I'm mixed on the artwork in Superb V1, along with the plotting/pacing of the story. Also, I had an issue with Jonah's character design (a lead with Down Syndrome who you couldn't tell has Downs just by looking at him).

'Superb Vol. 1' from Lion Forge Comics is a collection of two complete stories: one from the present, and one that goes back to the event which created the costumed folks in the first story.

The events in the second story tell of an asteroid that is going to hit the Earth and the astronauts who break it up. The problem is that these fragments do hit the planet and cause things to happen to people. One of those people is Jonah Watkins, who finds himself with strange powers. He likes to dress up as a hero named Cosmosis, but there is a government organization named Foresight that would like to stop him. His best friend Kayla Tate's parents are in Foresight, and Kayla may have secrets of her own to hide.

I wish the second story had been first, but really, it's a rehash of events from the Noble series. Based on the cover, I was hoping for better art than I saw inside the book. It's mostly pretty dismal with some increases in quality.

I like idea of a cosmic event creating powered individuals, but I feel like it's been done better elsewhere.

I received a review copy of this graphic novel from Diamond Book Distributors and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this graphic novel.

It is very good to see a book with a variety of teens as heroes, especially ones with all kinds of capabilities. It is a nice break from the everyday and sameness of traditional superheroes. I hope this book starts a new tradition. I think this will appeal to fans of Riri, Kamala, Miles and maybe even the Princeless series. It is also a great coming of age story.

Superb is a fast-paced read that doesn’t necessarily go in the directions you’d expect from a typical hero comic. It’s interesting to note that the creators worked with the National Down Syndrome Society to ensure they crafted an accurate portrayal of an individual with Down syndrome. And even though the main characters are teens, this is not written specifically for a young audience. Not surprisingly, given David Walker’s involvement, the story has a bit of a Luke Cage feel to it (which is a good thing). No, it’s not highly original or a very deep plot, but it’s generally engaging, keeps you interested and flows well, plus there’s some really good art in the first few issues (I’m not a fan of the art from issue 4 onward – the different look affected the tone of the story).

This comic is about people who mutate or evolve with superpowers. The government, while trying to stop incidents of death from happening, begin to round up and imprison people they find with these abilities in order to create a superpowered army.

This story features a boy with Down syndrome and well as several poc which is always a plus for a comic. While I think that is a major plus and that the characters have individual voices, there were a lot of flaws for me. It's fun and interesting and has good pacing, overall I could see recommending this to certain people. But it wasn't for me.

I had trouble rooting for anyone and I think that stems from not understanding the stakes. We're told that the enhanced children are a threat and that the government wants to use to them to protect themselves. But what's confusing is from what. They talk about it like they only mean protecting the city from 'outside forces'. Jonah, while he has his mother's death as a possible motivation, lacks any serious conviction. Why is a breaking into the lab, why is he running around helping people--have we seen him helping people?

If details don't bother you this can be a fun read. It just really wasn't for me.

This book is kind of a mess. One of the main characters is supposed to have down syndrome, which actually sounds pretty groundbreaking. However, the art and storytelling were so poor, I had no idea until halfway through the book when his dad tells the police he has down syndrome. I was totally floored. I even flipped back and looked at the art and storytelling again. Nope, no other indication until I got to the end of the book and saw some concept art.

There is an attempt at world building, but it is so all over the place that it just left me confused. Foresight is established as an evil corporation that is taking into custody kids who have powers. But then they are supposedly trying to create a team of heroes out of these kids which we never see. It's also alluded to that Foresight is brainwashing kids. And then there are boxes full of dead bodies just lying around. The whole thing is just a hot mess.

The world was changed by a meteor shower. People now have powers, and since one person took out a large amount of the population, screens have been set up to find out who exactly has powers to keep everyone safe...at least, that's what the majority of the population thinks.
Some of the people who have powers of strength or speed, though, aren't being caught by the screening process, or being caught in the late stages of it. There's also a rogue hero going around saving people, and the powers that be really want to find this individual.

