PANTHEON HIGH, VOL. 1

TOKYOPOP
WRITER: Paul Benjamin
ARTISTS: Steven and Megumi Cummings
COVER: Steven Cummings
ISBN: 978-1-59816-734-4; soft cover; Action/Fantasy; Older Teen-Age 16+
192 pp., B&W, $9.99

The gods and goddesses of the Greek, Norse, Japanese, and Egyptian pantheons have children.  These teenage demigods attend Pantheon High where they received the finest education, instruction, and evaluation.  Like human teenagers, these divine teens bicker and feud, but when a group of them decides to use the other students in a grand magical scheme to become gods, it's up to a quartet of students who have nothing in common to save life as they know it.

Written by Paul Benjamin (co-creator) and drawn by the husband and wife team of Steven (co-creator) and Megumi Cummings, Pantheon High, Vol. 1 could well be the closet American Manga has come to producing a superhero comic book.  It has elements of Marvel's old New Mutants comic book series with similarities to the late animated series, "X-Men: Evolution."  Pantheon High also has echoes of 80's Saturday morning cartoon, "Galaxy High," but in the end, Paul Benjamin and Steven Cumming have created something that stands away from any other influences.  Also, a reader might be forgiven for seeing this as a riff on Harry Potter and Hogwarts, except Pantheon doesn't have one student as its focus.

At first, Benjamin's script seems a little too cutesy, as he plays with the notion of children whose personalities mimic their divine parents' personalities.  For instance, the son of Hades, Greek god of death, has a death wish, and the daughter of the Egyptian god of the sun has a hot temper.  Benjamin, however, quickly blends this all together as he unfolds the main conspiracy (the dangerous spell to attain godhood) out of the minor conflicts between the students.  It is then that he engages the readers, encouraging us to see how (of if) all these clashing personalities and volatile teen psyches come together to achieve their ends.

Steven and Megumi Cummings have drawn several superhero comic book titles for both Marvel and DC Comics including Excalibur and Elektra for the former and Batman and Green Lantern for the latter.  They're quite good at drawing action and fight sequences that involve displays of power and also fight scenes in which the combatants are humans, beasts, monsters, and all manner of creatures.  They've produced art that is the closest American Manga has come to mainstream superhero comic book art, and it's quite good.

Pantheon High is probably TOKYOPOP's most accessible Direct Market book, and I'm certainly looking forward to Vol. 2.

8/10