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There have been countless attempts at a 'real world' approach to superheroes, most successfully from Alan Moore with Marvelman and Watchmen, which A God Somewhere is already being compared to. Actually those comparisons are misleading; in its unassuming manner I think it's probably closer to Kurt Busiek and Stuart Immonen's underrated Superman: Secret Identity, although it's a lot more violent. But either way, A God Somewhere doesn't have its protagonist donning a costume and fighting crime. Instead, we witness Eric's gradual disintegration, as he turns increasingly violent and ends up public enemy number one.
And it's the violence that's really notable here; there are dismemberments and buckets of blood aplenty, with hundreds of deaths over the course of the story. In one particularly gruesome scene Eric stamps on a soldier's head and the soldier's eyeball pops out. It's shocking, but then that's the point.
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Something that worked less well for me was the race element. Sam happens to be black, and encounters racism as a result, but that's never fully developed and doesn't have anything really to do with the main story, so it just kind of sits there. There's a parallel theme of faith and religion that's better explored, particularly in an unsettling sequence where Eric recounts a dream where he's God.
A God Somewhere is full of ambiguities, but those ambiguities only help to make it more compelling. It's a disturbing, engrossing read that manages to transcend the often hackneyed tropes of superhero comics, and Snejbjerg's artwork (and Bjarn Hansen's colours) is utterly sublime.
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