Hyperion/Supreme Power Mega-Post Part 2

[proteus_lives]

Greetings True Believers! My last post of the year is here! This is part 2 of my Hyperion mega-post. Mark Milton is Hyperion, a superman analog in this story. Read part one for more explanation on that front. He was raised by the government to the America's greatest weapon and hero. He was the first superhuman but he has recently discovered he's not the only one. His first encounters with these beings will be both kind and trulbulent.

He has been lied to all his life.

He has been been manipulated all his life.

He has the powers of a god and he's discovered the truth. What is Hyperion going to do?


Suggested Tags: char: hyperion, char: doctor spectrum/joe ledger, publisher: marvel comics, title: supreme power, creator: gary frank, creator: j michael straczynski, nsfw: gore



Part 1: http://scans-daily.dreamwidth.org/1404322.html?#cutid1

The Georgia Blur is a man named Stanley Stewart. He's a young black man with super-speed. He wants to be a hero but he agrees to be a corporate sponsor to provide for his mother. He outran Hyperion last time but Mark still wants to talk.



I like that that. Talking at superspeed is like their own private chat-room.



The the next images are very important.



I think those images could be called "Power vs. Responsibility part 1". Plus it's interesting how he doesn't tell Stanley how far he can go.







That last panel is interesting. What do you think it means?

Joe Ledger, this universe's Green Lantern analog awokes from his years-long coma. Hyperion has his first encounter with this universe's Batman analog, Nighthawk. They will not be good friends with subtext.

Hyperion has a thinking moment.



Hyperion saves a bunch of people from a burning building.





The NSA take control of Project: Hyperion and Mark receives a note.



Mark goes to China.







That old dude is sly. He did for his country what no army could. He threw a rod into America's hero machine.

The Agent in charge of Mark freaks. Hyperion asks a very good question.



Blunt and to the point. His answer? There is none.



Mark does not go the back-slapping event. Since he can't get a straight answer from his government, he calls a talk-radio show and asks the host about dangers to American security in the world. The host rattles off a list and Mark goes searching for the other superhuman.

He catches up to a glowing, flying light in Africa and gives chase.



The light is Corporal Joe Ledger a.k.a. Dr. Spectrum. He's the Green Lantern analog. Like Hal Jordan he was a member of the US armed forces with a ton of willpower. But that's where the similarity ends. Joe is not a pilot. He was a special forces operator and his ruthless efficiency earned him the nickname of "doctor". His power-ring is actually the power source of the ship that brought Hyperion to earth. It is a crystal is a sentient entity that responds to the user's thoughts. It's also influencing Joe's mind to some unknown extent. When Joe melded with the crystal, he was thrown into a years long coma. He recently awoke when Project scientists put him the same room as Hyperion's ship. After recovering, Joe became a superhuman black-ops agent. When Hyperion is out rescuing people or whatnot, Doc is performing special missions.

Joe turns and knocks Hyperion out of the air. This is earth's first superhuman battle.









That's another page that makes this series great. Hyperion doesn't know what pain feels like. Physical pain anyway. It makes you think about being superhuman, being isolated. He's probably watched humans hurt themselves all his life and gone, "what's that feel like?"



Two-page spread. One word: Boom.



This next page rocks. I love the use of flash-vision.



Mark fights his way through the force-shield.



The crystal reaches out to Mark.





Ouch. Right in the nuts.

Ledger disappears and Mark sees what to the surroundings when superhumans fight each other.



Later Mark finds himself in a Catholic confessional needing advice.

He tells the priest that he doesn't know who he is, what he is or what he should do.







I wonder what that priest would have said if he knew who he was talking to. Mark leaves to find the truth. The priest walks out of the confessional and nun asks him about his face.

The next page is awesome. I love the quote. That priest is going to have quite a story to tell if he ever puts the pieces together.



Hyperion has slipped his leash and the directors of the Project are shitting bricks.

