Customer Reviews

Espers

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Ahh, for the days of Epic Comics, when a creator-owned work wasn't all flash and no substance, and a major company (Marvel) was willing to take chances with material that was off the beaten path. In the waning days of the Epic imprint (1986, to be exact), a writer named James Hudnall got his start with an idea for a new series called "ESPers": a team of six covert operatives, each with their own specific mental ability. There's a pyrokinetic and an electrokinetic, another who teleports by visualizing a destination, and yet another who can use telekinesis to both move objects and become untouchable. Several storylines have been collected since that time by different publishers.

This particular trade paperback collects the team's first two adventures. In the first story, Hudnall and artist David Lloyd assemble the ESPers in a very "Giant-Size X-Men #1"-fashion via the daughter of a kidnapped diplomat. She herself has a special ability - to communicate with electronics - and becomes aware of the others' existence while accessing CIA computer files to get a clue as to her father's whereabouts. After the obligatory initial encounters and training sequence, the team jumps between Monaco, Beirut, and Monte Carlo, chasing down the kidnappers and those that pull the strings. Hudnall's writing style would develop further over the years, but this is a decent first effort. It seems that he and Lloyd did not convey as much information on the page as they could have. As a result, some finer points of the team's powers are not presented clearly. For example, one character has temporal control in his immediate vicinity, essentially allowing him to move at super-speed (I'm not sure exactly how that's a mental ability, but anyway...). He uses it in the first issue when he's attacked, but it just appears as if he's rushing his attacker. The action in this scene is not really made clear until the end of the issue, where a text piece gives a more detailed explanation of his powers. This bit is actually well-written and helpful, as are the two others, but I really don't like to go from comic to short story and back. It breaks the overall mood of the story.

In the second story, Hudnall teams with artist John M. Burns for "The Liquidators", a collection of short bits focusing on certain ESPers, as well as some assassins who will apparently be tasked with taking them down, thanks to a familiar face from the first story. Here, Hudnall's writing flows much more smoothly, and Burns' art is spectacular, with excellent line and color. Very well written and illustrated, and making good use of previous events, "The Liquidators" definitely got my interest for more adventures with this team. Whether or not I'll get to them is a different story.