Unofficial Heroes NBC Forum and Message Boards

The_Blob · Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2007 12:05 am Post subject: Anybody remember...

Does anybody remember what the J. Michael Straczinski (of B5 fame) comic book series/graphic novels about superheroes was called?

The_Blob · Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2007 4:39 am Post subject:

I remembered!!! WATA!!!

I just KNEW that I'd seen "SPECIALS" used to describe paranormals before...

Rising Stars is the story of the "SPECIALS", a group of 113 children who gained superpowers when a fireball struck the town of Pederson, Illinois in the late 1960s. As soon as the children -- who were in utero at the time of the crash -- begin to develop their abilities, the world takes notice, and the U.S. government begins monitoring them. I have a fondness for self-contained sagas of this type, especially those in which the emergence of "powered" types is well-reasoned and part of a larger, unified tale. It's too easy, in these eyes, to explain away such powers as a "mutant" birthright, and sloppy to allow such characters to come by their abilities in varied and different ways.

Powers takes place 10 years after the events of Born In Fire, in which one Special began killing off some of his compatriots, having realized that the dead Specials' energy passed on to the remainder of the bunch. Long story short (and so as not to give too much away), this bad egg precipitated hostilities between the dwindling Specials and the U.S. government. Ten years gone, a couple of American cities lay in ruin, cut off from the outside world. Poet, the altruistic, brooding loner of the bunch, receives an offer of amnesty from the government, on the condition that he "clean up" Chicago, which remains under the thumb of Stephanie "Critical" Maas, whose split personality renders her highly unstable and -- factored in with her considerable mind-control abilities -- extremely dangerous.

Poet and a small band of Specials take up the gauntlet and infiltrate Chicago, and in short order all-out chaos breaks loose. Straczynski exhibits a nimble hand at building, sustaining and releasing narrative tension, stacking event upon event and plot point upon plot point with unerring ease. It's not an easy trick, and he gets full credit for making it appear so.

After the dust settles, Poet steers the remaining Specials in a new direction, delivering a dramatic speech in which he theorizes that they were all given these powers for a specific purpose -- to change the world. The Specials take up the gauntlet Poet throws down, and their varied approaches toward making the world a "better" place are intriguing, to say the least.

Jormengrund · Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2007 8:13 pm Post subject:

have you found anything online regarding these novels/comics?

The_Blob · Posted: Mon Apr 30, 2007 1:56 am Post subject:

You can buy the complete Graphic Novel for $200 on Amazon or $100 on Ebay.

I have the original comics in out-of-state storage, when I get them, they're getting PDF'd & put onto EVERY peer-to-peer server I can find.

slippy · Posted: Sun May 06, 2007 12:17 pm Post subject:

But, but, that's ILLEGAL *gasp*