Project Superpowers

Project Superpowers is a collection that updates numerous super heroes from an older time and generation to the "now". It's renown for it's covers provided by Alex Ross, whose painted realistic style is highly appealing to many fans.

Jim Krueger and Alex Ross worked on the storyline. The interior illustrations are provided by Doug Klauba and Stephen Sadowski in the initial issue, while Carlos Paul takes over for the rest of the series.

Project Superpowers is an interesting take on the super hero world. Unlike say, Marvel or DC, as it's a separate setting, it doesn't have to worry about setting continuity. It doesn't have to worry about looking like "the real world."

And it doesn't.

While there are superficial resemblances, wars are fought by animated undead soldiers. Some of the most popular and powerful people of the time, are actually robots. A whole city is coopted by a mystic and his connection to nature that allows him to turn the city into a new green paradise that the Swamp Thing could only dream about.

All told, it does the job well. It manages to modernize the heros through the use of Pandora's Chest. See, there were rumors that evil would be captured in the chest, but only if you captured the good with it.

So one of the heroes "nobly" captures all of his friends and comrades into the "Chest". Not everyone went into the chest. Some are assumed dead. In the time between the "chest" and the current era, other heroes have risen using technology.

Skip decades ahead to the modern times where hey, the world is still filled with evil and there are still bad things happening.

So the chest is opened again and those who emerge from it,  do so in different locations with different abilities in this modern world.

It's a good "time skip" cheat that works here because this is it's own setting. Doing something like this with save, all the popular characters of a particular setting might reek or bad plotting in a larger or more involved setting.

If you're a fan of Alex Ross, the series is worth looking over just for the covers. If you're a fan of the Golden Age Heroes, many of those that are in the public domain make their modern entrance here. It's a fun done in one style story that can provide a lot of ideas on how to bring characters from the past into the current setting.