Ben 10 #1: It Started With An Alien Device…

Ben Tennyson is your average kid with average problems, that is until an alien super weapon falls from space and attaches itself to his wrist while on a family camping trip. Now a target of the military and a super powerful alien warrior, Ben is going to find out that his destiny is much grander than finding a golden Super Sumo Slammer card.

Ben 10 is something of an institution for elder-millenials like myself. It came along during the action cartoon boom of the mid-2000s along with classics like Teen Titans, Justice League Unlimited, Spectacular Spider-Man, and others. Ben 10 was a unique show that took all the recognizable elements of superhero comics, and distilled them down into a fun and energetic show that pre-teens could enjoy. It enjoyed a long-run on Cartoon Network, spanning multiple sequels, two live-action films, video games, and a reboot show that lasted until 2021. After being relatively dormant for the past five years, most of the original Man of Action team (consisting of Joe Casey, Joe Kelly, Duncan Rouleau, and Steven T. Seagle) have returned to bring this story into a new age.

This first issue is a retelling of the original first episode of the first Ben 10 series “An Then There Were Ten” but there are some key differences that the creative team makes here. Vilgax searching for the Omnitrix instead of battling the shit carrying it, the military(?) arriving at the crash site that was originally remote, and Ben using his new powers to defend himself from a cybernetic bear instead of accidentally starting a forest fire. Outside of that the rest of the elements Joe Casey presents here narratively fit with the original series, minus some light swearing just to showcase the darker tone of this book, since it was touted as being the “Absolute” version of Ben 10.

Robert Carey’s art is fine, but some of the paneling and illustrations can be a bit off model, making for a bit of a rough read at times. Some of the new character designs are solid though, with Vilgax and Heatblast being the notable changes. There are also subtle bits of body horror to Ben’s transformations that weren’t there in the original.