The story: I found the story intriguing, with just enough of a back story to understand everything. I liked the different characters and how people who are often overlooked were on the side of the rebellion. (Trying to keep the super powers out of the hands of the corporation.)

The art: the art was straight forward with strong lines.

Overall "Superb" didn't really click with me. While I can appreciate the story and the characters, I didn't like the art and it didn't really draw me in.

I have mixed feelings about this comic. The art is not great, which is a statement I feel like I should qualify by adding that in comparison to your average Bronze Age comic, it's pretty par for the course; it's just that we have so many more options nowadays with cleaner lines, bolder colors, and overall a more attractive style. (As a side note: one particular failing of the art is its inconsistency in depicting the face of the protagonist, a young man with Down syndrome.) The storyline is a fairly prototypical X-Men knockoff about teens with superpowers who must hide from the shadowy agency hunting them down, and only really gets going toward the end. That said, it does get going toward the end! And the main cast of characters (Jonah, the aforementioned protagonist, Kayla, a black teen with a conspiracy theory podcast and evil scientist parents, and Abbie, a mysterious figure of indeterminate age and possibly Asian ancestry who figures as Jonah's erstwhile Q) is charming, with promising chemistry. Only time will tell if the story (and art) will continue to improve.

Superheroes come in all shapes in sizes and from any background. In Superb Volume 1: Life After the Fallout, David F. Walker and Sheena C. Howard explore the rise of enhanced teens after an event causes a meteor shower to devastate Earth.

Youngstown, Ohio is now a Level 5 impact zone. After a teen goes berserk, losing control of his powers, Gomez at Foresight starts an intense search for others. It's his goal to find teens with superhuman powers before they lose control. When Jonah, acting as his favorite comic book superhero Cosmosis, is caught on video camera their search for his true identity begins. His friends Kayla and Abbie are pulled into the fray as they both attempt to help Jonah and fight back against Foresight.

This action packed graphic novel is filled to the brim with an engaging story that fans of X-Men will surely appreciate! Life After the Fallout has so many layers that I'm surprised it could be condensed into this quick read. At some points in the story the writing was a bit disjointed, but once most of the story is exposed it's smooth sailing. I was worried I would not feel a connection to this story because it seems to just drop you in the middle of something big. But reading Catalyst Prime: The Event helped me understand the backstory. Now, I'm excited to see where this series leads!
*ARC provided in consideration for review*

Superb is one of a few titles that revolve around a central theme: an Event caused teenagers to gain superpowers by exposing them to meteor fragments. The meteor was blasted apart by an organization called Foresight, which is now trying to identify and control the superpowered kids. There’s clearly something nefarious going on with Foresight, but its full extent has not been revealed.

Okay, that’s not a bad premise for a series. Not a great premise, but it’s sort of a throwback to a simpler comic book era, so I rolled with it for a while. But a good bit of the story, sadly enough, doesn’t make much sense.

Somehow, walking through something like a metal detector lets the school know whether a student is normal or enhanced, when it works, which seems hit-or-miss. How does a superpower detector work? No explanation is given, presumably because none could be imagined.

Students who become enhanced get locked away somewhere. One of the enhanced high school dudes is dressing like a superhero and lifting cars and rescuing cats. He calls himself Cosmosis because, well, why not? At least a couple of other enhanced dudes (Accell and Noble) have titles of their own.

About 6500 kids in town might have enhanced powers due to “the Event,” but the meteor only enhanced kids under the age of 18 because, hey, it’s a comic book and nothing in comic books needs to make sense.

Foresight claims to be protecting the town but of course it wants to control the kids for its own purposes. Kayla Tate, whose parents work for Foresight, is also enhanced but her parents don’t know that because it apparently never occurred to them that if 6500 kids are enhanced, their troublesome daughter was probably one of them. We know all about Kayla from an “official file” that reads as if its author was still writing in crayon. Although maybe anyone with a degree of sophistication fled the government after the Event, leaving only morons to prepare top secret memos to top secret files.

