Herokillers a Violent Parody of Dynamite's Project Superpowers

PROJECT: SUPERPOWERS was one of those cool ideas that had tons of potential: take all those superheroes who've been allowed to lapse into the public domain and pile them together into one cohesive universe. So you'd have the Black Terror, Captain Batle, The Owl -- even Blue Beetle and Daredevil, carefully referred to as "Big Blue" and "Death-Defying Devil" because other companies now hold the trademark on those names if not the characters, and why court a lawsuit, right?

In HERO KILLERS, the PROECT: SUPERPOWERS universe gets satirized in an over-the-top gross-out comedic way. The setting is that the city is overpopulated with supeheroes, having been put on the payroll to put a stop to crime. It worked, but now the heroes have little to do, and are in strained competition with each other for the bounties they collect.

On top of that, many have become major jerks. Case in point: The Black Terror, who bullies his sidekick, Tim, and has him ordering him hookers. When Tim and two other sidekicks, Captain Battle Jr. and Sparky (sidekick to Big Blue, not to Sparkman, which would have made more sense, but that's how it was in the day), stumble upon a well-known evil mad scientist, they take him down together -- only to have their victory taken from them by the Black Terror. Enraged, Tim takes up the evil doctor's ray gun and shoots the Black Terror, disintegrating him. He then shoots the doctor so that there are no witnesses to the crime, and swears a pact with his co-conspirators to never tell what really happened.

But the plot is a little more twisted than that. As Tim, Sparky and CBJ compound lie upon lie (and killing upon killing) to continue to maintain their hero status, they face fierce competition for the Key to the City from Rainbow Boy. Further, it is revealed that the raygun Tim has picked up is actually a teleportation device, sending its victims to a hellish dimension populated by little gross pukeballs. The Black Terror and the mad scientist are working together to open a portal back to Earth, and when they do, all Hell's coming with them.

It's not a bad story, but one hopes that HEROKILLERS more "based on" PROJECT SUPERPOWERS and not truly part of it. For one thing, it's overly slapstick in places, but since it's intended as a comedy, that's forgiveable. There's also the fact that Tim has gone the way of the bad guy before, in a more diabolical fashion, in Alan Moore's TERRA INCOGNITA, which utilized many of the same super heroes.

If you like over the top violent comedy, then HEROKILLERS is probably something you'd like to check out.