“Yesterday’s” Comic> Ps238 #0

The other bumper sticker says “this car breaks for supervillain attacks”.

Ps238 #0

Do Gooder Press (November, 2002)

“Student Handbook”

STORY/ART: Aaron Williams

The idea of a school for kids with superpowers is not a new one. I grew up with the “Hero High” segment of the Kids Super Power Hour With Shazam!, which is the earliest concept of a superhero academy I know of. We’ve had Sky High, My Hero Academia, Superhero Kindergarten (do yourself a favor and avoid that one; it’s a disgrace to both Stan Lee and Arnold Schwarzenegger), Hero Elementary, and even DC and Marvel have attempted comics about training the next generation of heroes.

This book at least is a series of short stories about Public School 238 (the atomic weight of the most common form of uranium isotope–apparently someone thought they were being funny), a superpower academy three miles below the Excelsior School. Thankfully there aren’t a ton of references to other supers in comics, but you aren’t getting away with a comedy about a superhero public school and not having a few. Many of the comics are staged as a series of infomercials for superheroes to sign their kids up at Ps 238, but some stories are just day to day events at the school, and the final story is one of the teachers trying to convince Congress to keep the place open.

What sets Ps238 apart from the others I mentioned is that it’s all comedy. No lessons are taught to the reader, no dramatic action (at least in this story) where the students who don’t like each other come together to save the school or the world or something. It’s just taking the tropes of superpowered beings having kids with powers (“metaprodigies” is the term they use for the super students) being trained in control and usage, with one story showing them also mixing with kids in the above school to help with their interaction with normal kids who are otherwise like them. They take a lot of the potential (and hilarious) problems that come up into account, and it’s fun to see what they’ve taken into account. My favorite is the kid trying to take over time and swearing a lot, given a “Barry Ween” chip to basically replace the swears with silly words…my kind of swearing. It’s a reference to a Judd Winick comic I haven’t read.

Overall, this was a fun read. I kind of hope the full series isn’t like this as I’d like to see some longer stories. I have access to issue #1, which plan to review next week. Even if it is, though, this is still worth looking up.