Irredeemable vol. 3

So we’ve seen what the Plutonian was like before he turned bad, the circumstances that led up to it, and the incident that pushed him past the point of no return.  The question for this third volume of writer Mark Waid and artist Peter Krause’s “Irredeemable” is “Where do we go from here?”  Fortunately Waid has some answers, starting with seeing how the hero formerly known as Charybdis reacts to gaining a massive power boost after the death of his brother.  After giving the Plutonian a massive beatdown in the last volume, he thinks that the worst of this crisis is over, but his increased power levels (and the arrogance that comes with them) only makes his teammates wary of his actions.  The rest of the world is similarly not reassured after he freaks out in front of a news team after their visible lack of gratitude.

As for the Plutonian himself, he takes this volume to lick his wounds while we get to see what drives him in his new outlook on life.  Interestingly, he’s driven not by any petty supervillain desires like world domination, but by a desire to understand why he was so feared by the people he wanted to protect.  The answer is clear to the reader on the page, but it’s thoroughly believable that the Plutonian wouldn’t be able to see it in his actions.  It doesn’t help the inhabitants of this world that the Plutonian is now being manipulated by his greatest antagonist, but it makes for great drama for the rest of us.

Holding the series back, as usual, is the art from Krause.  I’ve said before that his work here is generally pretty competent, but it lacks the style and flash needed to set it apart from other superhero titles.  Things take a step down in this volume as there are a number of panels where characters adopt unnatural looks and poses that take the reader right out of the story.  Artist Diego Barreto takes over on parts of three of the issues collected here and he’s an improvement.  I wouldn’t say his style is particularly distinctive, but there’s a clean, uncluttered look to his art that I appreciate and his characters look more natural than Krause’s.

While this series was founded on the idea of “What happens when Superman goes bad?” volume three shows that there’s still life to the story now that it has answered the obvious questions.  It may not have art that matches the quality of its writing, but “Irredeemable” is still a good read that’s going in some interesting directions.