I'll be the first to admit that I was a little jealous of Project Superpowers when I first heard of it. After all, I had the exact same idea of grabbing some public domain characters and creating my own comic book universe out of them (so did many others apparently, including Alan Moore). Of course, I could never get the funding together to do so. My name isn't Alex Ross.

Regardless (because irregardless isn't a word people), public domain is public domain, so it's fair game for anyone, and seeing Alex Ross and Jim Kruegar bring these old characters back to life is a great thing. Who doesn't love the golden age of comic books?

The first trade consisted of the entire collection of Project Superpowers Chapter 1, and I'm glad I read it all in one. The art is fantastic, as one would expect. The story? It was ok. The basic premise is that Fighting Yank was tricked into trapping all of his former colleagues into a magical urn in order to make the world a better place. Of course, the "better place" turns out pretty bad. The Fighting Yank is visited by the American Spirit and is told to seek out the Green Lama for help in finding the urn and setting their former allies free. Upon smashing the urn, heroes start popping up all over the world, and the Green Lama sets out gathering them up. There's ultimately a bit of intrigue and an ultimate showdown that concludes with the "Superpowers" taking over New York and setting up shop as the "watchmen" of the government.

The story was good, but it wasn't epic. Considering the stories in other Alex Ross works (Kingdom Come, Earth X) I expected this one to be on more of a grand scale. The use of the urn was an interesting way to bring these heroes into the 21st century, but it seemed too contrived - especially since the urn also altered their powers to make them more 2.0 superheroes. On several occasions, I felt like characters were shoved into the story just so Project Superpowers (the company) can slap them with a trademark.

Which brings me to my ultimate gripe. I can understand copyrighting your material. These are original stories with definitive changes to the characters, but Project Superpowers has trademark notices on the titles and in the credits of the book. How exactly do you - in good faith - trademark something that's already in the public domain? My assumption is that they're trademarking the title logo design and the character design and NOT the actual usage of the names in comics. For example, I'm assuming that somebody could come up with their own Black Terror comic book and call it "Black Terror" without getting sued. After all, Project Superpowers didn't originate the Black Terror name, nor it's usage in comic books, so they shouldn't be entitled to a trademark on it. If they are, one would hope that they wouldn't be as repugnant as to sue somebody else using the name, considering that their claim to it is just by circumstance and exploiting loopholes. Regardless of the actual claim and right, it opens up a shady area of potential misunderstanding with other creators that wish to use public domain characters in their works - especially at the rate that Project Superpowers is jamming more and more public domain characters into their works (even if just for a cameo). Let's hope this isn't some sort of power play on Ross' part.

Whereas Project Superpowers itself was so-so (entertaining, yet not thrilling), and the Death-Defying Devil trade was much of the same, the Black Terror trade paperback installment was absolutely fantastic. Incredibly intense and full of action and mayhem, Black Terror is so over-the-top it defies description. You can tell that the Project Superpowers creators fell in love with the character of the Black Terror because it feels like so much additional effort was put into the storyline in his own book. Despite the hype around the Project Superpowers maxi-series, it's this book that defines the universe as a whole. I'm interested in seeing how things evolve in the Chapter 2 maxi-series, but I'll be waiting for that one in trade as well.

Overall, I think this is a great effort to bring new light to long lost characters.