[EDIT: Welcome, Larry Young fans! Be sure to also check out my response to what brought you here, here.]
I have to admit to having an extreme aversion to hype. I call it the American Beauty-syndrome, in reference to the inexplicable amount of praise that overrated retread of suburban dysfunction received. I saw it three weeks after it opened, simultaneously impressed and concerned by the amount of hype it was getting, and absolutely hated it. As the hype continued to grow, I hated it even more, nearly bursting a blood vessel when it won Best Picture honors.
DEMO is now my comic book equivalent of American Beauty.
Hailed as the “Indy of the Year” by Wizard, yet snubbed even an honorable mention by The Comics Journal, I can only believe that some people give extra credit to intent when actual content goes missing, because Brian Wood’s self-righteous attempt at “a whole new and different take on superpowers” is little more than an interesting concept crippled by half-assed execution. When you get bold and go promising “new and different,” you better deliver the goods and Wood just doesn’t do it.
Twelve individual stories, very loosely connected by the aforementioned “superpowers” theme, DEMO might best be described as the X-Men Professor Xavier doesn’t track down. Or, if you wanted to be snarky, NYX if it were more pretentious and had been published on a regular schedule.
That is, of course, only referring to the issues where Wood actually stuck to his self-proclaimed “new and different take on superpowers.”
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