There’s no mythology to Irredeemable. Waid’s not spending his time setting up a universe. There’s the Plutonian, there are the major supporting characters and then there’s everyone else and they don’t matter much. Krause’s job, at times, seems to be to come up with interesting looking characters, who could, conceivably, have had adventures, and then to kill them off and make sure the reader recognizes them.

Obviously, I’m oversimplifying. I mean, this issue has the Plutonian forcing people to act out his sexual fantasies under threat of death (gee, I wonder, has Waid seen Sea of Love?). Krause’s other main job is to make sure every moment with the Plutonian is uneasy. It’s not whether he’ll snap, the snapping is guaranteed; it’s dreading the awful thing he’ll do.

Waid also does a small anti-ordinary people rant here. It reminded me a little of Superman III (in a good way).

Once again, maybe not the best-paced comic book in the world, but here’s where Waid starts hitting the mark. He combines a traditional mystery investigation with his Superman-gone-bad thing here, with the outing of Clark Kent as Superman. Or whatever the stand-in’s names are. Sure, Waid makes it a little more politically correct with the Indian girlfriend or whatever, but it’s still Lois and Clark, only on a bad day.

One has to wonder, did Waid come up with Irredeemable before or after DC offered him the Superman monthly and then take it away almost immediately afterwards.

Because the story makes a lot of sense, this story of an angry god–it’s like if the Silver Age Superman were the Modern Age one and went bad.

I just wish I remembered (or knew) all the other characters’ names. They really aren’t particularly important, just the Plutonian.

Now this one’s what I call a fast read.

Somehow, Waid manages to make this rapidly paced comic book compelling the whole time, even though it probably takes place over five minutes.

His trick, near as I can tell, is to make sure everyone is afraid–he opens the book killing women and children–anything is possible. Where Waid’s skill comes in is in how it doesn’t come across as mean. People get zapped matter-of-factly. There’s no Miller-esque torture scenes.

I don’t know if, on it’s own, it’d be worth four bucks though. Waid doesn’t have a protagonist for this issue, something it definitely needs. The pacing feels forced, like he’s trying to pad it out to one issue, when it’d feel better as two (especially given how the comic ends with the bad guy’s only “real” line of dialogue).

There are also some neat narrative reveals.