August 14, 2026 at Underbelly Bristo Square, Cowbarn
The beautiful thing about the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, or any Fringe Festival, is getting to see DIY stuff, shows that are messy and chaotic because they can’t be slick every night for a month, performers who are working out how to do this. You get to see art when it’s raw, stuff that doesn’t happen on TV or even in big theatres, due to standards of professionalism.
That’s great fun, but after seeing a lot of it in a row, it can be very nice to sit back in a comfortable chair and enjoy a fully realized show that would soar over a TV studio’s standards of professionalism. Hero Complex was originally performed in Australia in 2017, and since then, has been all over the world. It’s been polished and perfected, and now, not a word or gesture or prop or step is out of place. Sammy J knows exactly where he’s going, exactly what he’s doing, at all times.
The structure is perfect. It’s a story about a love of superhero comics, and the story itself has all the twists and turns of an actual comic book. It has fakeout endings and resurrections, it has a romance subplot, it has peril and suspense, it has a bit of nonlinear storytelling. Every single thread gets woven in deeply and fully resolved by the end. Every bit of information is given us to us at the right time, so we know just as much as we need to appreciate the story, and are left in darkness long enough to be satisfied by each reveal.
The story itself is fantastical; it sounds like it can hardly be true, but it’s backed up with enough photo and video evidence to prove it (also, on the night I saw it, the main character from the story was in the crowd and gets brought up at the end to massive cheers, in case anyone somehow still doubted his existence). Sammy J lays out all the lore behind this story, just like a dedicated comic book writer; he even shows us a map of his old school, for the nerds who like worldbuilding.
This show is very much for the nerds, in content and style. It’s also almost painfully earnest and heartwarming – the audience lets out an “Awww” almost as often as they laugh, and Sammy J is entirely intentional about looking for that reaction. He shows us each new prop, each new narrative thread, with the enthusiasm of a real comic book geek, it’s endearing and captivating.
It draws on many topics that are undeniably sweet – a geeky kid looking for community, an unlikely friendship, a young love story, the passion of fandom. It’ll make you smile, even in the rough festival crowds and the cold Edinburgh rain. It’s excellent.
Dave Baillie