Very brief summary to start here. In 1981 tv was forever changed with one of the most original super hero characters. Ralph Hinkley burst onto the scene with a super suit (from aliens) that gave him powers and turned him into a hero. Problem was, he lost the instruction manual and so was learning everything the suit could do blind. The show went 3 seasons.
40 years later AMP comics is doing a 5 issue mini series bringing Ralph back. Older and absolutely not one whit wiser! He doesn’t know how it works any more than he did back in 1981.
The comic is only 2 issues in. And what we know is that Ralph has a son. And his son has an 8 year old daughter. His son hates him because he claimed to be a super hero and then also disappeared from his life. His granddaughter doesn’t know him at all. But she is 8 and suddenly grandpa is here and she embraces that with a childlike zest for life.
Ralph has returned with a mission that he doesn’t understand. Not understanding it makes it hard for him to know how to accomplish it.
Through the first two issues, he has discovered new abilities with the suit. Which is pretty cool. He doesn’t really know how they work, but he is a bit better at analyzing what happened. So when he accidentally teleports, he later replicates the incident and teleports intentionally. The teleport and learning is cool. But he teleports to save his granddaughter from being run over by a truck. Mind you she was only coming out of a gas station with a drink, so it felt like a weird moment. Why was this truck barreling into a gas station at full speed? He teleports into the path of the truck which then crashes massively into Ralph. The vehicle is in pieces (we don’t see the driver, but he surely couldn’t have survived.) But most interestingly, Ralph de-ages for a moment as the suit power does its thing. Surely this will be a thing explained later in the series. I’m looking forward to it. This scene just needed a bit more reason to play out the way it did.
That was pretty much issue one. Issue two focuses more on him trying to rekindle some sort of relationship with Pam and her (as mayor) asking for him to help with a potential bomb situation.
One thing I forgot to mention about the tv show. The suit came from aliens who gave instructions to work with Bill Maxwell in the FBI to fight crime. So the scenario premise of issue 2 hearkens back to this. He declines to help because he has a premonition (suit based) that his son and granddaughter are in imminent danger.
Watching this tv show requires a rather decent amount of suspension of disbelief. Something that carries over into the comic, because … the show. I thoroughly enjoyed the first two issues, even with the truck scene being wonky. I’m rolling this a 10 star review. Because sometimes fun trumps a bad scene.
And there is a Tick reference to Greatest American Hero that is worth watching. I couldn’t find the clip, but just go watch the Patrick Warburton 2001 Tick series. You can thank me later!