After the teams bumble around long enough for Kayla to get her own superhero uniform, the story changes gears to explain the Event, which I’d already read in volume 1 of Noble, who is another of the new breed of teenage superheroes. So now I’ve read it twice and I still can’t make much sense of it.

This series is just getting started, but it really needs to crank up the smarts if it wants to spark interest. I liked the art, which has a nice retro feel, but improving the writing quality and trying to make a story a bit more coherent would greatly improve my interest in Superb.

Goodreads Synopsis:
After the Earth survived annihilation from an asteroid which was destroyed by a group of heroic astronauts, the resultant meteor shower turned Youngstown, Ohio, into a Level 5 impact zone. After a Columbine-like incident in which a superpowered teenager exploded and killed other youngsters, the Foresight Corporation took over Youngstown to find and regulate any other teenagers with emerging powers.

Kayla Tate has returned to Youngstown because her parents are scientists for Foresight. Kayla has reunited with her childhood friend, Jonah Watkins, a young man with Down syndrome. Kayla and Jonah are learning about each other again, as a mysterious new superhuman named Cosmosis has become the Internet sensation as the hero of Youngstown. Kayla discovers that Cosmosis . . . is Jonah! Based on his favorite comic book hero, Jonah is using the secret powers he gained from the meteor shower to help people and fight bad guys. To protect Jonah, and discover the sinister mysteries of her town, Kayla uses her own powers gained from a meteor fragment to fight alongside Jonah as the hero Amina.

When Amina and Cosmosis discover that young superpowered people are being kidnapped and trained to become Earth’s best line of defense against the possibility of an alien invasion, the two teenage heroes use their abilities to stop Foresight, all the while helping each other navigate through resentment, naivete, and the awkward steps of rekindling their friendship.

My Review:
I received a copy of this from Netgalley and Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review.

I've been reading a lot of superhero comics lately. Superb tells the story of the illegal "enhanced" people, who are immediately taken away somewhere to be quarantined by armed guards when they're discovered. It follows a girl named Kayla, who is always helping out her friend Jonah with his bullies, while she goes to school. Their lives are very different, Kayla always alone at home because of her parents busy work schedule, and Jonah taking care of his dad. Enhanced people are really people with powers, and mutations, and sometimes they reach critically dangerous levels and lost control. That's why the people without the mutations don't want to risk it, although they deal with in an inhumane way. This forces enhanced people to hide themselves.

It also follows a masked superhero named Cosmosis, who can shoot a telekinetic beam from his eyes. This allows him to do pretty much whatever he wants, and although most of what he does is harmless, it still worries the authorities. Life after fallout has dramatically changed how the world works, and I'm interested in learning more about the world and its inhabitants.

Overall I really enjoyed reading this and definitely want to check out the next one.

Here's a link to the book on Amazon.

https://www.amazon.ca/dp/1941302408/r...

Thanks for reading! Check out this review and more at my blog.
(Radioactivebookreviews.wordpress.com)

Superb is part of the Catalyst Prime lineup from Lion Forge. The ultimate goal from this collection of series is to create a comprehensive world capable of competing with DC Comics and Marvel. I’ll be honest, while I had high hopes for Catalyst Prime (us fans win when there’s comic competition), I was very worried about Catalyst Prime, right up until I read Superb. Now I’m convinced they have something. I can’t wait to see what happens next in this world, specifically with these characters, but I’ll take what I can get.
Superb: Life After the Fallout is a pretty apt title for this volume. The small city of Youngstown has been shaken to its core following the events of the Fallout. After meteorites started crashing down to Earth, people, teenagers mostly, started showing symptoms of being enhanced. While this sounds like any comic book lovers dream come true, it comes with some very real dangers. Like losing control and/or being hunted down by a government organization (man, I hope they’re a government organization).
This is the life Kayla and Jonah have been living ever since their school was blown up by an enhanced kid that lost control. Granted, Kayla wasn’t there at the time (a fact that nobody seems willing to let her forget), but that doesn’t mean she wasn’t affected by it.
I really loved this series, the characters (specifically Kayla and Jonah) were compelling, and I immediately found myself caring for their success and wellbeing. Kayla is spunky, and while I immediately assumed she was an enhanced in hiding (why else would she be acting that cagey?), the revelation was still really well done. Meanwhile Jonah is a stubborn, well-meaning kid who’s playing at being a superhero. I say playing mostly because I’m not sure he fully understands the danger he’s in, or the repercussions for his actions (don’t worry, Kayla understands all of that, and does her best to take care of him).
The villains for this series are perfect; they’re threatening while also having the appearance of being official and well-intended. In my opinion this makes a fantastic setup for a long term plot arc, one that could span beyond the characters introduced here (which I’d be fine with, give me more!).
I can now safely say I’ve been pulled into the Catalyst Prime-verse, and I can’t wait to see what happens next. I hope we see more of these kids in the very near future. I’m assuming all of the series so far will get a second volume, but I find myself hoping that this one in particular will (it always seems like my favorites get cancelled with the other publishers, so this has made me paranoid). Here’s hoping!

