Supreme Power (Fall 2003)

You don't have to know that this new J. Michael Straczynski (''Rising Stars'') series is based on an old Marvel book, ''Squadron Supreme, or that it's meant to be a ''dark'' version of DC's Justice League. Fan trivia aside, this story of Mark Milton, a found-in-a-spacepod youth who grows to manhood as heroic Hyperion, is distinctive for the way it works real-life presidencies from Bush Sr. to Clinton into the paranoiac suspense. The art by Gary Frank is realistic verging on waxy, but its stiff beauty actually enhances Straczynski's ominousness.