From Action Lab Entertainment.

Writer: Louis Southard. Artist: Ben Matsuya.

This comic is so good!

Master Molecule is no longer seen as an A list villain, but one of the super villain unions thinks he would be an A list team villain. Along with new recruits Spirit King and Nite-Man these new teammates break every rule on both sides of the fourth wall.

I have read every super hero deconstruction story since the Watchmen, along with most comic readers. But this comic is a reconstruction. Let’s take everything about heroes, villains, their dynamics, their places in society and not only break them up to examine, but then put it all back together and see how those original pieces now fit in different and engaging ways.

Just to start, a super villain union makes so much sense and explains away many logistics of criminals in a fantasy world. Master Molecule is so arrogant, so selfish, such a douche but in an inexplicable lovable way. It’s been a long time since I read a graphic novel introducing an entirely new world and on the final page craved even more. Does Louis Southard have Instagram pictures of his high school notebooks full of designs and bios for all of these characters? Every major, minor, or Master character feels like there’s a six issue origin comic in Southard’s head.

Molecule’s team gets in over their heads so fast I’m not sure if I should laugh or be scared yet. The comic is funny, deep, violent, silly, every possible emotion changes from page to page. He has created an imperfect world. One in which the line between hero and villain doesn’t only depend on one’s actions, but also on what one chooses to keep private.

And what animation school did Ben go to after falling in love with comics? His art combines the rules of comic art with the fluidity of cartoons. It’s not easy to show how the main three characters are feeling when one has glowing eyes without pupils and another is a mute in a full mask, but dammit he does it! I was laughing, surprised, or scared like an innocent bystander to their destructive spree.

I went into this comic blind. No idea of the plot or any twists, and this review is as spoiler free as possible so any new readers can have that same experience. Because of everything mentioned earlier but also because of that one thing missing from so many super hero comics today. Everything mattered. Every character introduced, every twist, every thing that doesn’t matter until it does. This kind of creativity, this passion is how to get people reading more comics.

Stay tuned for a review of issues 6, 7, and 8 coming soon to this very site. As much as I love these first 5 issues, the story gets even better and I gush even more.