SPECTRUM #3
PAGE ONE
PANEL ONE: Richie’s bedroom, a continuation of the last panel of issue #2. EDDIE, KELLY and RICHIE are in mid-conversation.
EDDIE:
I said, how’s it going, superhero?
PANEL TWO: RICHIE is taken aback. EDDIE is prodding him to give up the goods!
RICHIE:
What do you mean?
EDDIE:
C’mon, man!
PANEL THREE: KELLY and EDDIE explain the obvious.
KELLY:
You were in the hospital so long, we figured it out.
EDDIE:
Yeah! That was your Origin Story, dude! The glowy lights? The colors?
PANEL FOUR: KELLY and EDDIE seem to be inspecting RICHIE.
KELLY:
So what can you do? Fire lasers from your eyes?
EDDIE:
Make solid constructs from light?
PANEL FIVE: KELLY looks excited. EDDIE makes a Dark Phoenix face by holding his phone’s flashlight under it and up-lighting himself with dramatic shadows.
KELLY:
Fly?
EDDIE:
Or are you all fire and death incarnate?
PANEL SIX: RICHIE needs a moment and tries to get them to calm down.
RICHIE:
Whoa, you guys, just…whoa.
Wonderful! I'd been lowkey waiting on something Spectrum related to pop up here. (Spectrum is the big comic pull from Two Gargoyles Comics for me. I need more of this comic and its cast of hero characters!)
Also, can I just say how much I love the friends being honest-to-goodness Superhero savvy here? I know this isn't the first example in Superhero stories (Western and Eastern) to do this. But it still feels like such a breath of fresh air to see it. Them unapologetically teasing Richie with this in a good-natured way comes off quite funny, too.
The only thing that's missing from this scene, from my Superhero-brained perspective, is them openly acknowledging and teasing Richie on going from a (from my understanding) non-athlete/non-athletic male teenager before gaining powers to gaining an inexplicable-yet-conveniently jockular, muscular, hunky build after gaining them. 'Cause that's a trope, too, albeit one that feels less acknowledged in a meta sense (outside certain groups of Korean manwha, perhaps). And don't get me wrong: I love this trope, both for how it follows through on the wish-fulfillment aspects of Superhero/Vigilante characters and stories and also for how it just looks cool and beautiful on an artistic, aesthetic level. (And yes, this includes the types of male hero/anti-hero/etc. builds popularized in the 80's and 90's; I'd like us as a collective to stop pretending we don't love those designs.)
Bonus points for how this scene also does an excellent job of characterizing/re-characterizing both Kelly and Eddie, as well as characterizing/re-characterizing the trio's relationship/friendship with each other.