My Superhero! is a love story where the main character is looking for someone to hate them. Yes, you read that right. There is no notebook to reignite past romantic experiences or sonnets sung under the moonlight to a beauty on a balcony. Mayhem, the main character of creator Jessie Page Dawson’s My Superhero!, isn’t interested in all that. Mayhem, in her own words, is interested in being fulfilled in her work, but ultimately, she wants her very own archnemesis. What she’s found is that sometimes, finding someone to hate can be harder than finding someone to love. Jessie Page Dawson delivers us in My Superhero! ‘Mayhem,’ that terrorizes her way into our hearts.
A Sight for Sore Eyes
Visually, My Superhero! is a treat for your eyes. Jessie Page Dawson flexes her way through the color wheel with every panel: red, green, orange, and even grey. If you name a color, it has a color palette, and each one of them looks good and serves a purpose. Burning buildings have a red and orange hue to highlight the carnage. Purple clouds filter “the villainous part of the city.” Using colors like this adds tension and makes scenes and places more distinct. In the scroll format of Webtoon, environments are hard to remember, but this isn’t the case here. You know where you are and what feeling you should have as you read. The proficiency of Dawson’s art is so prevalent it felt like almost every panel could exist as its own wallpaper.
The stellar use of colors accentuates Dawson’s fantastic character design skills. If all the characters in My Superhero! were to be blacked out, I would still recognize them in silhouette alone. Each silhouette says something about the characters. Mayhem’s hair isn’t balanced and could be described as mayhem incarnate. Eagle Scout is boxy and strong, a picture of reliability and order. Beyond the silhouette, this attention to detail continues. Mayhem is sporting a long sock on one leg and a legging on the other, while Eagle Scout is prim and proper in his scout’s uniform. This extends to every character in the story, with many fun and memorable character designs sprinkled here and there. There is even a cameo from a character who looks like Jared Leto and Joaquin Phoenix’s Jokers had a baby. Dawson’s art style has your eyes joyfully scanning every panel, noticing every pixel. It is such a fun and light style, and for Webtoon, it is one of one. It is the type of style that needs a TV show (and I hope it does get one).
Comedic Writing Enhances the Characters
The writing fits the art style like a glove. It is just as light and breezy, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad. The story is a comedy, and the writing had me cackling left and right. One of the things that got a laugh out of me was the characters' names. Boomer Ray is an older villain who still uses the classic ray gun, and Ms. Behave is a grammar-obsessed villain who will end you for poor use of language. The dialogue is just hilarious. I laughed aloud when Eagle Scout had to fire his sidekick for using an iron with the wrong fabric setting. Amidst the humor, Dawson still moves the plot very well. It’s such an easy read because the characters truly drive the plot. There isn’t some bigger external plot at play; everything is connected to Mayhem and the rest of the cast. We see with the connections that Mayhem makes as we read that there is a potential for a “love” triangle of sorts (I won’t spoil you with the details).
My Superhero! is not your traditional love story, but I fell in love with it while reading. Mayhem has not been able to “rizz” (as the kids say) Eagle Scout yet into being her nemesis, but she has charmed me. The world she lives in makes me wish I could be transported into its many hues and shades. With the way Dawson draws her characters, this reviewer wouldn’t mind being a cameo in one of her stories. My Superhero! last updated on February 26th of this year and I will be in a mayhem of excitement when the notification bell rings for the next chapter.
