Review by Frank Plowright

Jane Ito is the writer and artist of a comic called The Unbelievable Unteens. They’re her creation, and popular enough to have cosplay equivalents, but when one of her characters walks through the wall into her room they eventually manage to convince her the Unteens were real. She’s been channeling their adventures for her comic, but the memory of them has been obliterated. She was once Strobe and she’s seen on the sample art with Jack Sabbath, both recruited by a millionaire benefactor to make the world a better place.

The amnesiac superhero’s not a new plot, and Jeff Lemire’s treatment of present day events as Jane is reawakened has some pathos and resonance as it undermines Jane’s world and prompts a mission to get the old gang back together. However, pages of the Unteens a decade on from their superhero days are separated with pages from their teenage prime. These are purposely overwrought, emotional angst amplified to prompt schisms within the team. There’s a reason beyond being an X-Men pastiche, but poor superhero comics are poor superhero comics even if deliberately intended as such, and while a scene or two might have worked, Lemire can’t resist the temptation to flood the story with such pages.

Tyler Crook draws both the adult and teen Unteens very nicely, revealing a hitherto unsuspected talent for simple superhero art, perhaps in the style of Bruno Premiani. There’s greater depth, though, to the pages in which the adults reunite, painted in dark watercolours and offering more subtle emotional responses.

Lemire follows a relatively predictable path until the final pages, which are the best of the story. He’s attempting to reconfigure the love his younger self had for simpler superhero comics, but can’t pull himself far enough away to supply greater sophistication.