So, not to long ago, I spent pretty much the entire review of Insufferable praising the amazingness of the incomparable Mark Waid. At that time, though, I hadn’t yet read Waid’s acclaimed Irredeemable, a work which has garnered 3 Eisner and 3 Harvey nominations. The story is about a heroic, powerful character who experiences a pyschotic break, and he becomes absolutely frightening. He kidnaps people and forces them to reenact his sexual fantasies. He kills former friends and their children in his furious anger. The remaining heroes have to resort to selling out their own morals in order to put a stop to the maniac.

I loved it. I pretty much downloaded and plowed through all 37 issues just because it was just so engrossing. At the same time, though, the characterization was always a priority over the more questionable elements. Waid made you care about the characters, even the ones that were transgressive beyond belief. It was a series filled with shock elements, but they all had a reason for being there beyond the gratuitous use of blood and gore. Irredeemable proved that you didn’t need to have name-brand heroes to make a superhero story compelling (though, to be fair, the Plutonian was more or less a mirror image of Superman).

The superhero comic, the staple of the print comic industry, is somewhat of a rarity in webcomics. There have, however, been several attempts… and some have been surprisingly long running. One has been around for over six years: Scott Story’s heartwarming tale about a man — or rather, two men — with planets emblazoned upon his chest, Johnny Saturn.

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