Jupiter's Legacy (comic)

Jupiter's Legacy is an American superhero comic book series, first published in 2013, written by Mark Millar, drawn by Frank Quitely, colored and lettered by Peter Doherty and published by Image Comics. Published as a series of eponymous limited series and interstitial prequel miniseries, it is to date the longest series that Millar had published as part of his Millarworld line of creator-owned comics, spanning an issue run three times as long as his then-most recent series, Supercrooks and Nemesis. It was also the first collaboration between Millar and Quitely since their work on The Authority in 2001, and Quitely's first long-form work with a writer other than Grant Morrison.

The story, which is influenced by Star Wars, King Kong, Roman mythology and origin stories from the Golden Age of Comics, was written as Millar's treatise on superheroes' connection to the American ideal. The first few issues of the opening story arc explore the generational conflict between a group of aging superheroes known as the Union, who used the powers they gained in 1932 for the betterment of mankind, in particular their leader, Sheldon Sampson (also known as the Utopian), and their children, who are daunted by the prospect of living up to their parents' legacy. Other conflicts and themes in the book include sociopolitical and economic differences among the older heroes and the end of capitalism, in the form of Sheldon's differences with his brother, Walter, which were inspired by Millar's reaction to the Great Recession.

The series received generally positive reviews, with praise given to Millar's writing, Quitely's art and Peter Doherty's colors, though more than one reviewer regarded the series' take on realistic superheroes as derivative.

The series' storyline is further explored in the spinoff series Jupiter's Circle, which depicts the lives of the six founding members of the Union in the 1950s and 1960s. The first volume of the spinoff debuted in 2015, and the second in November 2015. The sequel series Jupiter's Legacy: Requiem, which continues the storyline decades after the end of the original series, debuted in June 2021, also yielding positive critical reception.

In April 2015, it was announced that Millar had partnered with film producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura to adapt Jupiter's Legacy into feature films. In 2018, it was announced that Netflix, which acquired Millarworld the previous year, was developing a television adaptation of the comic series, with Steven S. DeKnight hired as showrunner and one of the executive producers. The series lasted one season.

Jupiter's Legacy was initially to be titled Jupiter's Children. The original idea for the series was conceived when writer Mark Millar read the memoirs of Star Wars actress Carrie Fisher, in which she shared that despite her fame as Princess Leia, she did not feel anything special because of her two even more famous parents. It led Millar to observe that "even Princess Leia feels the sense of not living up to her parents." Thus Millar described the story as evoking the generational conflict of Hamlet, and would explore, as one of its themes, the question of "what it would be like to grow up as Wonder Woman and Superman's kids", in particular the difficulty in living up to the legacy of previous generations. Millar created the series as a "big, weighty tome that happens to be about superheroes", which examines the connection of superheroes to the American ideal. Millar was also influenced by sources such as Star Wars, King Kong, origin stories from the Golden Age of Comics, and by Roman mythology. This is seen in the name Jupiter, which Millar chose because it evoked a grand, mythological scope to the story, which he hoped to contemporize by blending those themes with modern imagery, and a Wagnerian story structure. Other themes and motifs explored include the dawn of man, the origin of Earth, and contemporary concerns about the current economy and the end of capitalism. Millar explains:

As someone who grew up with an American flag in my bedroom, I watched from across the Atlantic in the past few years to see something I never thought I'd see in my lifetime: poverty in the States. It actually touches my life because a lot of my friends who are comic book fans or freelancers will tell me stories I could never have imagined happening in my lifetime, like how their local gas station is closing down because no one in town has the money to run a car anymore. It's a country that, growing up, I always associated with things getting bigger and better, and so to see it contracting is actually quite terrifying. That served as the inspiration for the backdrop to this story. The superheroes are impotent in the face of this complex situation, and that's where things kick off...This story is my love letter to America. That idea of democracy and everyone having an equal say is such a fundamentally decent one and something we should cherish...And for me, the United States has always been tied up with superheroes as well. Maybe that's because Wonder Woman and Superman are wearing the American flag. It seems a nice analogy to tie in the end of the American Empire with this big, grand twilight of the superheroes kind of story.

Asked about the pulp era opening scenes of issue one, in which the group of protagonists charter a boat to journey to a mysterious island, Millar explained that King Kong is his favorite film, and that the sequence in which that film's characters travel to Skull Island is "one of the greatest ever". Millar further explained that he wanted to give the characters a superhero origin that was more both mythical and simple, such as the Golden Age Green Lantern and the Silver Age Flash, instead of grounding it in real world science. The mystery of what exactly happened to the protagonists of Jupiter's Legacy on the island in 1932 is gradually revealed during the course of the miniseries, beginning with issue #4.