Broken Frontier

There just aren’t many super-heroes out there in webcomics – at least in the first two pages of Top Webcomics, which seems like as good an indicator as any other. Hero In Training falls somewhere between super-heroes and something else, and the results are all extremely interesting.

The webcomic follows Garth Poe, a normal youth in the city of Ashville – until he is visited by a mysterious cloaked figure in his dreams, who offers him the chance to be trained as a hero. Soon, Garth’s life becomes far more complicated as his trainings begins to progress.

The prologue – in which flustered Garth awakes in front of the enigmatic trainer naked – is interesting although a bit over-wordy. Creator Stefan essentially poses the argument that heroism is a force of the universe which is necessary for its continued existence, and while the argument is lengthy at times, the postulation does make for an interesting premise. Chief among them is Garth’s heroism is more subtle and perhaps more circumstantial than more overt and traditional uses of super-powers. This bold new definition of almost mathematical heroism makes us want to read further.

Unfortunately, upon entering Chapter 2 (Chapter 1 and Prologue are one and the same), your eyes will scream. At the bottom of the screen, Stefan warns us of crappy art which he has not yet redrawn. Well, in webcomics, crappy art happens. Even Stefan’s current art style isn’t as engaging as other webcomics. This is because webcomics are a work-in-progress. And with that in mind, it’s not bad art which bothers me – it’s bad lettering. You can have the worst art in the world on the first pages of a webcomic and still get away with it (for at least a while) if there’s clear lettering – but Chapter 2 is excruciatingly hard to read! Fortunately, this only continues for a five or so pages before improvements are made.

A spot of bad lettering aside, Hero In Training is well on its way to realizing its own epic potential. With great characters and an interesting premise, Hero In Training may not be the cape-and-cowl hero, but it certainly brings a diverse premise to a medium in need of a different kind of hero.