And... this is the first stumble in the Catalyst Prime series. We're going to get several books in this comics universe, all regarding the superpowers of humans after a meteor strike on Earth was diverted, but only partially. This one is definitely a poorer cousin of the others I've sampled - the baddy is right out of the Basil Exposition school, and there are whole pages of him and the teenagers that just don't sound anything like regular human speech. We're told things over and over again in these four short chapters, too, which suggests to me this is a teen read as opposed to a proper adult book - but that would be derogatory to teens. (It certainly contrasts with the all-over-the-shop prequel, presented here as so often before.) We're supposed to like the comic more because the heroine is of colour, and we're informed (by the book, mind, not the story) that the hero has Down's - this is not evident in the story whatsoever. I did like it for its briskness, and its matter-of-fact approach to the baddies trying to jealously contain all the superpowered teens for their own military gain, but I didn't really find much that was new. The artwork is reasonable, but as I say it's the at-times shockingly bad exposition in the already poor writing that gave this book such a demerit. One and a half stars.

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

I didn't like the first one I read in this series. Normally that would be the end of it, but I read a second one without realizing until the end that it was part of the same series, and I liked it. I also liked this one, probably more than any of the previous ones. The artwork was really good, the characters realistic (as comic book super heroes go!), interesting, motivated, and believable, and the writing was very good. I noted a strong female influence not only in the writing, but also in the art, and this can make a big difference to the overall look and feel of a comic.

I really like the way so called minorities are front and center. Minorities are actually the majority of people on the planet, yet they're so poorly served in comics, TV and movies that it's criminal. It was nice to see that balance being redressed without going overboard. It was also nice to see a character with Down Syndrome (aka trisomy 21) included as a major player. The relationship between him (Jonah, aka "Cosmosis"!) and Kayla (aka Amina). and the awesome Abbie, was choice. It really made the story shine for me.

Each individual graphic novel in this set is a sort of origin story, but its not your usual origin tale; it's more of a development story, which to me is more interesting, especially this one. All of the graphic novels I've read so far run in parallel, but there is no repetition. Each story advances the whole, and the only tiresome bit was the last bit which is the same in each comic. Of course you can skip this once you've read it the first time, and it does mean you can start with any comic in the group without having to worry that you missed something because you didn't start with the 'right one'.

In this story Kayla, already aware of her powers and that she's not the only one with them, is trying to keep a low profile, especially since her parents work for the corporation which is trying to capture, intern, and experiment upon those with such powers. Jonah is less retiring. He breaks into the corporate facility to finds out what they're up to, and he barely escapes with his life. Kayla protects him and this is how the two of them team up with Abbie, who is Jonah's friend. Unfortunately, Kayla's desire to live a normal life is seriously compromised, and that's all I'm going to say!

On the negative side, I have to say that this shtick with the powers-that-be coming down hard on the mutants is really reaching saturation point. Marvel has repeatedly done it with X-Men, Inhumans, and Gifted, and it's been done in other graphic novels unrelated to the DC and Marvel stables, including one I reviewed negatively recently. Frankly, it's starting to be boring. It would be nice to see something different.

