One of the newest comic book publishers on the market is getting ready to tackle one of the medium’s oldest tropes: a school-age superhero. The simple premise, however, comes with a few surprise twists, which have the potential to make this an influential take on the tried-and-true concept.
One only has to look at The Resistance, AWA Studios’s first (and, so far, only) stab at the superhero genre, to see just how thoroughly it can play with the format and, even, subvert expectations. E-Ratic is a five-issue miniseries that seems set to follow in that first title’s footsteps – 15-year-old Oliver Leif is a high schooler who has just been bestowed with great powers, which arrive just in time for the youth to battle a cadre of inter-dimensional monsters.
Here’s how writer Kaare Andrews frames the concept:
“But unlike some other teenaged superheroes, Oliver doesn’t have an Uncle Ben or an Aunt May, he isn’t the sidekick to an adult superhero mentor, and he isn’t part of a team. He is on his own, scraping to make ends meet as the youngest kid in a single-parent household.”
There’s one additional wrinkle to add to this already-different premise: the nature of the powers themselves. They last for just 10 minutes a day before they’re depleted – “in other words,” Andrews says, “if E-Ratic doesn’t save the day in 10 minutes, he’s toast.” The underlying mechanics of his super abilities are meant to be a sort of parallel with the social constraints of his life – that is to say, fleeting and unreliable. Oliver is the new kid in a new town in a new school, dealing with new classes and chasing after a new crush, with these new superpowers that he’s just developed and a home dynamic that is challenging for any teenager.
And, actually, it’s the school setting that is meant to be of particular interest in this equation. Whereas comics readers may have had literally decades of experience reading stories about young heroes who have to navigate fighting villains, on the one hand, with the daily struggles of school life, on the other, high schools of yesteryear are lightyears apart from the academic landscape of the 21st century – a time when, according to AWA, “everything is polarized and upside-down and downright unnerving.” Kaare Andrews drills down even more:
“I mean, it’s never been easy, but there are very unique and modern particularities to the 2020 education system that I haven’t seen explored before, I haven’t seen made fun of before, I haven’t seen characters suffer through before. And maybe it’s the Canadian in me, the Degrassi Junior High in me, but anything that hasn’t been explored before is always the place I’m most drawn to.”
Don’t let these distinctions – and this emphasis on modern-day school life – make you think that E-Ratic is a title meant specifically (or overwhelmingly) for young adults, however; Kaare goes out of his way to point out that this isn’t so much YA as it is teen-friendly. “It deserves the same rating as an issue of Spider-Man or Batman,” he says, comics which have a surprising range of storytelling and a surprisingly deep resonance with all sorts of ages and audiences.
E-Ratic will arrive on December 2, 2020, for a suggested price of $3.99.