Four issues in, AMP Comics’ The Greatest American Hero shows how well this superhero comedy handles drama and old age and still delivers the laughs I remember. There are little callbacks to the original series in the way Ralph masters the suit. After travelling the universe with the little green guys, he comes home to a lukewarm welcome. Everyone’s moved on. Some thought he’d died. Others wanted to forget him. What I particularly liked was how the comic tackles a plot hole by giving Ralph’s son the spotlight. In the pilot, the boy went off to live with his mom before Ralph started dating his lawyer, and we know how well that went.
You can watch the series on Amazon Prime if you want to revisit the pilot, but honestly, you can go straight to the comic. For three seasons, Ralph Hinkley, Bill Maxwell and Pam Davidson stuck together through thick and thin as crime-busters. Bill took on gangsters in Al Capone’s league. Ralph? He just wanted his kids, those high schoolers with troubled pasts, to find decent jobs and stay out of trouble.
