Not sure if this is where to post this...

[KJ4]

And maybe someone mentioned this already and i haven't found the post for it, but I have to ask.

Has anyone here read "Irredeemable" or "Incorruptible" by Mark Waid?

[jameson (ST)]

Yes and yes, but as a lazy person who fears floppy comic books I wait for the bound editions meaning I'm always a little behind the curve. Good stuff though, Irredeemable is the better of the two but I think that's just the nature of the story.

[Matt]

I've been on a comics kick recently and have all of the published TPBs. I like it but wouldn't say it is great.

[Charlotte]

They say that the best origin stories are the ones you can tell in three panels of a comic book. It's true for the "evergreen" characters like Superman and Batman, but the Plutonian's "origin" - all the things that contributed to him snapping - can't be summarized so cleanly, and in many ways is what the series is all about.

Some of what contributed to his breakdown was his fault - mistakes he'd made. Too often, it was out of his control, traumatic events in his childhood building up inside, and him being keenly aware via his senses how people saw him - an exterior coating of adoration over a roiling pit of fear. Love over top of hate - come to think of it, very much like the Plutonian himself, who just wanted to be accepted by the world and who grew bitter and angry when he slowly realized he never really would be, no matter how many people he saved or how selflessly he dedicated himself to others.

Irredeemable is a fascinating story for me. Even as its main character is killing millions, you still can feel sympathy for him, because of the two unshakable truths of the series - that the Plutonian was unquestionably one of the good guys and he is now unquestionably a monster, and there's no easy out like mind control or clones or possession to fall back on. The truth is, he snapped. He broke down. The world asked him to be perfect, and he tried to be perfect, and he fell short. And left unspoken is the emergent truth - if he fell short, anyone could. And halfway through the series' second year, we are seeing that in the other superheroes as well, the times they gave in to temptation, took the easy out.

So Irredeemable is about a lot of things - but at its core, Grant Morrison's introduction summarized it perfectly: what happens when the best in us is brought down by the worst in us. It's the one comic series I still keep up on, during this self-imposed exile I'm in. I think it's pretty great (four paragraphs later, he said.)

[KJ4]

I pretty much had given up on comics after Marvel screwed things up with their Civil War (and the disasters that followed). Then I stumbled onto Irredeemable and I was actually into reading comics again.

Then again, for some reason, Irredeemable and Incorruptible kind of reminded of Aberrant a little.