Written by Steve Orlando
Art by Patrick Piazzalunga
Published by AfterShock Comics
One of the very fun things about comic books is how you can recombine and absorb any genre and call back to any number of previous stories across all media.
But when you recombine them, you can wind up with something altogether fresh. That’s how I look at Project Patron.
Steve Orlando, with his long career writing superhero stories, thinks: What if Superman fights Doomsday and dies, but the world’s governments agree to hide his death and keep a fiction of him alive?
How? Use comic book science and build a drone that replicates his powers, of course. Then what if that Superman drone is operated by a team of elite pilots, like the Voltron Force or the Jaeger mechs in Pacific Rim?
But what if a wealthy, James Bond villain found out that secret and killed a member of that elite squad?
Guess what? You’ve got a story. Rename Superman as the Patron, and the Doomsday monster as Woe, and you’re off to the races.
Issue #4 opens with the surviving members of Project Patron uncovering that Matthew Mammon was behind the death of Commander Kone.
But not much time to grieve, because up on the screen is a large monster flying toward Earth. And it’s Woe, who was not killed as the UN said, merely trapped on the moon. Looks like Mammon found a way to free him.
What can they do? One pilot goes into the Patron drone to fight Woe, to nearly fatal results. Meanwhile, Mammon is ready to tip his hand and make his blackmail plea to Project Patron to control the world lest he reveal the UN’s secret and plunge humanity into chaos.
All appears lost. But their new member has an idea. No one of them could defeat Woe, which would take the wind out of Mammon’s scheme. But what if all four of them combined their strengths and piloted the Patron drone together?
Get your popcorn ready, kids! This one’s a confident adventure series giving a different spin on superhero mythos.
