So, Avatar finally was able to get it’s bowels moving enough to drop the final issue of Black Summer (#7).

Frankly, I am not a fan of multiple cover, print every other month and charge three bucks for a comic business, but the sad thing is that Avatar is the only publisher that’s pushing any sort of boundaries right now, except for publishers that don’t touch superheroes at all - and unless you live in San Fran, New York or LA, you simply can’t get hold of non-superhero comics on a reasonable basis. Recently I was getting down on Warren Ellis’ because his books were tending to start strong and slowly wash out over time.

But I was harshing too heavy, primarily because I was jonesing for more decent reads. Black Summer ends like all good scifi is supposed to: a harsh reality with a grim mirror. The first six issues can be read as an us-against-the-world because one of “us” went off on the deep end. Similar to Blade Runner, the end of the Black Summer re-cast the entire tale into something else entirely. Superheroes constantly break laws: they crush buildings, illegal search and seizure, and kill people in the name of JUSTICE.

Black Summer is a serialization of two stories: why would people want to step outside the law to fix the world, and how far would they go? For each character in the book, there’s an origin of sorts - not a “how I got my powers” but “why do I want to be a superhero” origin - a telling of socio-political theory each character has to step in and create justice. Everything between “I want to save the world” to “because it’s there” reasoning is applied to each character. And the ever-unsatisfactory plot of “who watches the watchmen” (in a non-Alan Moore way) is also embodied in a character, slightly ham-handed, but a decent mustache twirling villain none-the-less.

But there’s justice and there’s the law and while the superhero power fantasy is important for young people to feel empowered by their passion and abilities, the law is there for a reason. Black Summer reminds us of why the law exists and why power fantasies should remain fantasies.

*Oh, yeah, in a shameless marketing move, Avatar created Black Summer Zombies cover shown above. **Sigh**