I received this trade paperback collecting the first four issues of the LIVEWIRE series at the ‘Ringo Awards. I don’t follow Valiant comics, having read only one previous collection, and this one did not give me an easy way to get up to speed. There is a brief bio of the character, but the story jumps into a continuity that obviously happened in some other series, but that’s never identified or made clear. Despite that, I enjoyed the writing and the art.

Amanda McKee is a psiot (hero with mental powers) known as Livewire, who can control any digital device or system. Apparently she and her friends were put in a corner by the U.S. Government, and to allow them to escape, Livewire shut down the entire electrical grid for the country. This caused a number of deaths from various causes. Now the psiots are on the run, and when Amanda tries to gather her psiot friends in a safe location, she finds they too want nothing more to do with her because of her actions. Soon Amanda is being hunted by another superhuman who has powers equalling her own, and she finds herself captured, powerless, and in more trouble than she’s ever imagined.

Recommended, despite the unclear story origins.