In the year 2030, scientist Matthew Ryder struggles with the totalitarian oppression of his world's leadership underneath the dictator and former superhero Monarch. Ryder, one of the very few in his world even privately opposed to Monarch's rule, finds small ways in which to research the superheroes of old, a long forbidden concept. Ryder's curiosity into the subject is drawn mostly from a vague childhood memory of being rescued out of a pile of rubble by a superhero that he couldn't put a face or a name to. It is revealed through flashbacks how Monarch, at one point a superhero himself, had murdered all of the other heroes singlehandedly and installed himself as sole world ruler, 29 years previously in 2001.