Hyperion defends his world from a twisted rogues gallery (give or take a Hulk) in Heroes Reborn #2. Written by Jason Aaron. Drawn by Dale Keown, Carlos Magno, and Ed McGuinness. Inked by Scott Hanna, Carlos Magno, and Mark Morales. Colored by Edgar Delgado & Matthew Wilson. Lettered by Cory Petit.
Jason Aaron and company’s Heroes Reborn #2 takes a hard right into the weird and macabre and it couldn’t have come at a better moment for the event series. Though largely focused on Hyperion and his enemies, aside from the issue’s substantial but oddly pedestrian back-up that we will get into later, this issue offers up a metric ton of dread and forward momentum.
Paired this round with the eye-catching and cinematic Dale Keown, Aaron delivers a pretty fun Superman set up, presenting the event and its atomic-themed hero with a problem only he could solve.
The Negative Zone Prison that now houses Dr. Juggernaut has been breached and all the remixed devils have been unleashed upon this new universe. Naturally, this leads Hyperion to make the rounds, checking in with the rest of our core cast of “normals” on the ground as he zooms from battle to battle. Namely Reed Richards, Ben Grimm, and Peter Parker; scaffolding the developments of their respective solo tie-in one-shots.
Aaron and the art team present some pretty engaging Super-action, pinging the atomic-themed hero from crisis to crisis while he monologues internally to give readers a better understanding of his propaganda-filled ethos. But the issue then takes a Gamma-irradiated right-turn, taking it from fun DC lark to oddly compelling Marvel melodrama.
As Hyperion re-gathers all his rogues for transport to the Negative Zone, one has managed to slip his net and take the fight to his civilian place of employment: Bruce Banner, who is still the Hulk, but manifested as more of a Bizarro-speaking oaf. Think Immortal Hulk alter The Big Guy if he was forced to speak in cheery but vaguely threatening opposites. This causes Hyperion to react wildly, invoking a presidential order that allows superheroes to kill, and reducing Banner to a sentient paste, while he pleads to know where his “friends” are. This is an odd gut punch of a scene and injects into the event an Al Ewing-like energy that I truly was not expecting.
This sequence, to me, really exemplifies the weird potential of this event’s concept. By pitting an echo of DC’s Superman against another Marvel hero, who is himself adopting a twisted version of a Superman villain’s gimmick (here Bizarro-Speak), it adds a weirdly compelling twist to all the characters involved. And then, when you further add Aaron’s Manchurian Candidate-inspired “ethos” for Hyperion, you have the potential for some really interesting superhero comics.
Aaron however somewhat undercuts his own trick by doing it again in the back-up story. “Welcome Home, Soldier”, drawn this time by the brawny-styled McGuinness, pits Hyperion against a more stable Marvel mainstay, the reawoken Steve Rogers, forcing him to grapple with the officially-recognized lies of the Heroes Reborn universe.
Unfortunately, this more conventionally superheroic backup lacks the same drive and conceptual oddness of the main story. Which is only exacerbated by McGuinness’ more thick-necked house style.
But even with the back-up’s more typical layouts and script, Heroes Reborn #2 still moves the event toward weirder horizons, much to the title’s benefit. We will just have to see if Jason Aaron and company actually commit to the things they touch on here, but at the very least, we still will have gotten an issue where a Superman analogue turns the Hulk into jelly while he sobs for Captain America for a full page.
Zachary Jenkins runs ComicsXF and is a co-host on the podcast “Battle of the Atom.” Shocking everyone, he has a full and vibrant life outside of all this.
