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The Plutonian, once Earth's greatest champion, has turned his back on his fellow heroes, humanity and himself. Now a group of heroes known as The Paradigm must discover how to stop the rage of a god before it's too late.
Imagine a world where our greatest protector can hear a bomb ticking a continent away, blast fire from his eyes to melt a terrorist's weapon or blow out a forest fire as easily as breathing. Now think about a life of where you can hear the snickers behind your back anywhere in the world, the constant paranoia if what would happen to your loved ones if your enemies discovered who you were or the day the woman you loved abandons you for revealing your identity to her. The Plutonian is a hero who succumbs to the latter and destroys his city in a rage and turns on his former allies, the Paradigm, who are scrambling all over the world for a way to stop his rampage. From the Plutonian's emotionless massacre of a hero and his family to his creepy sexual indulgences, Irredeemable sets the tone for what this tale will be: the complete fall of a hero. The more the Paradigm prob into the Plutonian's past, digging up his former side kick and searching for his girlfriend, they discover just how little they really knew. With the destruction of Singapore , one of these heroes is compelled to seek out the one being who's ever brought fear into the heart of the Plutonian but can he stop the destruction...or even want to?
Mark Waid's Irredeemable is a great story in the vain of his and artist Alex Ross' 1996 masterpiece Kingdom Come. Waid takes the premise of what would happen if a hero with powers at the level of the Man of Steel were constantly beaten down, betrayed and had just reached a point of hopelessness that being the world's savior seemed pointless. As a longtime Superman fan I liked the idea and nods to some of the source material and from the first page and the Plutonian's first massacre I couldn't stop reading. I didn't want to know what drove a hero to do all these things, I needed to know. This book shifts it's storytelling between flashbacks giving the reader more back story on the Plutonian from the Paradigm's point of view as they try to find ways to stop the former hero and what the Plutonian was currently doing. If you've grown tired of the same superhero formula, this book needs to be on your reading list.
Extras: Introduction by Mark Waid, Afterword by Grant Morrison, Cover Gallery by John Cassaday, Barry Kitson, Jeffrey Spokes, Dennis Calero and Dan Panosian; Ads for Mark Waid's Potter's Feild Hard Cover, Irredeemable Vol. 2, The Unknown Vol. 1 Hardcover and The Unknown: Devil Made Flesh
Written by: Mark Waid
Art By: Peter Krause
9.5/10
Rudy T.
Staff Reviewer
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