GRAPHIC NOVEL REVIEW: Jupiter’s Legacy Vol. 1 – Old Vs. Young

The Age of Millennial, as so they speak: Internet, reality shows, Google, Facebook, social networking, catchy-candy songs, shallow entertainment, political correctness, modern gadgets, and whining, to name a few things that define this generation or so. Scottish tandem Mark Millar and Frank Quitely collaborate once again to explore the 21st century polarizing zeitgeist between old superheroes, and their young adult and teenage super-powered offspring in the first volume of Jupiter’s Legacy.

It contains issues one to five that basically has two stories in one chapter/volume. Issues one to three chronicles the dysfunctional familial nature of the Sampson family possesses, most particularly with its patriarch, The Utopian. Aptly named, he is another Superman-inspired type, but despite his moniker and his uprightness, he fails to understand fully his two children’s acts of rebelliousness and the pressures they inherently possess: maintaining the LEGACY their old folks began, built, maintained, and continued. The story ends in the classic Millar-Quitely fashioned that the new paradigm shift is now complete. The second part deals with the aftermath of the Brandon’s usurping and his New World Order policies with the “advice” or “wise counseling” of Uncle Walter, alongside the life the under the radar of his sister, Chloe, and her husband and son, who also possesses his grandfather’s philosophy of altruism and lost superhero Golden Age adage of Justice, Truth, and Right.

As often in Millar-quese discourse, themes of political and socio-economic turmoil; the widening of gap between the elite class the hoi polloi, with the disappearance of the middle class; the general frustration to the American presidency; and the explicit conflict in perspectives and attitudes between the old guards and the Young Turks, the idealists and the realists are overtly highlighted to justify the fast-paced narrative and plot-turning moments that are the fingerprints of the Mark Millar visual literature clashing views of two old patriarchs, the typical father-and-son-in-your-face-struggles, the “old-is-useless” and “let’s innovate” mantras, and the cliché “the system is not working are not working” are so strongly charged that this working may be a Mark Millar manifesto to this interesting times. But obviously, this work unfinished, and Millar promises to fulfill the promise of reverting to good old-fashioned superhero narrative (with some political-cultural musings) by the time Frank Quitely will be done his ever beautifully portrayals and illustrations nets years or so.

In the case of the Scottish artist phenomenon, Quitely remains highly consistently in his artistically integrity. So painstakingly and eloquently drawn, even the most graphic and brutal moments, he is definitely the top of his game, and I’ll not be surprised if he will be nominated (and more so nominated and chosen) by critically-acclaimed comics award-giving bodies this alone.

This has the features like the latest biographical updates of the entire creative team, some Frankly Quitely art, plus the variant cover arts of each issue. If only it has some notes or sketches regarding the story’s development process, this volume would be a perfect work. But nonetheless, it can stand the tests of times.