Superhero Media: Irredeemable

Written by Mark Waid, famous for epic stories in the DC Universe, Irredeemable does one of the better jobs of answering that eternal fanboy question, "what if Superman turned evil?" Rather than a single inciting incident, like in Injustice, the "Superman" of Irredeemable, Pultonian, is worn down over years to the point where he breaks. The other superheroes of the world, The Paradigm, struggle to save as many people as they can from the rampage of a mad god, as they're picked off one by one. The first few trades of Irredeemable performed really well, even garnering Esiner Award nominations, but as it continued, the fans dropped away and it finished with something of a whimper. Rather than continuing on as a kind of superhero "survival-horror", Irredeemable soon morphs into a Kirby-esque space opera before finally becoming a story of hope in the face of the inevitable. Whilst I can see why many fans drifted away with the tone change, I quite like that a thoroughly "Iron Age" concept like "Evil Superman", ends with a Silver Age message of hope and saving the planet one last time. 

 

Yes, Irredeemable is not the great "Evil Superman" story that people are, for some reason, still demanding, but is more a collection of ideas about superheroes that Mark Waid has had over the years and needed to get down somewhere. Probably the most recurring concept, which may be the closest thing to a thesis of the story, is "it only takes one mistake to condemn you", which not only happens to Plutonian, but other characters, like Qubit and Survivor. The answer seems to be that it is the degree of mistake and what one does to makes amends that matters, but Plutonian isn't human and has grown up being abused and feared, so he reacts badly and makes the situation worse and worse. I need to mention that there is a companion series to Irredeemable, entitled Incorruptible, which follows one of Plutonian's villains, Max Damage on his journey to becoming a hero. The two series set up a confrontation between Plutonian and Damage that never happens, the actual finale being more esoteric and less violent. If you really wanted something closer to Injustice, Irredeemable is not what you're looking for. 

What I like best about Irredeemable are the characters, which, in a pleasant twist, aren't merely takes on existing heroes in the DC and Marvel pantheons. Gilgamos is an immortal, winged man with superhuman strength and endurance, married to Bette Noir, a gunslinger with magical ammunition. Survivor wields energy and Volt controls electricity, fairly generic, but not lifted whole-cloth from anywhere. Kaidan is a Japanese woman who uses her family's curse to summon ghostly warriors to fight on her behalf and Qubit can make any machine into any other machine, using "teleportals" most often and being a pacifist for most of the piece. It is the characters that tend to draw me back to Irredeemable, rather than the narrative, though I'm more forgiving of the flaws than most, Qubit and Modeus (the Lex Luthor stand-in) especially, as their journey of needing to work together, but doing so for their own reasons, is probably one of the more interesting "Good Guy/Bad Guy teaming-up through necessity" stories I've read in comics. I feel Irredeemable is better than many give it credit for, but I do think it's imperfect and not something everyone will enjoy.