In terms of this comic, it's hard at this point, despite having read several of them, to see how the foresight corporation got so much power that it can openly act as a paramilitary force and hunt down these people. That felt a little bit much, but maybe it will be explained. Or maybe I missed it in that first volume I read because I was so disappointed in it!

That quibble aside though, I really liked this graphic novel and I recommend it as a worthy read.

Superb told the story of superheroes, in a dystopian society.

I don’t wanna say too much about this because I really enjoyed throwing myself into this book before knowing anything about it.

I really loved the characters, they were complex and captivating.
The intrigue was all kind of great too, it kept me on my toes the entire time, I didn’t see anything coming...
Once I started this, I could not put it down. It was so good, I’m really looking forward to the next installment.

I really wanted to like Superb: Life After The Fallout, but unfortunately it just never clicked with me. The majority of this can be put down to the fact that when it comes to these types of stories, it’s very hit or miss with me. I really loved the graphic novel I read previous to this – Generation Gone – so I was hopeful, but ultimately disappointed.

I liked the diversity represented in Superb: Life After The Fallout. The Down Syndrome representation is, to my knowledge, ground-breaking in superhero graphic novels. That, combined with Kayla being African American, and Abbie (who plays a lesser role) being a heavier-set Asian, definitely checks a good number of ‘representation needed’ boxes. On the actual representation of someone with Downs Syndrome, I can only assume- given the nod from the National Down Syndrome Society in the back of the book - that is accurate and/or believable. I have no relationships or interactions to draw experience from personally.

I had trouble getting into the first couple of issues in Superb: Life After The Fallout. It felt very run of the mill, and just wasn’t particularly the type of story that draws my interest. The third issue hooked me, though, and I was definitely paying more attention from then on out. The last issue in the volume threw me off because it involved none of the characters we knew. Instead it was devoted to the detailing the Event that changed everything. Including a revelation that – sorry -- wasn’t even close to being surprising.

There was supposed to be some ‘awkward steps of rekindling their friendship’ but there wasn’t, really. It amounted Kayla just assuming they were best friends again right away, Jonah saying no, they weren’t, not really – and then, presto, stressful events bond them together into a somewhat argumentative superhero team (trio if you count Abbie).

The art for Superb: Life After The Fallout was solid. It’s a realistic style complemented by rich colors when possible. The dialogue is kind of bland. I didn’t encounter anything particularly quote worthy. In terms of things that happen within the story, I did appreciate that Jonah was underestimated because of his having Down Syndrome. Like having an extra chromosome automatically means you can’t kick butt as a superhero.

I can’t say I was interested enough in Superb: Life After The Fallout to pick up any further issues, but I am very glad it exists. For children with Down Syndrome, having a superhero that has the same thing that they have must be a fantastic thing. I hope the series brings lots of joy to them.

Superb grabbed my attention quickly. Superpowers are fascinating to me, so I was excited to read another comic with that involved and this one didn't disappoint.

Jonah is a teenager with a big heart and it shows throughout everything he does. He is determined to get to the bottom of what is going on. Not to mention, he has Downs Syndrome. Jonah is out here doing amazing things and I think that is wonderful representation for those who do have Downs Syndrome.

Kayla is also a good friend and supportive. She never tells Jonah that he can't do something. If she does it's because she wants him to think it through first, not because she believes he can't go out there and do something amazing.

Overall, this story has many excellent points, strong women, a superhero with Downs Syndrome, and an intriguing plot. It has left me eagerly awaiting more issues to find out how the story and the characters continue to develop.

Outstanding! Great premise, and a wonderful start to a promising new graphic novel series!

I liked the pacing and feel of this story. Interesting premise, likable hero and heroine, dark dealings by shadow groups, believable conflict between the main characters and a very fresh, modern superhero story.

Recommended for fans of superhero graphic novels, and those who like stories about ordinary humans becoming extraordinary.

A fun graphic novel with a lot going for it. We'll definitely add this to our collection.