It’s hard to be the big brains of the operation and be practically ignored all the time.
Creative Staff:
Writer: Mark Gruenwald
Penciller: Bob Hall
Inker: John Beatty
What They Say:
In “A Small Sacrifice,” Tom Thumb will make a choice that will cast shockwaves through reality and irrevocably alter the fate of the world. Is it too late for the Squadron to act?
The Review:
After the first double sized issue, Squadron Supreme works with a normal page count here to tell the tale of the group of superheroes that reached their limit and have decided to user their powers to the fullest for the betterment of mankind. With the problems they faced before that caused the world to go past the edge and into pretty much collapse, they’ve now worked a month straight (with time for poke games after meetings) to try and bring things back online. Food shipments are reaching a lot of the country, though some are getting waylaid, electricity is returning to the majority of the country and the president elect is about to assume full power after being the postmaster general just two years prior. With the Squadron having made their revelations before with their identities, they’ve made good on promises to restore order and advance on other goals as well.
Not everyone has forgiven or forgotten what lead up to the disaster though, as we see some citizens pushing back against the Squadron during food deliveries they accompany. With so many people thrown in concentration camps under Richmond’s rule and so many deaths out there as well, there are those that want to have their form of justice enacted. It’s not a real threat of course, when you have people like Spectrum being attacked and “disarmed,” but it does highlight things to Tom Thumb about how inconsequential he is in the field since he’s practically ignored for most of it. Thumb has always been an interesting character when you get down to it, but he’s able to humanize his plight even more as he does what he can to fix things but still feels like he never gets the recognition.
So when one of the team comes to him for help in a more personal way, as Nuke realizes that his powers are getting stronger and he fears that he may have caused his parents cancer, it causes him to take things very personally since he really feels needed on that level for once even if he doesn’t know how to handle it. And getting a request to cure cancer is definitely pushing things for him, though we do see that he goes to some obvious and cliched extremes to try and help. When you’re a genius who has done what he has done, it does get to be much to believe that a cure for certain diseases can’t be found, and that to not try bargaining with the future as a tactic would be wrong. Of course, that would change the future so you know it doesn’t happen, but you have to like the way it tweaks and works Tom over since he wants to help his friend and others, but the cost is far too high.
Release Notes:
This comiXology edition of Squadron Supreme comes with the main cover as released with the print edition and no other extras.
In Summary:
The focus on Tom Thumb for the second issue is a bit of an odd choice since he’s not exactly the most stand out character, but his story here helps to highlight a few other things that are progressing, from the recovery of the country to helping out Nuke with his power issues by supplying him with a new suit to try and contain it a bit. It’s more a foundation piece than anything else since the other characters have bigger roles coming up and Tom can be used to show how they look through his eyes. There’s a lot of somberness to be had in this particular issue because of the cancer side and the state of so much of the country even as it starts to recover and that drags things down, but it’s as it should be since it’s dealing with a post-collapse time frame. Seeing the good that’s being done is a positive, but it’s against the backdrop of so much bad having happened as well. There’s a lot to like here when you get down to it but I still find Tom to be an odd choice to build on this early in things as the main focus.
Grade: B+
Readers Rating: [ratings]
