The conceit behind is Dynamo 5 was that the Superman of that world was kind of a horndog, and after his death, his widow (a top-notch reporter) tracks down his various illegitimate kids and forms them into a super-team. Each kid ends up with one of dead old dad's powersets - telepathy, flight, super-strength, shape-shifting, or vision powers - and away they go.
Each of them comes from a different situation, and they're spread out in age a bit. Gage and Hector are both still in high school, Livvie's attending Georgetown, Spencer's an adult living in a series of hotel rooms. Livvie's mother is deceased, but her father (the one who raised her) isn't. Gage's parents are together, but he's got two younger brothers. Bridget lives alone, but her parents seem to having periodic falling outs. Faerber has a couple of the parents find out in different ways, with different reactions. The teens have their own trouble adjusting, both to the truth about their father, to having siblings, and to having super-powers and the strain it puts on their everyday lives. Sometimes to the good, like Gage being determined to help Hector talk to girls. Sometimes bad, when the team learns the other side of Spencer's family tree is a lot different from theirs and reacts badly.
Asrar's the artist for almost the entire series, minus this and one other issue Cinar draws at least part of, and one drawn by Matteo Scalera. Since it's a team book, Asrar goes for the team uniform approach, which a little variation. Scatterbrain gets a hood, puts the emphasis on his mental powers. Visionary's got a helmet with a visor that amplifies his powers. Slingshot gets some of the old armpit wings for maneuvering, stuff like that. Keeps them from being too interchangeable.
Most of the different hero costumes are pretty straightforward, but I think Asrar has a little more fun with some of the villains. Like Brainstorm, the guy in the background of the picture above, who is a big android body with the brains of five human scientists on it (that's what the yellow bubbles are. You'd think they'd hide their brains inside the body, but I guess it's more impressive-looking this way.)
Asrar doesn't do anything too flashy on page layouts most of the time, but each character has a distinct look in and out of costume, which helps them feel like individuals. The fight scenes are well-drawn, and even the characters who take a physical approach do it differently. Myriad is maybe the most acrobatic, using a lot of flips and jumps kicks, whereas Scrap tends to just charge in a throw haymakers. She's stronger and tougher, but she also doesn't have as much experience fighting. When Gage fights physically, he tends to do so like a football player. A lot of tackles and using his size, which is what would come naturally to him by now.
Faerber and Asrar plays with expectations a bit. Maggie, the widow, turns out to have actually been a secret agent who uses being a reporter as a cover, or maybe an additional way to get information. She ends up keeping secrets a lot, and has her own skeletons in the closet. Which is where Maggie's tendency to act like a Nick Fury/college football coach-style hardass backfires a few times. But the series touches on the fact it's not easy for her to work with the living embodiment of her husband's fidelity. Gage, the big jock linebacker ends up with the telepathy, which predictably frustrates him, while Bridget, the extremely pale (but hot) goth girl gets the super-strength.
Faerber shifts things up a lot with some surprises and twists. Takes Maggie out of commission for a few issues, forcing the team to work without her guidance. The surprise reveal of Spencer's mother that throws the team for another loop. The roster changes once, Maggie's past comes back to haunt the team. There were a few things I don't think ever actually came to fruition, like the reporter Bridget briefly starts dating, or her and Spencer being roomies. On the one hand, it keeps the book from getting stale, because things can change at any minute, but on the other hand, it feels like some things get tossed aside without ever exploring if they could be interesting. Maybe Faerber reconsidered after he started and that's why he moved on from those ideas.
Faerber had a few other superhero books he was writing at the same time - Noble Causes, Firebirds, maybe one other I can't think of - and he set all of them in the same universe. Which gives him the advantage of having other books to introduce characters and concepts in, which could then be sprinkled into this book whenever. Which is a nice way to make a book feel like it's part of a universe that's already been going for a while.
The series ran 25 issues from 2007-2009, plus an Annual and Holiday Special. There was another 5-issue mini-series a year or two later, but it was a big alien invasion thing that used not only a bunch of Faerber's other characters but also some other Image characters like Invincible, and I'm not really here for that.
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