This volume collects the Free Comic Book Day story and the first four issues of the Dark Horse Doctor Solar series of 2010, which unfortunately only went on for eight issues (the remainder is compiled in Volume 2).

The writer is Jim Shooter, the same creator who relaunched Solar in 1991 for Valiant with enormous success. It is unavoidable to compare the 2010 Shooter Doctor Solar with the 1991 Shooter Solar, but they are in fact significantly different. This most recent version of Solar is very classic, very well-written and superbly drawn, but he is also very much self-contained far as continuity goes. For better or worse, gone is the ambitious and perhaps overdone continuity that both blessed and cursed Valiant in the 1990s.

What remains is something perhaps sorely missed in these days: an actual classic superhero, with impressive powers, incorruptible morals, and interesting personality. Shooter's writing is also even more careful to make the science believable. This volume is well worth a read. ( )