One of this year's biggest Netflix original series premieres this year is Jupiter's Legacy, which adapts the Image Comics superhero tale of the same name created by Mark Millar and Frank Quitely. Featuring a team of superheroes known as the Union that has defended the Earth since the 1930s, the aging heroes realize their hubris and advancing age has put them at odds not only with their own children but the will of the people that they swore to protect.
With a whole line of titles launched by Millar's publishing imprint and Netflix subsidiary Millarworld, here is a reading guide for fans looking for the perfect place to read the story before the television series' premiere this May.
Jupiter's Legacy
Millar and Quitely launched Jupiter's Legacy, with colorist and letterer Pete Doherty, in 2013. An enormous critical and commercial success, the series found the aging Union facing a renewed economic crisis across the country coupled with the realization that the world was losing its way, as it had when the superhero team was first formed in 1932. But perhaps even more troublingly, the team's core couple Sheldon and Grace Sampson find their children Brandon and Chloe haven't been coping with their own powers and celebrity status in a healthy manner.
This opening volume ran for five issues, culminating in the generation gap between the Golden Age heroes and their progeny coming to a violent head while familiar foes were recruited by the government to help keep super-powered individuals in line as the world cried out for new heroes to inspire it through its latest set of hardships. While earlier collected editions identify this as Jupiter's Legacy Vol. 1, this initial story arc has since been collected as Jupiter's Legacy Vol. 3, as the collections run in chronological order within the comic book's alternative history.
Jupiter's Circle
The early days of the Union were explored in the 2015 prequel series Jupiter's Circle, with Millar and Doherty joined by artists Wilfredo Torres and Davide Gianfelice and colorist Ive Svorcina while a second volume had the creative team bolstered by penciller Chris Sprouse and inker Walden Wong. Set during the 1960s, the Union began to weather their own respective midlife crises and personality conflicts set against the counter-culture backdrop of the decade.
Widely acclaimed, Jupiter's Circle would receive two six-issue volumes chronicling the Union facing the social upheaval of the mid-20th century. Both volumes have since been collected as Jupiter's Legacy Vol. 1-2 to place the overarching story in chronological order.
The Next Generation
Millar and Quitely reunited in 2016 for what was initially titled Jupiter's Legacy 2, continuing the present-day story right from the epic fallout of the inaugural story arc. Just as the preceding storyline was focused on the post-modern adventures of aging superheroes and their children, the sequel followed the rise of a new generation of supervillains to oppose them from the shadows.
Retitled Jupiter's Legacy Vol. 4 upon being collected, the five-issue story arc delivered some of the biggest, most bombastic action in the line yet as Brandon and Chloe found themselves on opposing sides for the place of heroes and villains in modern society, with the entire world caught in the epic crossfire.
Netflix's Jupiter's Legacy stars Josh Duhamel as The Utopian, Ben Daniels as Brain-Wave, Leslie Bibb as Lady Liberty, Elena Kampouris as Chloe Sampson, Andrew Horton as Brandon Sampson, Mike Wade as The Flare, Anna Akana as Raikou and Matt Lanter as Skyfox. The series premieres May 7 on Netflix.