A very interesting take on what having superheroes might actually be like. Told in sort of an "After Action Report" style in the wake of government created super beings unleashed upon the world. ( )

Dernier volet de la trilogie sur les surhommes de Warren Ellis, celui-ci est le plus ambitieux et le plus dévastateur, sans pour autant n'être qu'une succession d'affrontements apocalyptiques. Toujours aussi cynique, il extrapole à partir d'éléments communs à la littérature super-héroïque des 5 dernières décennies et construit un avenir sombre construit sur des idées de grandeur. Fascinant et déprimant en même temps, peut-être parfois un peu pompeux, mais d'une intelligence rare. ( )

Ellis pulls it off again. This is insanely sane. It's unthinkable and yet the whole idea of governments working on "superhuman" projects that will go wrong and end up destroying the world is probably real enough to be something to get people worrying that it could happen.

The art is great, the ideas are original and it doesn't pull any punches.

At first I thought the way of telling the story was kind of lame but it grew on me and the guy telling the story was hilarious. ( )

In Supergod Warren Ellis has updated most of the pieces of the Cold War superhero fable The One by Rick Veitch, and put it in the multilateral world of 21st-century geopolitics. So, it's not really so very novel, although it pokes bloody, singed fingers at the usual holes in modern superhero narratives: Wouldn't people worship superhumans? Wouldn't superhumans find that their due? Would they really serve the status quo?

Garrie Gastonny's art is up to the task: there are a number of full-page and dual-page panels that look like proper devotional art. The depiction of Dajjal (an Antichrist engineered by Western military contractors in Iraq) is particularly inventive and effective.

Ellis has a considerably bleaker view of the outcome than Veitch did, but to be fair, the planet has gotten a lot more screwed up since the end of the Cold War. In Supergod, Ellis dispenses with the rosy deus ex machina elements from The One, and tells the reader from page one that civilization has gone completely belly-up as a consequence of superhuman-powered catastrophes. The retrospective framing of the story allows for some sardonic humor as well. The whole storyline has a sense of grudging inevitability that can make you wonder whether a scenario like this -- if perhaps a little less colorful -- isn't actually in the cards.