I wasn't sure what to expect and this book really delivers. Tim King have us a superhero story grounded in the real which is hard to pull off. Definitely, one of my fav reads this year.

I might have even gone five stars for this, except that DC's preview issue via NetGalley only collects the first 10 issues of the series, so it isn't complete. It ends at a pretty huge cliffhanger (I won't say more--if you're reading this in single issues, you're probably aware of what I mean) and...that's it. What the what? Why send this out in this form? If you want to whet people's appetite, send out a collection that collects the first half of the story or something. What is here is great. The artwork, the story that combines the mundanity of married life with cosmic battles, the human angle. But it doesn't wrap up, darn it! Now that I think about it, DC pulled something very similar with the Dark Knights Metal volume they offered previously via NetGalley. Even now, I have no idea how that story actually wrapped up.

This trade paperback collected issues 1-12, and it was better than expected! I haven't been really excited about the DC Universe in a while, and there is definitely a learning curve in this collection, which threw me for the first issue or so. Not being familiar with the characters, it was a bit jarring to be thrown in to the middle of their story. Still, it got there with all the necessary panache of an unreliable narrator (and I do love an unreliable narrator). As is often the case for me, I enjoyed the personal family issues bits much more then the fight/war scenes, but the two were blended seamlessly in several places, which made for a story line that didn't make me want to skim over chunks of pages.

I think if you're not reading this, you are missing one of the best, Period.
King used the best of Kirby, made sense of the bounty of ideas, even made Funky Flashman relevant. I read Kirby's Mister Miracle as the issues came out at the drug store. (Yeah, I'm old.) I felt this book respected the past and yet was completely modern.

I'm anxious about "where this book is headed" in terms of representations of mental health... But I am a fan of this author and will follow them through the end of the series.