This book suffers from the same problem one of the iFanboy contributors brought up this week: why the hell isn’t it just an issue of Irredeemable proper? I understand the supposed allure of the #1, but this isn’t exactly the best jumping on point in the world.

That said, the artists do great work and the story’s better than the slow burn we’ve been getting in said proper book. It sets some great stuff in place for the future and it’s reassuring to know that Waid has an arc in mind as it’s felt like the books (both Irredeemable and Incorruptible) were wavering a little.

It was also great to have some solo adventures with characters we’ve met in other books. Honestly, I found semi-honorable villain Max Damage more interesting in his past adventure than he’s portrayed (under the weaker handle of Max Danger) in his own book and that might lead me to drop Incorruptible if it doesn’t shape up a bit.

Really, this special may have been such a shock of good, focused storytelling that it snapped me out of the fog of following its mother book and spin-off blindly, despite it not really going anywhere. We’ll just have to see with the next issues, I guess.