They are discussing that the info from the Ledger/Hyperion fight shows that Mark is far more powerful then they thought. The scientist describes how bad it could get. This is a graphic series of pages that made think of superhumans actually existing and that thought made me shiver a little.





The NSA guy flips.



That is scary to say the least. Hyperion is a one-man apocalypse. In the DCU and the 616verse, this shit supposedly happens on a regular basis. It makes you think, how many people would die if Spidey and the Green Goblin fought their way down a city street at mid-day?

The general boils it down. Hyperion is coming to this base and here's why.



But while they've been raising Mark for twenty years, they've also been preparing to kill him if the need arose.

The general thinks back to baby Hyperion.



The rest are aghast but the general is ready to but the final option into motion.

The rest of the event is told to the President in a flashback by the only surviving Project head. (The Scientist) Hyperion arrives at the Project headquarters. His approach is terrifying.









Mark sees the ship that brought him to earth for the first time.



While Hyperion is scanning the computer files at superhuman speed, the Project evacuates. The army general locks the NSA agent in a supply closet and gets ready for Hyperion's arrival.



Hyperion cuts his way through twelve levels to confront the general.



I love how blunt and unapologetic the general is throughout this confrontation.



The general does his duty to the very end.





So ends part two. In part 3, Mark meets more superhumans including a lady named Zarda who may hold the key to his past. More fights and Mark attempts to decide a number of things.

Supreme Power rocks for so many reasons. I love how both Hyperion and the government react. I like Joe Ledger and I'll do a post about him soon as well.

Superhumans and how the world would reacts to them. Can an alien ever consider himself part of the human race?

Comments

[freivolk.livejournal.com]

Its this moment, when the series started to lose me. All goverment men started to act as stupid suicidial dicks. Oh great, just make the guy who can kill us all more angrie. Fake the death of his foster parents, hey, what the chance he will find it out. Try to kill him! Hey, we are not sure if it can be done but lets try it.

[kd_the_movie]

That reaction seems about right to me. No matter the stakes, the Defense Department has never seemed like the type of guys to negotiate and appease. Hyperion is so powerful I can understand their "If we don't have absolute control, he's a threat" stance.

[jlbarnett]

really? You are aware getting negotiations going is part of their jobs

[freivolk.livejournal.com]

I think even in the Defense Department must be people who knows to keep somebody the goverment needs happy. How far you can let him from the lesh and still be in controll, what does he like to eat and drink, can he sleep with woman without killing them?

[equinox216]

That'd be the State Department. Unless you count knocking someone over, handing them a phone, and saying "You'll want to take this call." as 'getting negotiations going'.

[kd_the_movie]

One thing i'm loving about the series is this ever-lingering feeling of dread if Hyperion decides to go rogue. Like those images where he's in space and his hand is covering the planet? Terrifying.

[jlbarnett]

oh, so this a book for those who subscribe to the humans are bastards school of thought?

[kd_the_movie]

what do you mean?

[jlbarnett]

there's no real reason for him to go rogue. To make something like that "ever-lingering" you'd have to feel that it would be natural for him to do so.

[cmdr_zoom]

And why not?

I mean, lots of people here are giving him the benefit of the doubt because we know he's "Superman." He could just as easy be "Zod" (or "Omni-Man"). Or Sil. (And don't we find out later that's exactly what he was supposed to be?)

Like the character says here, when confronted with a force of this magnitude, your choices are basically "total capitulation" or "take it out first." And if you fail to do the latter...

I consider myself a pretty liberal-peacenik kind of guy, but I was bugged a bit by the end of The Abyss where someone smugly informs the Navy people around him, "Looks like you guys are out of a job." Yes, they now have "world peace"... imposed by entities who were about to exterminate our entire species for being insufficiently Green and/or Nice, and who might decide again to do so at any time. Carbon caps and population limits enforced by the threat of city-obliterating tidal waves. Sounds pleasant, doesn't it?

