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Kill All Parents! has a killer premise without the execution to back it up.

Kill All Parents! has a nice, simple premise at its core: one mad scientist sees the terrible future and moves to prevent it by creating a whole host of superheroes. You can probably guess how. Heroes need tragedy to become who they are, he reasons, and all the better if that tragedy is something that occurs during childhood—when the hero is helpless and vulnerable, and can never find anything like closure. At least, not through superheroic violence. It’s a damn good premise, worth at least one surprised-bark of a laugh.

Except, it turns out, that’s all the book really is: premise. First the scientist arranges the origins we know so well—infant child launched from supposedly dying planet toward Earth, young boy witnesses parents shot down outside movie theater by man in a clown mask, etc, etc—and sets the kids on their course to heroism. Then the heroes find out the ghastly truth about their origins, thanks to a, um, janitor who lucks onto the file. The heroes confront the scientist. The scientist monologues about why he did what he did, greater good, et cetera. The superheroes deal with him. Catastrophe may result. The end.

Shallow, but then I’m not sure what else you can do in 36 pages. Should the idea be expanded? I’m not really sure how it could be. Condensed? Then it’d be even more spare. But surely something meatier could be done with it; this is exactly the kind of premise AiT/PlanetLar knocks out of the park.

Looking for illumination, I turn to Image’s website, and get this summary:

“KILL ALL PARENTS is the story of an authoritarian government’s secret program to ‘save’ mankind by eliminating villains: by insuring that every child born with a super power becomes a super hero. Based on the life’s work of a brilliant but demented scientist and futurist, the method is effective but fantastically cruel, unnatural, and ultimately deeply flawed. We follow the last of the strong heroes, the remaining brave, who fight for not only their future and the lives of their families, but that of all mankind.”

This is an almost-perfect summary of a completely different story, so I can’t help but wonder: Did something from Kill All Parents not make it into the final cut? Or did Image’s copy guy just not read the damn comic?

Further bafflement: KAP is written by Mark Andrew Smith, co-creator of the vastly entertaining and underrated Amazing Joy Buzzards and the as-yet-unread-by-me Aqua Leung, which garnered some high critical praise. Smith knows how to combine goofiness with actual plot, turning weightless pop culture nonsense into something of substance. Artist Marcelo Di Chiara and colorist Russ Lowery (the last expanding from his red-n-black Villains), similarly talented, put forth much gloss in service to not a lot.

The mistake may have been in creating analogues of well-known superheroes in lieu of making up new ones. The setups for the individuals are a little too wink-wink-nudge-nudge; immersion suffers when you’re playing a little game with the creators to see who they’re hinting at now. This makes the whole thing feel gimmicky, and the mad scientist’s pages-long monologue suffers for coming across as Serious Business.

Man, that speech. If there’s a point to Kill All Parents beyond the ho-hum execution of a killer premise, I suppose it’s to be found in the speech. Whatever that point is, I couldn’t find it.

Writer: Mark Andrew Smith
Artist: Marcelo Di Chiara
Publisher: Image Comics

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