Hail to the Kids

 

PS238 #27

This one doesn’t come out often enough, so let’s recap the basic premise. It’s about a secret elementary school, located about three miles underneath a normal elementary school, that’s designed to educate metahuman children in how to use their superpowers. One of the main characters, Tyler Marlocke, is the unpowered son of two superheroes — he gets to attend the school because his folks are positive he’s going to manifest powers, but Tyler has taken up crimefighting as the sidekick of a Batmanesque hero named Revenant.

Anyway, in recent issues, Earth was invaded, with PS238 as a major focus of the aliens’ attacks. Tyler was infected with a virus that would soon cause humans to mutate into the alien invaders, so he was put into a stasis field until he can be cured. Meanwhile, the aliens have caused a cave-in at the school, trapping the school’s doctor, the mysterious Principal Cranston, and the still-unconscious Tyler.

Well, this story also functions as an origin story for Principal Cranston. The stasis field is having a strange effect on Tyler, as he keeps having strange dreams that he’s Principal Cranston — in his previous job as President of the United States. It turns out that the headband Cranston wears is a power dampener, designed to shut down his very powerful telepathic and telekinetic powers. He was forced to wear it to keep from being impeached for using superpowers to gain political office, and that the founding of PS238 was another condition of Cranston’s release.

On top of that, we also get several excellent cliffhanger moments. Will Tyler recover? Is Moon Shadow dead? Is a favorite teacher quitting the school? Future issues will reveal all, I’m sure.

Verdict: Thumbs up. It’s always been very heavily implied that Cranston used to be the president, but the full background is very entertainingly told here.

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