The Netflix show may have been cancelled, but the comic still keeps the faith! Your Major Spoilers review of Jupiter’s Legacy: Requiem #1 from Image Comics awaits!

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JUPITER’S LEGACY: REQUIEM #1

Writer: Mark Millar
Artist: Tommy Lee Edwards/John Paul Leon
Colorist: Tommy Lee Edwards
Letterer: John Workman
Editor: Frances Mullen
Publisher: Image Comics
Cover Price: $5.99
Release Date: June 16, 2021

Previously in Jupiter’s Legacy: Chloe and Hutch have gotten married and had more children. The superheroes are working in harmony with humanity and creating a perfect world. But all is not well in the Garden of Eden as the Sampson family gets ripped apart and the secrets of the mysterious island begin to be revealed.

MANY YEARS LATER

Jupiter’s Legacy: Requiem #1 picks up where the last series left off, with the new Lady Liberty and Skyfox marrying and living happily ever after… for about eight years. (Millar even lampshades this with “Of COURSE, it didn’t $#&@ing last.”) Smash-cut to the year 2051, where Las Vegas is obliterated, Tokyo is inundated and unexpected storms strike around the globe. Someone has hacked the weather control systems, and even the Utopian finds himself spread thin trying to bring it down. In New York, his brother Otto is holding a protest to demand justice for Uyghur Muslims, only to have big brother arrive and fight off another attack. The whole thing turns out to be a teenager hacking the system(!!), making Utopian wonder if the new era is going to last. Lady Liberty has gone missing for weeks, Skyfox is offered 20 million dollars for his old costume, and a psychic journey into the mind of Utopian’s dead uncle reveals that there are still secrets to be had regarding their superhuman forebears.

UNRELENTINGLY BLEAK

I should say that no one in their right mind would expect a Mark Millar story to be bright and sunny, but Juptier’s Legacy: Requiem #1 is so shot through with cynicism that it’s hard to keep reading. There’s also a recurring issue with Workman’s lettering, which has random BOLDING all THROUGH out the issue, which is very distracting, especially given the size of the font. It’s as though we’re being shouted at. The coloring is equally over-the-top garish, detracting from some really lovely art from Edwards and the late John Paul Leon. There are some interesting plot points introduced in this issue, but jumping forward another generation to show that nothing much has changed and that the world is still a crapsack feels like it undermines the ending of the previous volume. On the one hand, I want to see what comes next, but on the other hand, it feels like we’re rolling things back in order to get more comics out to coincide with the Netflix show. It all feels a bit mercenary.

BOTTOM LINE: THIS BOOK IS NOT FOR ME

That said, generational drama and people not learning from the past are staples of this book (and all Millar works, honestly), meaning that Jupiter’s Legacy: Requiem #1 fits with all that has come before, and the parts that work do make me want to come back next time, but problems with storytelling, coloring and lettering made it hard to get there, leaving the book with 2.5 out of 5 Stars overall. It’s a brave new world with all-new conflict, and that should be of interest to fans of Millar and of Jupiter’s Legacy, especially with the implications of untold mysteries around the heroes’ origins.

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