Sunday, October 11, 2009

_Ultra: Seven Days_, by The Luna Brothers

Image taken from the Luna brothers Ultra page, and used to link back there. :)

I've been ransacking my comic book collection for books that I could let my 12-year-old read. As a result, I've been rereading a lot of old favorites.

This one didn't make the cut for pre-teen consumption, because the Luna brothers have somehow perfectly channeled the inner lives of hot 20-something superheroines, and I'm not ready for him to read that. Granted, I've never lived the life of a celebrity/supermodel/superhero as depicted here, but even though no one else has, I am fascinated by this take on what it might be like to be a superhero.

In the world of Ultra, superheroes work for agencies that get them endorsement gigs as well as liaise with the police. The story is so much not about the superpowers that we don't see an origin story for any of the characters. In fact it's about the personal life of Ultra, a young woman trying to date again after a five year lapse.

I've probably read this story a dozen times; it remains one of my favorites. Three thumbs up, and I have pal Mikael to thank for pointing me at this book way back when.

3 comments:

  1. This was an interesting comic, like a less trashy and gratuitously violent and explicit Powers. But I always wonder what makes two guys think that they are well-suited to write about the emotional travails of a group of women. Are they just writing characters that are good enough to convince their mostly make readership?

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  2. I typed "male" readership and the autotype function corrected it. I hate these helpful features.

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  3. I did detect at least one detail that I thought betrayed the fact that this was written by guys. But overall I'm highly impressed by how realistic the characters in this are...all of them. People seemed to have realistically venal motivations. Now, I can't get Tanya to read this to render her verdict. But I don't actually know anyone whose life is remotely close to these ladies' lives who could judge. I just think they're quite realistic as sort of New York socialites.

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