My Rating
“Broken Spirits”
Hershey was a multimillionaire philanthropist, social engineer, and construction mogul with a vision for the future. He believed in building small, self-contained cities where residents could live, work, and raise their families in clean and safe surroundings. Over the years, Hershey constructed several of these experimental communities throughout the American Southwest.
Every project suffered a few growing pains, but nothing could have prepared Hershey for what happened in his latest city. Built with space-age alloys and packed with the latest technology, the community represented everything Hershey believed a modern city should be. For a time, the inhabitants seemed perfectly content.
Then the apparitions started to appear.
At first, the sightings were random. A strange figure here. A shadowy form there. Before long, residents throughout the city began reporting encounters with what could only be described as ghosts. Was this some form of mass hysteria? Contaminated drinking water? Perhaps a chemical used during construction was causing hallucinations. Whatever the explanation, there had to be a rational one.
Hershey and his people managed to sweep the problem under the rug for a while. Then the madness began.
Residents started suffering psychological breakdowns as supernatural sightings spread throughout the community. Ghosts were everywhere, and they seemed to be on everyone’s mind. Something had infected Hershey’s perfect little city, and conventional explanations were quickly running out.
It’s time to call in the professionals. It’s time for the Challengers of the Unknown!
Are the dead really walking the streets of Hershey’s futuristic city? What connection does Brenda Ruskin have to the unfolding mystery? Can science explain the supernatural forces tormenting the residents, or has Hershey built his dream community on something better left undisturbed? Collect the series to find out!
Review
We have ghosts, Brenda Ruskin’s backstory, and weird science! Now this is the Challengers of the Unknown I’ve been waiting for.
“Broken Spirits” is a very well-thought-out adventure that takes the supernatural elements of a traditional haunted-house story and expands them across an entire city. Instead of investigating some dusty old mansion with skeletons rattling around in the attic, the Challengers find themselves exploring a modern community built from space-age materials and cutting-edge technology. That contrast between old-fashioned ghosts and futuristic science gives the story a unique atmosphere.
I also enjoyed learning more about Brenda Ruskin. One of my complaints with some of the earlier issues involved how little background information we received about the newer Challengers. The series occasionally expected me to understand these characters before it had given me enough reasons to know them. Digging into Brenda’s past helps correct that problem and gives her more depth beyond simply being another member of the team.
Ghosts?
Once again, I have to give the writers credit for throwing some actual science into the mix. The story doesn’t immediately shrug its shoulders and say, “Yep, ghosts!” The characters consider rational explanations for what the residents are experiencing. Could environmental factors cause the sightings? Is some new technology responsible? Could the construction materials themselves play a role? That willingness to investigate the impossible from a scientific perspective is quickly becoming one of my favorite aspects of this series.
I would also recommend reading the letters page in this issue. Fans offer some interesting criticisms of the series, but not in a nasty or dismissive way. Instead, you get a glimpse of what readers thought about this unusual incarnation of the Challengers while the series was actually being published. Superman even gets brought into the conversation. I love old comic-book letters pages for exactly this reason. They are little time capsules that let modern readers experience some of the discussion surrounding a book when it originally hit the stands.
Ghosts, science fiction, character development, and enough mystery to keep the pages turning—“Broken Spirits” checks just about every box for me. This is easily one of my favorite issues of the series so far. Five out of five stars.