The Order

The Order by Matt Fraction and Barry Kitson consists of ten issues.

The Order is a comic set in the aftermath of Civil War, the big Marvel event of 2007. The situation is that SHIELD has decided that every state gets its own set of superheroes to defend it. They have the technology to give people superpowers for a year, this way they can build teams of superheroes for each state, heroes that they train for several months before letting out on the street. The Order is about the heroes selected for the state of California. Because California has many celebrities, the team has celebrities: an ex-alcoholic actor who played Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.?), a charitable sexy actress (Angelina Jolie?), a teen pop superstar singer (Britney Spears?) and a few other non celebrity characters.

Each issue centers around a character, having about 4 pages of interviews to give us a back story on them. Besides the four pages, the issues do involve all characters and the series has plenty of subplots that all reach a conclusion by the tenth issue.

I liked the comic a lot, specially how it highlighted a character in each issue and how it shows a little of how hard it can be to lead a superhero team, as often Henry (the team leader) feels frustrated and tries to get help from Stark, who himself is in charge of 50 such teams, a much harder task.

The comic has a lot of fun over the top action to complement the nice character moments. I recommend checking this book out.