Jupiter’s Legacy

I’ll get this out the way at the start; Jupiter’s Legacy is a very entertaining comic, published over 10 issues as Jupiter’s Legacy 1 and Jupiter’s Legacy 2. It has Mark Millar writing spectacular action set-pieces, and Frank Quietely employing some of his most ingenious artistic storytelling yet. The general tone is very readable; which is basically the familial super-hero drama of The Incredibles with the tone and scope of a mature HBO drama. Millar even added extra gravitas to the plot by grounding it in the uncertainty of the global economic crisis. The comic’s biggest flaw then, which is very unfortunate considering the last issue only came out a little over a year ago, is that it already feels fairly dated.

You see, the first issue debuted in April 2013, and the whole world seems to have completely changed in the 5+ years since then. Scotland has had a divisive independence referendum, and the UK is still reeling from an even more contentious brexit vote. Russia has re-emerged as a potential global aggressor, annexing Crimea, meddling in the US election, supporting tyrannical regimes in Syria and potentially attempting to carry out assassinations in the UK. Oh yeah, and Trump happened. The global economy doesn’t seem to have turned around, and yet money is the least of our worries these days.

So the underlying question of ‘how would superheroes help to alleviate a global recession, or even should they?’ is a bit moot now. But luckily the story is still carried by some rich characterization; and an examination of what place the American millennial generation can find in a world which has been so indelibly shaped by the successes and failures of their parents and grandparents. By the blockbusting conclusion, Millar doesn’t really offer an answer to those questions; at that point the plot has really just descended into an (albeit very inventive) clash between good guys vs bad guys. But if you’re reading a superhero comic, that’s really what you came for, isn’t it?