The Spark

In an unnamed city at an unspecified point in time, Lucas discovers that he is one of the four individuals of his generation granted a generic set of special powers by some mysterious phenomenon known only as “the Spark.” Distracted from his studies by family responsibilities and aware that the previous Spark-touched quartet gave their lives to save Earth, Lucas is extremely reluctant to become a superhero. Forced at last to help save Earth from an infestation of catastrophically inquisitive extra-dimensional scholars, he finds a way to crusade on his own terms rather than the government's. Readers looking to independent publishers for something unconventional and original should look elsewhere; The Spark is utterly conventional, from an origin event oddly similar to the one in Marvel's now defunct New Universe to its collection of two-dimensional stereotypes posing as characters. It is also not particularly well done; the art, which varies from crude to grotesquely crude, does not distract from the fact that this is a completely derivative superhero book, offering nothing new to this now elderly and declining genre. (July)