Bigger Than Capes

Publisher: Image/Top Cow
Story by Mohsen Ashraf
Written by Patrick Meaney & Mohsen Ashraf
Art by Jeff Edwards
Colors by John Kalisz
Edited by Matt Hawkins & Elena Salcedo

While I’ve not seen a cape, we’re very much in traditional super-powered being territory with Syphon.

Like many comics I’ve received of late, it opens with a murder. A lass called Katherine gets killed, whilst trying to help someone with her powers, by a powered shady bloke with a sharp knife and a sharp suit, who may well be our big bad.

We then meet Sylas, a paramedic with a troubled past, and swiftly he is imbued with the powers of recently deceased lass, and a hint of the history of this passed-on ability. We then get a slightly clumsy montage of him using those powers, which allow him to siphon (geddit) the pain of others to alleviate their suffering. We get some spectacularly cliched monologue too.

At the business end of this origin story, Sylas is done with this shit, does a bit of victim-blaming, and then decides to chase a mugger, getting shot for his troubles. It’s here he kicks off – turns out all that pain he’s absorbed can be sent the other way.

And finally, Sylas awakes patched up from his recent shooting. Who’s patched him up? Shady bloke from earlier!

The artwork is solid, with some nice splash pages and use of lines and colour to represent power use. I guess a choice was made to keep the lettering down to plain text for the most part so there’s not much to comment on in that respect.

Some of the text was cliché city, but I guess that’s allowed and even expected in the genre. The transition into montage was abrupt and initially confusing, and it appears Sylas has raced through an entire relationship in that time, which seemed a bit odd. However, the hints at a lineage to this power and how that might play out has got the potential to be interesting.

I guess this series could go in a few directions – are they going to explore the morality of using powers, the nature of human suffering etc?

Overall – not bad.