Insufferable #1 Review

Insufferable #1
By Mark Waid & Peter Krause
Colored by Nolan Woodard
Published by IDW

Insufferable #1 should be your new favorite book if you’ve ever been a fan of the super hero genre. While the heroics in this book tie it to a more realistic universe where super powers would seem out of place, it is a book ready and willing to explore the sort of relationships that you can’t address in the spandex soap operas many other books descend into.

This book is almost like a writer’s clinic about what one should do when introducing their series to readers. In the beginning, we are thrust right into the middle of the action, where the nature of the world and the way it sees its heroes are instantly displayed. Galahad, a famous hero more likely to find himself on the cover of a magazine than slumming it in a crime scene, is called out to save an innocent girl from an ugly death.

Nocturnus talking to the police lieutenant.

When his former partner — and the man who trained him — Nocturnus arrives on the scene, we get the feeling that this has all happened before. The scene plays out like an orbit that we have been swept into, with these characters repeating the same pattern while lives hang in the balance. In Insufferable, we do not only have the struggle of good versus evil, we have the struggle of two men tied to one another and how the world perceives them.

What Nocturnus and Galahad share in implication with another dynamic duo only serves as a shorthand to help us fill in gaps from the past, giving us a more solid platform for the series to play out on. We have a pair of men who have been torn apart and are dealing with it in very different ways, and while they are both crime fighters in the same place, they are worlds apart.

Straight from Galahad’s Cyberpad.

Insufferable #1 manages to introduce us to a pair of new heroes, the world they live in, the way they see one another, what their lives look like and how they came to be what they are today, all without ever seeming to shift in time or even slow down.

It’s a slice of the life these characters have created for themselves. It’s a commentary on what we gravitate toward as fans and who puts in the work. It’s a story about people who silently do the right thing and those who puff out their chests like peacocks, loudly declaring how amazing they are with every breath. It’s also a great read.

Insufferable #1: A

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