Saturday, July 16, 2005

Fun Run for 7/16

Today's fun run is Young Heroes in Love.

Written by Dan Raspler and drawn by Dev Madan, this was a more "realistic" look at superheroes, done in a cartoonish style.

The closest comparison to this fun series, I think, would be Giffen and DeMatteis' work on Justice League International.

The heroes form a club, but their motives are quite human.

Says their leader, Hard Drive, "We want to help, but we’re afraid to do it alone."

The group consists of ditsy Bonfire; muscular dumb guy Thunderhead; shapeshifter Monstergirl; teleporting Off-Ramp; a tiny guy named Junior; ice-powered Frostbite; and leader Hard Drive, a super-strong flier with hypnotic powers.

Hard Drive was quite creepy, as we learned later on.

This was a really smart, funny, "sexy" comic.

Raspler really played well off of the conventions of the genre.

A book I think is like this now is Noble Causes.

I really liked Off-Ramp.

Everyone, share your memories of this late (but certainly lamented) comic series!

2 Comments:

Blogger Mark Fossen said...

This was a great series - one of my favorites. It's also one of the very few that my wife read and looked forward to each month .... YHIL and Strangers In Paradise.

In fact, I was such a fan that at Wondercon in 1997, I got a hard Drive sketch from Dev Madan, and ave it to this day.

Whatever happened to Madan and Raspler?

7/17/2005 10:55 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

It was also great because of the humanity of the characters. They showed the flaws that other heroes don't.

Zip-Kid was a heroine but shrank from confronting her boyfriend about the way he treated her.
Frostbite had a libido that was up for anything and didn't care what other people thought of him.
And Off-Ramp, who had problems trusting people and didn't want to be tied down... not to mention the can of worms he was getting into at the end of the run, with Frostbite.

The characters all had their 'something' that was their weakness. But the series was also interesting of what it didn't have.

It didn't have -the merc with bulging muscles and warehouse full of guns.
It didn't have -the single-minded crime-fighting crusader, who lived and breathed the superhero life.
It didn't have -heroes that all the answers to life's grey morality questions.

Nice was a nice experiment, too bad it didn't last.

kvj00@yahoo.com

7/18/2005 12:09 AM  

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