This may be a bit of 'Hello and welcome to 3 million BC!' kind of thread, but I'll risk it.

At my LCS yesterday, it turned out there weren't any comics on hold for me this week. It was a slow day, so I looked around, seeing what new figures they have, what's new in the discount bin, and what comics are out on the shelves. I came across an intriguing cover (to me) for the Twilight Experiment, a series I've never heard of. It's a 6 issue series Wildstorm title (2003,2004 I believe is when it originally came out), and I was stunned. Now this is a good story, so much better than most of the crap comics seem to want to shove down our throats nowadays. They had the entire series there, so I paged through them briefly, then bought them. I even managed to get a great deal on them, all six for $10.

Now, I don't want to mislead, I don't think it's some perfect gem, or something extra-ordinarilly well done like Astro City is IMHO, but it was a fun, refreshing, and well done story. And I love the main idea.

I'll try to give a synopsis without Spoiling, but don't blame me if I do spoil something for you. There are only four Superheroes in the universe. Each have nearly unlimited powers, each created from human volunteers to save the planet. They have Superheroish outfits, and do Superheroish deeds. One of them, the Righteous (In a cool Superhero outfit I'll add), has come to a solemn realization. Humanity has to be conquered for it's own good. The other three don't go along, and are killed by Righteous. However, in taking out the last one, Serenity, he's knocked out cold, captured by the organization that created him, and put in stasis. Around a decade later, he breaks the stasis chamber, and resumes his quest. He disarms countries of their Nuclear and Biological weapons, eliminates half the Chinese army for standing in his way, as well as the Russian air attack group. The US surrenders to him. He takes Doctors to Africa, creates a state of the art building (out of the dirt via his will and powers), and gives them the cure to AIDS, which a German company had found, but were keeping secret to profit off treatments until he came to them, and punished them, which he makes free to everyone. The Doctors will give free medical help to the people as food and other shipments arrive. Stock markets shift to alternative energies, biotechnology, and other changes as a result of this change. Righteous addresses the world, not as a dicatator, but as a shepherd trying to break humanity of it's petty violent cycle and push them to become the civilization they should be. He will rid them of hunger, disease, and crime. Even if he has to reduce the population to a more managable number to do so.

However, there are two other powered beings (and in fact they are the two primary characters). The son of Serenity who's been raised on a space station, and a paramedic who seems to have the same powers as Serenity and feels she's losing her mind. They find out why Righteous and the others were created, and that the world is at risk of destruction. They attempt to stop two worlds from being destroyed, by doing what Righteous and Serenity were created for, but fail, they need Righteous' help.

Anyway, I thought it was a great original story, and I had a lot of fun reading it and seeing where they were going. There's a fair amount of smart dialogue and some nice art. If you've never heard of it, and want something a bit different than what the big two are serving right now, I'd suggest it. With only six issues, it's not a major chore to get the series, nor is it terribly expensive to own.