Reviewer: Iain Burnside
Story Title: The Joke’s Over
Written by: Daniel Way
Penciled by: Steve Dillon
Inked by: Steve Dillon
Colored by: Dan Kemp
Lettered by: Joe Caramagna
Editor: Axel Alonso
Publisher: Marvel
These are strange and troubling times in the “Supremeverse” as it may or may not be known. When J. Michael Straczynski got the strange notion of repackaging the Squadron Supreme, a blatant rip-off of the Justice League, for the Marvel MAX imprint nobody could possibly have expected it to have gone as well as it did. The eighteen issues of SUPREME POWER that followed were some of the finest examples of “real world” superhero stories to have ever been released, thanks in no small part to the lack of limitations on language, violence and nudity allowed by the MAX line. Now, however, the series is moving onto a second volume in the Marvel Knights imprint early next year for no discernible reason. There is certainly no way to reconcile the Supremeverse characters and setting with the regular Marvel Universe so moving the book over to the same line that handles Spider-Man, Daredevil, the Fantastic Four and all the rest of the PG-13 superhero set seems to be a little redundant. What’s even more peculiar is that in order to segue between the two volumes they have released two six issue mini-series. SUPREME POWER: HYPERION continues the main story arc about the government’s attempts to quell the Superman facsimile, Hyperion, and seems to be setting the scene for the ultimate formation of the Squadron and the establishment of some regular super-villains along the way. It also manages to keep the same tone as the parent book whilst subtly making things a few degrees lighter en route to Marvel Knights. All in all, that mini, regardless of the quality of the story itself, has a perfectly rational editorial plan to adhere to. SUPREME POWER: NIGHTHAWK is a completely different kettle of fish altogether.
Nighthawk is of course the Batman analogue of the Squadron and remains as such here, with the big ‘twist’ being that the Bruce Wayne portion of his character, the successful entrepreneur Kyle Richmond, is now black instead of white. He still knows all the necessary martial arts skills and has the money and savvy to utilize a vast array of hi-tech weaponry, yet now a great deal of his actions are based on preventing racial hate crimes as a result of his parents being murdered in one many years ago. This is not the sort of thing that creeps up a great deal in the origin stories of most superheroes but as a part of the grittier Supremeverse it worked very well. The deeper Nighthawk fell into the murky depths of the criminal underworld that he was trying to eradicate, the more militant his actions became and the more paranoia began to get a stranglehold on his fragile personality. There are no teenage sidekicks here. No patented Shark Repellant Bat Spray, no nipples on the costume, no wonky satellites in space… This Nighthawk is in Sin City more than Gotham City. Well, it’s actually Chicago but you hopefully get the point. If you do then the joke is on you because once the characters are shifted over to Marvel Knights it’s unlikely that this sort of story will be able to continue in such a fashion. While Hyperion is off tangling with government agents in the Arctic, Nighthawk is out on the streets in the south and west of the Windy City having been given free reign by the Deputy Mayor to clean them up in his own R-rated manner. It’s working rather well in this mini but it does spoil the enjoyment of the story to know that this is the final stand of the potential the MAX line had to offer the series.
The villain of the piece is rather self-explanatory if you take a look at the not-so-subtle story title for this issue. His name is Whiteface, which continues the artful skill of avoiding subtlety at all costs. Unlike the distinguished competition’s ADD afflicted version of the character however, Whiteface (real name Steven Binst) is near-catatonic and has far more in common with Rorschach when it comes to deriving enjoyment from his violent outbursts. Since his escape from his correctional facility thousands of junkies all over the city have died due to the supply of poisoned drugs that has hit the streets. The nature of the victims doesn’t exactly have the authorities in any great rush to solve the case, so Nighthawk is left to his own devices. Things got rapidly worse in the previous issue though, when Whiteface managed to make a gaseous version of his poison and used it to blow balloons at a children’s birthday party whilst disguised, unsurprisingly enough, as a clown. Dead junkies are one thing but dead children are quite another, particularly when one of them is the son of the Mayor, whose wife was also killed in the attack.
That’s where we are so far and, naturally, the Mayor doesn’t take these developments very well at all. Grieving after such a tragic event is only to be expected but he takes it to extreme lengths and, after urging Nighthawk to kill Whiteface because he cannot, he takes his own life in a shockingly public manner. Nighthawk, however, is already well on the case and after some intense interrogation and with the assistance of an unrealistically accurate G.P.S. device (i.e., it works) he manages to track down Whiteface in the apartment of the dealer the he has killed in order to sabotage his incoming drug shipments. It doesn’t end well for the ol’ Hawk of course because, well, there are two more issues to come. It certainly doesn’t help that the Marvel curse of inappropriate covers strikes again. They have a tendency to spoil important plot points or give away the ending to the book whenever the covers try to branch out from the usual ‘stock footage’ syndrome and that’s exactly what happens here. There’s nothing bad about the artwork whatsoever, but it certainly wouldn’t have hurt to have a more innocuous piece that hinted at the story contained within without necessarily compromising it, such as taking something from the rooftop interrogation scene.
Anyway, that’s pretty much it for SUPREME POWER: NIGHTHAWK for one more month. There isn’t a great deal to comment on in specific with regards to this issue because it is another one of those patented decompressed six-issue stories that Marvel seems to be so keen on and that the Supremeverse books have specialized in. Luckily, unlike the DOCTOR SPECTRUM mini, this one is actually well-crafted and has a coherent story that explores the setting the character lives in and gives him the chance to get involved in the action. Also, unlike SUPREME POWER: HYPERION, it could stand very well on its own as a self-contained tale of explicit superheroics in a realistic setting without any prior knowledge of its parent title. It will also probably make a perfectly acceptable graphic novel once the collected edition is released, yet now that the chance of similar sequels has been greatly diminished the entire concept behind releasing a story such as this seems rather misguided.
