“With great power comes great opportunity.” That’s not quite how the saying went that brought Peter Parker to being such a role model to the super hero community, but it’s the advice that we read in the first issue of Alpha: Big Time. The problem here though is it’s not exactly Spider-Man giving him advice. I’ll get to that in a minute though. First let’s step it back a bit when Spider-Man previously had made some amazing new particles that turned a young kid into Alpha, one of the highest powered heroes to date.
The artwork int he first issue threw me off having been done in a different style from his Spider-Man appearance but I really feel he looks a lot better now. The backgrounds looks great, and the character looks to show more emotion are well done. But I’m not fully sold on his uniform quite yet. I wasn’t initially either but we’ll see if that evolves with the series.
Alpha had the ability to do amazing things and his power was growing. The only problem with Peter’s creation is that this young hero didn’t have a code to follow and stopping the bad guy at any cost sounded great, but not when it involves mass destruction and almost hurting innocent people in the process. He finally realized he was going overboard just in time for every other hero to agree that his powers had to go. Peter and Mr. Fantastic found a way to de-power him and Alpha was no more. All that was left was just regular old Andrew Maguire whose secret identity had never existed. Everyone knew who he was and once he lost his powers no one cared.
He had gone from a guy who sat with his geeky friends to the most popular kid in school to the biggest social outcast to have existed. It’s clear from the start of the issue that has been working wonders for his self esteem. Also while he is ‘de-powered’ his abilities aren’t actually gone they are just switched off which is apparently being monitored by visits to Horizon Labs by Peter.
The problem right now though is for anyone following Spider-Man you’ll know that Peter isn’t exactly himself at the moment. That being said ‘Peter Parker’ decides to give him his powers back, at 10% of what they were in order for him to learn control. Right after Alpha leaves in pure glee we get a flash of ‘Peter’s’ thoughts and Doc Ock has plans for Alpha of his own. Clearly we’re being teased about where the story is going to end up going but I have no idea what that well be. Clearly though Alpha getting his power back isn’t going to be for the betterment of all.
This is a chance for Alpha to get redemption for his first screw up and he instantly goes off trying to do good. He’s made mistakes and he feels that he is done with them. Until the last couple panels of the issue that is. I feel that this screw up may be just a little bit larger than what we’ve seen by him so far.
It’s the second new issue this week with a teenage character set to be the main hero. I’m not fully sold yet as I strongly disliked Alpha in his premiere in the pages of Spider-Man. I won’t lie that I want to see what the consequences of what happen on the last 2 panels in this book are and also what Doc Ock (Grr I mean Spider-Man) has up his sleeves for the boy. I’m going to give this a tentative 4 stars with how much my interest has peaked but it’s going to have to pull some amazing punches to keep me this interested for it as an ongoing series.
Writer: Joshua Hale Fialkov
Cover Artist: Humberto Ramos
