Broken Frontier

Stephen Crowley’s Magellan is a marvel of super-hero originality in the webcomic world. Although there are bits and pieces of the X-Men and other recognizable super-hero continuities laden throughout the work, the webcomic’s mixes an insatiable style with a grounded maturity without draining away all the color which makes superheroes so appealing to begin with.

The titular Magellan refers to Magellan Academy, a training school for super-heroes. The school is not only to teach teamwork among its students, but also weed out potentially dangerous “vigilante tendencies” among their numbers. As expected, Crowley has built this super-hero world from the ground up, drawing on both familiar super-hero archetypes as well as real world instances. The most interesting addition is the emergence of conspiracy theories surrounding the death of the eponymous hero Magellan himself, casting doubt onto the character’s self-sacrifice as well as the existence of his terrifying foes.

The entire story centers around Kaycee Jones (a re-spelling of TMNT vigilante "Casey Jones"), a “norm” student without any outstanding superpowers, and a traumatic experience (and subsequent super-hero rescue) which drives her to be a super-hero herself – something easier said than done when super-powered rival Charisma Magellan makes her life miserable at every turn. But from Kaycee to Charisma, every character in the story is incredibly well-designed and equally well-written – not a character feels flat or wasted. On the other hand, Magellan is one super-hero webcomic boasting mature content – but with a few opening exceptions – Magellan doesn’t overuse this approach to supplant its character development.

Overall, Magellan is an extremely detailed and accessible webcomic for anyone looking for something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue. There’s quite a lot of reading to do in the archives, so Magellan could be the answer you’re looking for those idle summer days.