Michelle Herbert reviews Ordinary…
From the irradiated gamma-rayed genius of Rob Williams (Doctor Who: The Eleventh Doctor, The Royals: Masters of War) and D’Israeli (Scarlet Traces) comes the collection of one of the most critically acclaimed and interesting takes on the superhero genre in a long time! Packed with extras, it features a host of exclusive pin-ups by Mark Buckingham, Laurence Campbell, Alison Sampson, Henry Flint and many more!
“I had this dream” – you know the one, where you finally dream about that one person, that fantasy that you will probably never achieve in real life. With this it is abruptly clear within the first few panels that Michael Fisher is one of life’s losers, even in his dreams. This is a resounding fact of Michael’s life, making mistakes for no good reason as well as being unreliable; he has no thought of changing the life he is spectacularly failing at. Michael once had a family that he abandoned years ago, but then he can’t even get it together to make it to work on time, let alone make the time to see his son Josh.
For someone so ordinary to have their world turned upside down when everyone in the world suddenly receives superpowers and he manages to stay the same, can be seen to be quite sad, but it is also refreshing to see such an average person become the lead in their own story. Williams and D’Israeli have created an extraordinary cast of characters, so that when you reread this (and you will want to reread Ordinary) you will see many things that you may have missed the first time.
The abilities that are most striking are the ones that seem to be based on characters personalities. Whilst some are just wish fulfilment, there are also powers that are mundane to the outright inventive. Each power manages to work really well in the context of Ordinary, which is to mostly to hammer into Michael how meaningless his life is. As the world seems to be falling apart, every country for good or bad now has superpowers, which in this context means that people who already felt hatred towards other countries are empowered to sort out their short term problems, in some cases wanting to destroy America.
Due to this we get to see how the American administration handles this situation. The Vice-President’s power is very literal as he starts on the side of the angels; they can be seen flying around his shoulders, although he is soon listening to the devils with the intent of using the superpowers of the American people to destroy America’s enemies, a blatant show of too much power can damage the soul. Ordinary shows some of the effects of this worldwide phenomenon and in this reality the world doesn’t stand a chance!
For all Ordinary’s death and destruction there is a great deal of humour, from sight jokes to puns. I swear I saw someone who looked like a furrier Dr. Bunsen Honeydew from the Muppets. There was also the great character of Dr Tara McDonald who is a Professor of Genomics who reminded me of Dr. Moira Kinross MacTaggert from the X-Men (a geneticist). Tara McDonald in this book is the voice of reason; she is driven and well connected as she focuses on whether this change in the human race has affected the total world population.
Throughout this graphic novel there are very human traits on show, the biggest one being sacrifice; which we see on both the grand and small scale. Which begs the question: What would you sacrifice to save the world? Michael ends up on a quest to find his son Josh which takes him through the madness of New York, which enables him to find the strength to think beyond himself. With sacrifice there is also selflessness and selfishness which is reflected across the characters. Michael at his worst is selfish in his pity for himself; he always has excuses for why something hasn’t been done. This is Michael’s journey to stand up for the ordinary man and see if he can make something of his life.
The use of colours in Ordinary is intense, this is reflected in the daytime and dream panels, the colour is so bright and primary that you can’t help but be delighted and startled by the difference in tone between these panels and when something bad is happening in the story or Michael is sinking into his own brand of despair. With a full colour palate at D’Israeli’s disposal this has been used to great effect.
Ordinary is an imaginative story that deserves to be read over and over again. When we think of people with superpowers as well as ordinary bystanders in superhero comics this is not what most of us would imagine, but this is why Ordinary works so well, as it is plugged into the varied nature of human beings and the amplification of that diversity. Ordinary asks many questions throughout the story of what we would do and how we would cope in a world where super powers could be mundane or life changing.
Michelle Herbert
Originally published November 12, 2014. Updated April 13, 2018.
