The Massive Trinity
Supermassive is a prestige format one-shot comic, and the official start of the Massive-Verse. It is written by Kyle Higgins, Ryan Parrott and Matt Groom, with art by Francesco Manna, Melania Palladino, Simone Ragazzoni, Marcelo Costa, ABEL, Erica D'urso and Igor Monti. It is published by Image Comics and was released in February 2022.
When Inferno Girl Red (Cássia Costa) chases a monster from her home dimension into ours, Radiant Black (Marshall) and Rogue Sun (Marcus Bell) show up to help. However, all three run into issues with their powers and a new threat, which forces them to band together to stop the threat.
The one-shot is the official start of the Massive-Verse, and features the first appearances of Rogue Sun and Inferno Girl Red.
A sequel is scheduled for a May 2023 release, this time featuring a team-up between the two Radiant Blacks (Nathan and Marshall), Marcus' son and successor as Rogue Sun (Dylan Siegel) and newly minted superhero Dead Lucky (Bibi Lopez-Yang).
Tropes applying to Supermassive:
- Ascended Fanboy: Marshall is a fan of superheroes, and is ecstatic that he gets to be in a superhero team-up, and with Rogue Sun, a hero he admires, at that. He has the time of his life working with Rogue Sun and Inferno Girl Red, who are annoyed by the idea and seem keen on doing it again, respectively.
- Author Appeal: All three writers are fans of Toku, and especially Sentai. So it's no surprise when Marshall creates a giant robot construct to fight the huge monster that the trio are tracking. That and the very Sentai transformation sequences in the comic.
- By the Power of Grayskull!: Cássia shouts "Inferno ignite!" when transforming, while Marcus yells "Rogue Sun!"
- Combined Energy Attack: Marshall empowers his robot construct with the powers of Inferno Girl Red and Rogue Sun.
- Commonality Connection: Marshall tries to bond with Marcus a bit over them both having abusive fathers. Marcus doesn't care, however.
- De-power: Marshal, Marcus and Cassia have their powers absorbed by the creature when they encounter it together. They spend much of the story chasing at across the country in order to retrieve their powers and stop the creature.
- Dramatic Irony: The vision Marcus receives when the three heroes' powers clash and are absorbed shows his funeral. He doesn't talk about it, but we the audience know that this basically confirms they're all seeing the future in some way — as Rogue Sun is about Marcus' son, Dylan Siegel, receiving Marcus' powers after his death.
- Fast Ball Special: Radiant Black pulls one off by using his gravity powers to accelerate Inferno Girl Red and Rogue Sun as they launch towards the big monster they're fighting, a move he calls a railgun attack. It doesn't end up working that well, but he likes the concept and wants to do it again.
- Good Is Not Nice:
- Marcus admits that his father saved the world a few times, but was also a complete piece of shit in his home life.
- Marcus himself follows the trend, though not to the same extent. He's also a recognised hero, but he's a complete ass to Marshall and Cássia for no real reason. He's just all around unpleasant to them.
- I Just Want to Be Special: Nathan doesn't even try to hide that he wishes he was still Radiant Black, but he's happy for Marshall.
- Knight in Sour Armour: Rogue Sun is gruff, confrontational and not good with people. He’s a man of action more than anything as well, so his solution to things is just to hit them.
- Legacy Character: Marcus Randolph Bell is not the first Rogue Sun. His father held the title and powers before him.
- Mech vs. Beast: Marshall calls forth a giant mech similar to the robot he and Nathan occasionally communicate with to fight the monster. Even the mech isn't enough on its own and Marshal has to convince Cassia and Marcus to lend their energy to the robot so it can win.
- The Multiverse: Inferno Girl Red is from a different dimension and is implied to frequently travel to different dimensions.
- Nice Mean And In Between: Marcus is a cantankerous antihero with a violent streak, Cassia is friendly person who likes travelling dimensions and Marshal, while not without his own flaws, is much more approachable than Marcus.
- Pet the Dog: Despite being a Jerkass to him for most of the story, Marcus does give Marshall a blanket when he needs to sleep off the team-up, albeit without telling him and after basically telling Marshall that he won't go out of his way to help him against the coming invasion from space.
- Remember the New Guy?: Marshall is a big fan of Rogue Sun, and there have been at least two! They just never came up before in Radiant Black, even when the characters had no clue what their powers were and needed as much guidance as possible.
- Skewed Priorities: When meeting Rogue Sun and Inferno Girl Red, Marshall’s first thing… is to as if they’d follow him on Twitter to help him get verified.
- The Stinger: The post-credits scene features someone hunting aliens on Earth, and then teasing something called The Dead Lucky coming in 2022, which would later turn out to be an ongoing series.
