Broken Frontier

It’s the penultimate day of my super-hero survey, but today I’m reviewing one I’ve been excited about for a couple days now. The webcomic is Union der Helden – or Union of Heroes – and its three webcomic rarities all packed into one box – a German super-hero live-action webcomic.

The webcomic – translated into English – opens up on a standard lovable loser named Marc, who finds a mysterious stranger cooking an omelette in his kitchen and informing him of the existence of parallel universes. In an alternate dimension, Marc’s counterpart is a super-hero named Erzengel – one who recently disappeared. So the mysterious stranger discovers that by transporting Marc to his world, he can bestow Erzengel’s metal-based powers onto Marc. And that’s as far as we’ve got.

In twenty-six pages, we’ve seen only the tip of the iceberg of what we typically see in most super-hero webcomics. We’ve been introduced to the premise, the protagonist, the mysterious stranger and seen a small demonstration of his powers. They are all, for the most part, well-executed. None of the effects seem cheesy and overdone – in fact Marc’s hand merging with a bookshelf looks exceptionally realistic in the strip.

On the other hand, there’s still a lot we haven’t seen – such as other super-heroes, their powers and their adversaries. Union of Heroes has trodden carefully and cautiously through the first twenty-six pages, but now its time to up the ante. The webcomic will need more wow and wonder if it is too survive.

Overall, creators Eric Wünsche and Arne Schulenberg have done a great job on the origin of Union of Heroes – it’s everything else which lies ahead of them. Their goal – of bringing superheroes to their native Germany – is an exciting one, and I can’t wait to see the world they make for their hero Marc. But in order to do so, they first have to get Marc out of the pedestrian apartment and into the exciting and eponymous Union of Heroes. You don’t see live-action webcomics everyone, and I have a pretty good gut feeling about this one.