"Every villain is the hero of their own story."
Halcyon, originally announced under the name of Utopian, is a superhero comic published by Image Comics, premiering in November of 2010.
The premise seems simple: what would superheroes do without crime? Super-team Halcyon is destined to find out - their world has mysteriously become 'nicer' exponentially over the last nine months. Crime is practically at an end. Armed conflict has diminished to the point on non-existence. The 'would be ruler of the world' and Halcyon's primary enemy just turned himself in on television.
What happens to them now? Are they out of a job?
The series is co-written by Marc Guggenheim (Spider-Man) and Tara Butters (Reaper) with art by Ryan Bodenheim (Red Mass for Mars) and Alisa Tager (Serenity).
Tropes:
- Cast of Expies: A good chunk of the cast are clearly based on other famous characters:
- Sabre is Batman, with shades of The Punisher.
- Enos is Beast, with elements of Brainiac in his design.
- Zenith is Supergirl.
- Psiclops is Jean Grey. Appearance-wise, she resembles Storm.
- Oculus is Doctor Doom.
- Jarhead is basically Captain America as a marine.
- Characters Dropping Like Flies: By the end, Sabre and Zenith are the only main characters not killed by the battle at Oculus' base. Even Oculus himself was killed by Sabre's dog earlier in the plot.
- Cool Mask: Both versions of Oculus that have appeared are wearing featureless, head encompassing metal masks with eye holes.
- The Cowl: Deconstructed. Sabre is shown to be boderline psychopathic, which is why he's the one who has the hardest time adjusting to a perfect world.
- Dead All Along: Psiclops died before the story began.
- Heroic Build: Obviously for the gents — but on Triumph?
- Flying Brick: Zenith, the World's Greatest Hero. This is horribly subverted by Triumph. We are initially lead to believe Triumph is flying at the start of one of the issues. However, it turns out she is killing herself by jumping off a building.
- Licked by the Dog: Sabre is described as a "homicidal vigilante" (by one of his teammates no less!), but his dog likes him so he can't be all bad.
- Mass Super-Empowering Event: Not one but two versions of Oculus describe attempting to use a "metabomb" in their reality.Oculus From Reality 2439-Gamma: [It] had the unfortunate and unforeseen effect of increasing the world's population of Super-Powereds by thirteen percent. Halcyon's membership is already up to six-eighty and counting.
- Meaningful Name:
- Superhero naming convention aside, "Halcyon" means "peaceful" or "calm".
- The original name of the comic was Utopian, which became the name of a city in the book.
- Most Common Super Power: Both of the ladies, natch.
- Mr. Exposition: It's lampshaded that Zenith has a tendency to explain to her teammates stuff they already know for the readers' benefit:Agni: You have a way of telling people that which they already know, Zenith.
Zenith: I've been told. - The Multiverse: All versions of Oculus appear to be able to move through this freely. They even have a safe haven in Reality 4587-Beta.
- Painting the Medium: Null "speaks" through what appear to be black narration boxes.
- Playing with Fire: Agni, also a case of a Super God.
- Slap-Slap-Kiss: Zenith and Sabre.
- Start of Darkness: The entire story was one for Sabre. It turns out that he's so hell-bent on having someone to fight, he'll even fight a perfect world. Oculus knew this, giving all his resources to Sabre, who has become the new Oculus at the end.
- Superhero Gods: Agni, the Hindu god of fire, is a member of Halcyon.
- Super-Soldier: Jarhead is basically Captain America as a marine. As such, he falls under this trope.
- Super-Speed: Transom has this as his power.
- Sugar Bowl: The whole world seems to be becoming one!
- Well-Intentioned Extremist:
- Inverted with Oculus. He built a machine to create world peace solely to spite the superheroes.
- Sabre becomes one at the end.
