Project Superpowers: Blackcross
Golden Rage
Release Date: OUT NOW!
Publisher: Dynamite Entertainment Writer: Warren Ellis Artist: Colton Worley
After his
impressive reinvention of Moon Knight last year, Warren Ellis has turned his attention to some even more obscure heroes. Branching out from Dynamite’s Project Superpowers series, Blackcross brings together a disparate group of Golden Age characters that were originally published by defunct companies such as Nedor and Fox Comics, but whose rights are now mostly in the public domain.
With the main protagonists initially unaware of their true identities, a passing knowledge of who they actually are will help to clarify the finer nuances of what unfolds. Evoking the quirky, claustrophobic spirit of Wayward Pines or a less snow- bound Fargo, the story takes place in the town of Blackcross, which is rocked by the arrival of a supernatural serial killer. Opening things with a scene of a naked man setting himself on fire before walking into a lake and disappearing, Ellis ratchets up the tension from the first few pages and never lets up. Casting Lady Satan as a fake psychic medium is a masterstroke, while Robbie Benton, aka the Black Terror, is reborn as a pharmacist with a dark past.
With Ellis’s script meshing perfectly with Colton Worley’s moody art and Morgan Hickman’s sombre colours, Blackcross makes a refreshing alternative to this summer’s more bombastic event books. But at only six issues long, the downside is that, like Moon Knight, it will be over far too soon. Stephen Jewell Some of Nedor’s early Black Terror stories in the 1940s were written by Patricia Highsmith, before she became a novelist.