Quasar #18

Wendell Vaughn, wearing a tie, finds himself in his hometown without remembering exactly what he's doing there. He goes home and visits his mother and sister, who are excited to see him, but he's unnerved by not knowing what he's doing there or how he got there. He calls his secretary and finds his appointment book is blank for the day. A confused Wendell says he doesn't do drugs, so why does he feel like he's come off a "bad trip"? He has a dream of flying with his Quantum Bands, but his sister wakes him up. He goes down to have dinner, and his mom mentions that a certain 10 year old boy idolizes Wendell for making good and moving to the big city, where super heroes live. Whoah, slow down, comic, there's too much action! The story from there goes in an interesting metaphysical direction where Wendell is recruited by one being, calling itself "Origin," to wipe out another, the "Unbeing." But why is a creative force like Origin so bloodthirsty?

I'm not always a fan of these "meta" stories where some outside force creates superheroes or whatever, but at least in this story, the force is in their world, not outside of it, so there's a bit less looking through the fourth wall type stuff. The story's competently built around the big twist which I saw coming as an adult reader, but would probably be at least a bit surprising to a less cynical audience. I've complained about comics not putting the hero in costume and introducing too much family drama, but even though this issue on its surface has those same issues, it's a lot more palatable because 1) Quasar's confusion echoes the reader's own, and 2) this book doesn't require a bunch of previous reading of the series to explain what's going on: all the information you need is given within this story. So while the actual story revolving around cosmic creator/destroyer figures that make super heroes is a bit divorced from what I like in superhero comics, at the very least it's a well told little one and done story.

Greg Capullo at the time was a pretty unknown, having only done a few What If stories and an Avengers Spotlight for Marvel, but he becomes the new regular penciler of Quasar as of this issue. His line work here is very clean and simple, and outside of a few slightly exaggerated shots of "Billy"'s head, I don't really see much of Todd McFarlane in his work at this point. He leaves out a few backgrounds, especially later in the issue, but all in all his work is way better than what I would expect for a book that Marvel never put any effort into promoting.