It’s either a damning indictment of how boring your action is, or a mark that there’s much more to your superhero comic book (sorry, supranormal, in Protectors parlance), when the most memorable scene is a conversation about how the government owned superteam will have full health insurance.

Little of column A, little of column B. Writer R. A. Jones doesn’t seem to have a grasp on the characters at all yet, as their powers and abilities are as ill defined as their personalities. The character who sticks in the mind most after reading this second issue is Ferret; one, for having a ridiculous name, and two, because he’s such a dick.

The early 90s was a boom period for edgy, supposedly mature superheroes, but for the most part they just came off as sulky teenagers who indulged in rather violent vigilante activities. Ferret is different, because he really is just an awful piece of shit, in the way he treats absolutely everyone around him.

Anyway, I at least remembered who he was. Just about all of the characters, most drawn from Golden Age superheroes who’d fallen into the public domain (though with a few minor identity changes, given that their names  sounded too close to a few more recently created heroes), are pretty forgettable.

Still, there’s that intriguing conversation about health insurance, and I’m being deadly serious there; given the situation in the US even now, it provides a pretty eye opening discussion point, and a welcome touch of depth that was unusual in US comics outside of DC’s Vertigo imprint and its British Invasion-style stable of writers, or the oft-cited, still fairly peerless, Watchmen.

The art still seems a bit awkward, and the comic still seems to be finding its feet in general, but there’s some clever touches in The Protectors #2 that make it more than meets the eye.