Catalyst Prime: The Event Review

Title: Catalyst Prime
Story: The Event
Characters: David Powell, Astrid Powell, Lorena Payan,
Creators: Joseph P. Illidge (writer), Christopher Priest (writer), Will Rosado (artist), Marco Turini (artist)
Publisher: Lion Forge
Publication Date: May 2017
Available In: Digital

Description: The origin of the Catalyst Prime superhero universe is revealed, as five astronauts take on a suicide mission to save the Earth from an asteroid collision, leading to the rise of superpowered beings.

Review: I am very late to this game, but I've been wanting to talk about this comic since it first came out on Free Comic Book Day. Unfortunately, between getting swamped at work these past two months and trying to stay caught up on my Huntress stuff (which I'm still behind on), energy was pretty non-existent.

With things starting to slow down at work (now that the fiscal year is over--whew!) and I'm finally back to having proper leisure time again, I can finally dive into this story! Since The Catalyst Prime line started only two months ago, catching up has been fairly easy!

I can't really talk about what I liked about this comic without spoiling some major details (especially concerning one particular character), so I highly recommend that you read the comic before reading the rest of this review. It is offered for free on Comixology, so it is easy to access. If you've already read it, or don't mind me spoiling some details, proceed with caution!

Catalyst Prime: The Event is very much the origin story for Lion Forge's superhero universe, but it does a lot more than setup for the upcoming line of books. In a way, it's also the individual origin stories for the main key players--in this case--Lorena Payan, David Powell, Jamila Parks, Evan Chess, Alistair Meath, and Valentina Resnick. There are other characters introduced in this one-shot that will also be major players in the Catalyst Prime universe, but the primary focus is on the aforementioned characters.

For the most part, Catalyst Prime: The Event shows where each of the main characters are in their respective lives prior to the main event that gives rise to superheroes in this particular universe. The Event doesn't just tell us who these characters are. We also get a strong feel for the kinds of lives they were leading prior to the cosmic change to their world and what their values are at the outset. This helps the reader get oriented to them very quickly. Most of the main characters happen to be in the space programme, but you also have ordinary citizens like Daniel dos Santos and a young kid named Jonah who are also set to be impacted by said event.

I would say the character I am most intrigued by in this comic is Lorena Payan who is a Mexican-American entrepreneur and also the character who is at the heart and centre of this universe. Not only is she leading the space mission to stop a meteor from hitting the Earth, but it is her actions in this comic that sets into motion everything that's going to happen to each of these individual characters. The comic also establishes towards the end that she isn't exactly whom she appears to be.

When you first meet Lorena at the start of this story, you think right away that she is one of the "good guys." All the work that she does is aimed towards improving her community and has made significant progress on this front already. Philanthropy is one of the things she is most passionate about, and for the most part, her actions are honest. What you don't suspect are the personal costs of that philanthropy and that's where her story gets interesting. By the time you get to the final pages of this comic, you cannot tell if Lorena is going to turn out to be an anti-hero or an anti-villain.

Lorena can very easily fulfil both roles in this universe. On the one hand, the comic does establish that her noble actions are in part being done to progress her own career, which would easily make her an anti-hero to most people. On the other hand, she also does do evil things for what she thinks is a good cause, effectively placing her more into the anti-villain spotlight. She can literally swing in either direction (or both) because her motivations aren't so clear-cut and is presented with layers. The comic does a very nice job at setting her up, and the fact that you don't expect her to be shady until you get to the final pages of the comic is a testament to the writing talents of Joe Illidge and Christopher Priest.

Two more characters I am intrigued by are David Powell and his wife Astrid, namely because they start out as this happily married couple who are just starting the next chapter in their lives together before "the event" that forever changes their lives. They're also the characters we know more about due to their book being immediately launched in the same month. I'll reserve discussion of these two characters for reviews of their actual comic, but they're definitely two characters fans need to pay attention to.

As a universe, Catalyst Prime: The Event does a good job at establishing the world these characters inhabit and how "the event" is going to forever change their lives. The majority of the characters that front this universe are of varying background, which helps to establish this world as resembling the one we live in, with no one group ever having a dominant presence. This is one way that Catalyst Prime stands out from other superhero universes, mainly Marvel and DC, which are dominated by white men.

On a broader scope, the Catalyst Prime universe from Lion Forge also seeks to compete with both Marvel and DC in a way that honours both publishers' contributions to the superhero genre, while at the same time picking up the slack on their major shortcomings. It seeks to fill a void left behind by past attempts at establishing diverse superhero universes like the Milestone imprint, but it also seeks to create its own legacy.

Like Milestone, Catalyst Prime seeks to address many ongoing problems with diverse representation in the mainstream market in a way that is both meaningful and productive. There is a strong emphasis on putting the spotlight on diverse creators and editors as the architects of this new world, which is one way it is honouring the legacy of Milestone. The way it seeks to create its own legacy, however, is that it seeks to become a flagship line of comics for an independent publisher--Lion Forge--instead of becoming an imprint for one of the major publishers like Marvel or DC.

By being a flagship line of comics for a different publisher, Catalyst Prime has a stronger chance at becoming its own brand with the potential to evolve into a mainstream superhero universe of its own standing. By not basking in the shadow of another superhero universe, Catalyst Prime gets to be in the spotlight, effectively increasing its own visibility on its own merit. It especially affords the line a stronger chance to build the world that it wants without any restrictions from a parent company, leading to a meaningful growth in its readership, effectively increasing its own chances of staying in publication for years to come.

★★★★★