
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.

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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