Dynamo 5 #1

Creators: Jay Faerber, writer; Mahmud Asrar, artist
Image Comics, 32 pages, color, $2.99
So? It's hard to do original superhero comics that feel fresh after nearly seven decades of every comicbook publisher on the planet pummeling the genre to death. Dynamo 5 is a good example of this. On the plus side, the book is entertaining. Faerber writes a story here of a Superman-like hero named Dynamo who mysteriously dies, but his philandering ways and affairs have resulted in his fathering five youths who don't know he's their father, that they have superheroes, or each other for that matter. Dynamo's widow, a former investigative journo, tracks them down, activates their powers and tries to assemble them into a team. The story has a peppy face and nice dialogue, and the art by Asrar is fun, clear and well polished by Ron Riley's excellent colors. The problem is that for all its fresh execution, it's still a pretty straight forward and conventional superhero comic, complete with underground training facilities, costumes and masks, and lots of uniformed henchmen to fight. Fun as it is, it's hard to get overly excited about it at this point. If it can consistently deliver improvements on the good elements and throw some more surprised into the mix, it could carve out a niche as a solid indie superhero comic of the type we used to have a whole lot more of the in the 1980s. Until then, it's fun but far from essential. Grade: B-