[jlbarnett]

actually when the force is a blank slate you have the legitimate option of making it your friend. The only reason he wasn't was because they didn't mean it. Which is the real reason he got pissed at them.

[twigcollins]

Oh, Cathoicism acting competently. <3

[freivolk.livejournal.com]

If you want to stay for 2000 years in buisness, you better should. Doesn´t mean they do it all the time.

[twigcollins]

Doesn´t mean they do it all the time.

Considering the mechanisms in place to keep that 2,000 year old business rolling, they might even do it less on average than other groups of people.

Still, it's nice to see a good example of the principles and intent of the job in action.

[thandrak]

If you set a horse free, it will return to the stable.

On its own.

Funny how often doing the right thing, not the expedient thing, pays off in the end.

[icon_uk]

I think the panel you query is simply about breaking down barriers, which Hyperion and Blur do here...

[equinox216]

Motto, though I'd add (for clarity) 'to parallel their own breaking out of corrals, simply by discovering they're not super-alone'.

[shanejayell]

I liked this book about... 80%. The government reactions were, IMHO dead on, tho I was always surprised someone just didn't tell him the truth. At that point, what is it going to hurt?

[blake_reitz]

I can understand not telling him. Part of their illusion of control is based around him being an American, and so he has do to what's right for America. Telling him he's not an American, and that he owes his birthright to no earthly country, well...

[bruinsfan]

I'd say that highlighting the importance of nurture over nature should have been a top priority to them. As someone who regards my adoptive parents as the people I owe allegiance to rather than the biological ones, that seems a no-brainer to me.

[geoffsebesta]

so good.

[savitar]

I only wish they kept going like this forever.

Or until the end.

[jlroberson]

One touch that helped me like this, which may be silly, was the Blur looking like Sly Stone. Sly SHOULD have been a superhero.

Another touch would be that Mark slowly gets past his anger to his conscience. I'm thinking of where he's apologizing to the dead elephants. (He's certainly hard on the critters in this) That's what puts this more on the MIRACLEMAN side of the spectrum than the MAXIMORTAL side. Our Superman here makes mistakes, but learns, rather than simply being a monster because he's powerful.

[lamashtar]

Yeah. Without the constant dicking around of him, Mark is naturally a nice person. When he finally meets a REAL supervillain, he's horrified by the reality...a reality that he's contemplating becoming in the above scans.

[halialkers]

Well, this is why you don't lie to your fucking superweapon in the first place you schmucks. What the fuck did you expect? Him to give you a hug and a kiss?

[bensanaz]

This. The officers talking make clear with the "where could we have hidden it?" line that they knew it was inevitable that Hyperion would figure out what was going on. If you consider it inevitable that he'll figure out what he's doing, and if you consider him an unmatched superweapon, the only sensible way to run the situation is the one that you think yields the least chance of him turning on you as a result of his figuring things out.

[bruinsfan]

In that vein, I think gradual revelations over time as he matured would have been a much wiser course of action than complete deception that falls apart at some point down the line. They could have made him a willing participant in their program rather than a potential loose canon who was always on the verge of finding out something that would set him off.

[halialkers]

Precisely.

And the Idiot Ball Wallbanger gets worse when they show how devastating he'd be. So why they set it up for themselves to start with is troublesome.

[freddylloyd]

With the scanner moiré patterns, they all look like they've got the strangest sunburns.

Thanks for sharing these. I'll definitely keep an eye out for these volumes now.

[blakeyrat]

Can somebody explain the scene where he's saving people from the burning building? Why are the news reporters saying "oh God!" with wide eyes?

Also: it's good stuff, but instantly throws me when somebody uses "football field" as a unit of measure. Can't we end that once and for freakin' all?!

[proteus_lives]

Because the reporter is watching the building collapse while Hyperion is pulling everyone out.

[lamashtar]

I will say that the depiction of Spectrum here proved that a rainbow-powered person CAN look cool. :)