Advance Review: ‘E-Ratic’ #5 Brings Down The Curtain With Originality, Style And Wit

Kaare Andrews’ coming-of-age teen superhero series comes to an end with this week’s E-Ratic #5, but it’s been a fun and energetic ride along the way. Mixing old-school superhero conventions with new school sensibilities and contemporary social problems has created a great new take on an old favourite; the troubled teen hero. And all done with a style that can be both realistic and exaggerated and verging on cartoon-like in its execution. Great stuff!

It’s the night of the big game and our hapless hero, Ollie, and Kirsten –  his, kinda, partner-in-crime – are taking in the game in which his older brother is playing. All the while his even more hapless alcoholic mother seeks solace in the bottom of a bottle rather than watch her eldest tear up the field. And it’s at the big game that E-Ratic’s arch-nemesis, and school Principal, makes his stand.

The mixture of teenage kicks, super-heroics, a humorous script that delivers on the action while also delivering a satisfying conclusions, works really well in capturing that youthful energy so well embodied in the likes of Spider-Man; the original hapless hero.

Of course, the comparisons to Spider-Man are purposeful. In E-Ratic’s origin and first adventure we are given a superhero for today. Representing the youth of today in the same way Parker did back in the ‘60s. The distance we’ve come seems vast, but in many other ways there is a closeness across the decades too, and  similarities. But, girl problems don’t seem to be one of them. Not for Ollie Lief.

E-Ratic certainly brings a much needed shaft of light to AWA’s new shared universe and I do hope this isn’t the last we’ve seen on E-Ratic. Or Kaare Andrews on this particular character. A great, fresh addition to AWA Upshot and another great example of comics being fun from cover to cover and issue to issue across this entertaining first series.

E-Ratic #5 is out Wednesday 28th April from AWA Upshot