Jupiter's Legacy: Requiem #4
As Lady Liberty returns from her alien mission, Skyfox gets embroiled in another caper in Jupiter’s Legacy: Requiem #4, by writer Mark Millar, artists Tommy Lee Edwards and Bernard Chang, colorist Giovanna Niro, and letterer John Workman. This is another exciting issue of this book, putting on display everything that Millar does great combined with the amazing artwork of Edwards and Chang.
The crux of this issue is much like the last, the juxtaposition of the lives of the Hutchence/Sampson family. Utopian wakes up in a field and is told about his mother returning and his brother’s attack on China. On Palorax, an invader is caught, but it doesn’t change the plans of King Kotsune and Lady Liberty’s plans to go to Earth. Otto decides to stay in China instead of meeting his mother and the aliens, while Sophie has too much work to do to attend, and Barney has a panic attack on the way there. Prince Caius telepathically speaks to Utopian’s wife about her unhappy marriage at the White House reception, and the two decide to have sex. Skyfox meets up with some villains to help them break into the Union’s headquarters, but things go awry because of how high he is. The Union attacks, Skyfox gets mad when one of the villains hurts his goddaughter and kills them. As that’s happening, Brandon’s killers appear and confront one of the escaping villains. Skyfox escapes the Union, but things go terribly awry.
Millar has some tropes as a writer, and they’re all here but not in the negative way that they’re portrayed as in the past by his detractors. There’s something terribly normal about the Hutchence/Sampson family that Millar captures perfectly throughout this issue. The only two that really seem above it all are Lady Liberty and Utopian. The rest of the family is stuck in the mundanity of the world. Chloe is a workaholic who has her own life outside of the family business. Otto is an idealist who believes so much in the rightness of his cause he’ll leave his family behind. Barney is stuck in everyone else’s shadow. Utopian’s wife is dealing with her husband’s workaholic ways by cheating digitally, which takes on a new dimension with Prince Caius. Skyfox is the screwed-up dad, the complete opposite of his ex-wife and oldest child, but he still has a bit of a moral compass.
These characterizations are brilliant and really get into something that Millar has been doing with Jupiter’s Legacy his entire run- getting under the surface of the superhero and showing their foibles. He doesn’t do it like Alan Moore has throughout his career, by showing superheroes as balls of neuroses and an underlying core of sorrow and pain that many of them take out on the world around them, but by showing them as pretty normal people but with superpowers. They drink, they have sex, they mess up. Some of them are great people who can do all of the stuff that people expect of them; others can’t. Beyond the impeccable plotting and action, this is one of the book’s biggest triumphs. It’s now and always has been one of the most human books on the market.
Edwards’ art is amazing. There’s really no other way to describe it. He’s hitting new heights with his art on this book, and this issue is no exception. So much of the book’s plot revolves around setting and character acting, and he nails both of these things remarkably well. He’s joined on the heist sequence by Bernard Chang, and it looks amazing, yet another stand-out sequence in a book that’s art has been amazing. The colors are spectacular as well, with Edwards and Niro, who does a few pages, giving the whole thing a painted quality that is to die for.
Jupiter’s Legacy: Requiem #4 makes the argument for why this book is one of the best superhero books on the market yet again. The plot is excellent, but the characterization is the champion here, really showing Millar’s chops as a writer. The art remains breathtaking. Edwards, Chang, and Niro do amazing work together, and Edwards is showing why he’s one of the great unsung talents of the comic industry with every line he draws. Jupiter’s Legacy: Requiem #4 is the pinnacle; few other books can reach it right now.