer had the powers of a superhero? Well, in a sense, all superpowered villains in comics are serial killers on a scale serial killers couldn’t dream of, but nonetheless. Earlier, I emphasized Stanley’s Blackness because there’s a compelling subplot between him and Nighthawk: Nighthawk is a militant, righteously angry Black man, who sees himself as the “field Negro” and Stanley as the “house Negro,” which obviously upsets Stanley. And Nighthawk, of course, sees Mark as another white man representative of the system. Even so, these three manage to work together to capture Redstone. In order to do so, Nighthawk proves his Batman-like bona fides by taking a pounding from Redstone before Mark saved the day and Stanley finished it. Then, Doc Spectrum, who is working for the government, takes Redstone into government custody, whereupon, the new leader of the government faction in control of wrangling these superpowered beings, General Richard Alexander, turns Redstone — again, a serial killer, who also killed dozens of people mere hours ago — into a government asset. Instead of the U.S. military toppling governments overseas, he wants Redstone to do it. (I don’t know how the government will control him once he’s “unleashed” on a country … But whatever, it’s messed up!)

General Alexander knows he can’t do anything to physically harm Mark; after all, his predecessors tried just that. But mentally, he can by ruining Mark’s reputation. It was the government who propagandized the American public into believing Mark was a hero and it’ll be the government who uses propaganda to turn the public against Mark. They do this by outing Mark as an alien being, which makes the public frightful of Mark, even when he’s still doing heroic things. The government is also requesting, lest they face legal consequences, other superpowered beings turn themselves in to work on behalf of the government (continuing their sly humor, as President George W. Bush announces this, Bill and Hillary Clinton are at home frustrated because it’s Bill who turned Mark into a public hero under his presidency; it was hilarious). I believe in subsequent series, this “team” is known as Squadron Supreme, who are tasked with capturing Hyperion.

At the end of the third and final volume, Mark writes a letter to General Alexander, delivered by Stanley, warning him about coming after Mark. To prove his point, Mark smashes into the Earth from space (somewhere in the Arctic, I believe) causing a 10.5 on the Richter scale level explosion. I have to say, that was pretty bad-ass!

Overall, I quite enjoyed the 18-issue series (collected into the three volumes I read), with these superheroes inspired by DC characters, but put through a more mature lens (MAX Comics comes with an “explicit content” warning label). If you like superheroes, but are looking for a slight twist on the usual formula, you can’t go wrong with Supreme Power.