Written by Brian Michael Michael Bendis & David F. Walker.
Art by Jamal Campbell; Josh Reed; & Carlos M. Mangual.
Collection Cover Art by Jamal Campbell.
SUMMARY:
Released by DC Comics (via its Wonder Comics imprint) in 2019, this 160-page hardcover compiles that same year’s Naomi: Season One # 1-6. The teenage title character is the co-creation of Brian Michael Bendis, David F. Walker, and Jamal Campbell.
In the U.S. Pacific Northwest, the sleepy town of Port Oswego witnesses a brief skirmish between Superman and Mongul. As the Man of Steel once did, seventeen-year-old Naomi McDuffie ponders unanswered questions of her own adoption shortly after birth. It’s a normal issue (for a normal teen), as Naomi’s therapist assuages her. Yet, amidst the local excitement of Superman’s presence, Naomi’s suspicions quickly mount.
In particular, she is bewildered why reclusive town mechanic D. (or Dee) specifies the exact date of her adoption. Her rattled adoptive parents, Greg and Jennifer McDuffie, though loving and supportive, are evasive of Naomi’s inquiries. Upon confronting Dee late at night, Naomi pressures the mechanic into relenting as to his guarded past.
Told of Dee’s origin as a refugee/fugitive from planet Thanagar, Naomi is abruptly retrieved by her irate parents. Feeling he can longer keep it secret from Naomi, Greg explains his own arrival nearly twenty years before on Earth as a Rann-born soldier. Opting to abandon his assigned surveillance of Dee, Greg subsequently married the human Jennifer.
Marking sure Port Oswego stays safe, Greg and Dee also uneasily established a détente as interplanetary refugees. Dually investigating an interstellar energy alert one night, Dee and Greg fended off an apparent attack from another dimension. Left behind for some unknown reason was an infant girl that Greg and Jennifer immediately adopt.
Upon showing Naomi his long-hidden Rann spacecraft, Greg gives his daughter a mysterious cube that had been sent along with her. It causes Naomi’s radiant super-powers emerge from within her. More so, a narrative of her birth parents’ ordeal on another Earth is revealed. Naomi also learns of her home Earth’s tyrannical overlord, Zumbado.
Transported to her decimated home Earth, Naomi’s defiant showdown with Zumbado is the beginning of their feud. Returning to her adoptive home, Naomi’s future is now stunningly bright.
Courtesy of Bendis, Naomi returns to her decimated home world in 2022’s Justice League, Volume 1: Prisms (Issues # 59-63).
Notes: This title is also available digitally and as a trade paperback. Though Naomi: Season One’s cover image is taken from Issue # 6, neither the Justice League nor Young Justice actually appear. Only Superman makes a brief appearance. However, the Justice League are guest stars in Naomi: Season Two (along with a brief cameo by Young Justice). The title character’s subsequent DC moniker is ‘Powerhouse.’
REVIEW:
If absorbed as a Young Adult graphic novel, Naomi: Season One is a solid treat for its intended teen audience.
Buoyed by artist Jamal Campbell’s stellar visuals, co-writers Brian Michael Bendis and David F. Walker collaborate on an intriguing origin tale. Still, revelations and red herrings regarding Dee, Greg, and Naomi’s extraterrestrial origins become somewhat muddled. Bendis and Walker’s ambitious plotting, as a result, risks overcooking their new heroine’s ‘last survivor’ concept far too soon.
Even so, Naomi McDuffie makes a fun protagonist to join DC’s Young Justice generation of heroes. Naomi: Season One, in that sense, is certainly worth a read.
ADDITIONAL CONTENT:
Campbell’s inspired full-page cover precedes each story. Bendis pens an insightful two-page ‘Afterword’ to readers. Campbell supplies the three-page ‘Drawing Fire’ (two pages in color; one in black-and-white) as a character design guide.
BRIAN’S ODD MOON RATING: 7 Stars
