Super Human Resources #1
Ken Marcus, story
Justin Bleep, art
Jacque Nodell, letters
Ape Entertainment
Review by Matt Jett

Super heroics as a business is a concept that’s rarely explored and, to my knowledge, never mined for comedy. Super Human Resources is out to change that, taking the humor of The Office or 30 Rock and transplanting it to a setting that’s strictly four-color.

Super Human Resources shows us this superheroic business world through the eyes of Tim, a temp who’s been hired into the accounting department. Powerless and sort of nerdy, Tim is the everyman foil to the more incredible world of the superhumans. He’s characterized well enough to avoid being a cipher for the reader, but it’s a very close thing. He’s not given much dialogue that reveals his thoughts or motivations; he generally just wanders through the comic with an incredulous look on his face as wacky circumstances happen around him.

This issue is strictly an introduction to the cast of the comic, with no real plot to speak of. This is the comic’s greatest strength and weakness. The cast is varied, and each character has enough of a personality that you really understand them in their short, three or four panel introductions. There are a lot of characters in the book, but you’ll never confuse one of them for another, and none of them are dead weight.

There are two distinct forms of humor in Super Human Resources. The first is the wacky sort of non-sequitur humor, personified best by the character of Zombor, the company’s zombie receptionist, who seemingly mentions to every caller that he is going to eat their brains, or by the random ninja assassin who poisons Tim at the beginning of the comic. The other type of humor consists of very smart send-ups of office and business culture when confronted with the reality of employing people with superpowers, as seen when a superhero confronts the human resources director, complaining about the performance of his 401k, which he checked on while sent to the future to fight a time-travelling villain. Which type of humor you like better is down to personal preference, of course, but I feel like the comic is really at its best when it’s emphasizing the situational humor.

The first issue of Super Human Resources is a very promising start, and having read the second and third issues, I feel comfortable recommending it to anyone who’s looking for a good comedy comic. Give it a shot if you see it in your shop.

Super Human Resources #1 can be ordered in the December issue of Previews.