Broken Frontier

To everything, there is a season.

Word around Hollywood, last time I checked, was that Reality T.V. ain’t going anywhere. As virulent as the spawn of The Real World and Survivor seem to be, so too are the spoofs and satires. Take for instance Cartoon Network’s Drawn Together or Marvel’s X-Statix. The latest artist to take the latest craze to task is Jason Martin, with his creator-owned comic Super Real: Beyond Reality.

On the surface, it’s fairly high-concept: Super Heroes on Reality Television. Underneath it looks like Martin plans for some good ol’ fashioned satire. Five twenty-somethings get their calls to join a new show for cable network Xtreme Television, XTV for short.

The premise of the book is so easy to understand, one might wonder why Martin feels the need to spend so much time explaining it. The book spends more time in the boardroom than on the cast. It’s a questionable choice, since the stars of our show would appear to be the stars of the book. Even if there are important things going on backstage, it seems the balance of the book gets thrown off for a few pages, particularly for a long scene in the board room between the show’s producer and the XTV executive. These characters may be important, but one can’t help but wonder if there weren’t a better way to "lay pipe." This exposition seems mostly unnecessary.

On the other hand, Martin may be setting up for some interesting political digs, with XTV owner W. W. III, who bears some resemblance to a certain other W. It doesn’t appear that the digs will be based on current events, but it might be fun if they did.

The main cast are all fairly distinct. Each is a misanthrope in their own way: the Overgrown Club Kid, the Body Builder, the Go-Go Dancer, the Model, and the Black Sheep. The book shares fleeting moments with each of the cast members. Martin should have spent more time with the cast members, and perhaps tightened the focus on the board room stuff. We don’t necessarily know the characters just yet, but they do seem intriguing.

The art has an angular, relaxed feel. It’s almost like cartoon characters over the pixellated backgrounds of the first Tomb Raider game, or like Aeon Flux on the set of Whose Line is it Anyway?.

One hopes that pundits are wrong about the longevity of Reality Television. Still, in its wake, and with a little adjustment of focus, Super Real could be entertaining for a season or two.

-Neil Figuracion