Plutona #2 Review

Writers: Emi Lenox, Jeff Lemire / Artist: Emi Lenox / Image Comics Kids caught a body ‘bout a week ago! Okay, maybe not a week, but our characters’ evening stroll through the woods was definitely met with a seemingly dead body laying right off the beaten path. And that body was none other than Plutona’s, which craftily mends our 5 students’ provincial lives with that of a super hero that readers weren’t entirely sure was real or imaginary. Well played, Lenox and Lemire. Well played. Issue #2 of Plutona takes a step back from the character development it did so well in issue #1, and uses that leeway to begin explaining the world we’re reading. And it’s a simple yet clever concept: superheroes exist, people know about them, but let’s see how it would be from the regular person’s perspective. Even better, seeing the young person’s perspective, less with strong already-formed opinions on the world, and more awe-struck and unsure about anything and everything.

And for a few young teens, they do pretty well. A misfit group of non-friends are being bound together by this shared circumstance, and it’s interesting to read their handling of the situation along with small insights here and there into their personal life. As mentioned, they’re not much of a “team” – they’re not together by choice – and so they reflect a pretty diverse group. Lenox and Lemire do a good job of highlighting that through glimpses into their home life, and just a single panel helps give readers a little back…