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.

[12] 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.

[9][15][16] 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 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.

In response, Millar announced that beginning in April 2015, all Millarworld titles would be completely drawn before the publication of their debut issues, to ensure a monthly schedule.

After journeying to the island with his brother Walter and a group of five old college friends, including his future wife Grace,[27] he becomes a Superman analogue[3][8][28] named the Utopian,[27] who is regarded as the greatest superhero on the planet.

[29] Donning a red and white costume with a gold eagle chest emblem,[27] he and his five companions to the island form a superhero group called the Union,[30] with headquarters located in New York City.

[29] Sheldon leads the Union according to a strict moral code, suspending Walter's son Jules from the main team for dating a woman that he rescued from a fire.

His sense of hearing is so acute that even in the thin atmosphere of Europa, he is able, in 1965, to pick up an ultra-high frequency, low pulse-beat signal broadcast by a handheld transmitter 1,000 miles under the moon's surface that is inaudible to the normal human ear.

"[40] Walter advocates more direct political activism on the part of superheroes and feels that they need to fix the ailing economy and tell President Obama what he should be doing in his second term.

[27] In the 1960s Grace is a partner in a law firm and a single woman with an unsuccessful social life, having not had a boyfriend since returning to the United States with the super powers she was given on the island.

[30] A neonatal surgeon at Los Angeles' St. Thomas Presbyterian Hospital,[30][41] with connections in the Hollywood entertainment scene, he hails from a prominent political family in San Francisco.

He later sets her up with a job and an apartment, but when he lobbies for her to join the Union, the other members refuse, both because April has no superhuman abilities and because his affair with her is an affront to Joyce, who they point out loves Fitz.

[39] Skyfox emerges as the sex symbol of the team, whose public image leads him to have liaisons with a thousand women, though in 1960 he begins a relationship with a 26-year-old model named Sunny.

[44] After she begins a relationship with Walter, George leaves his estate to Sheldon, cuts all ties with the team, ends his superhero career, and moves to Kentucky, where he lives incognito.

Headquartered in Franklin Senior High School in Upstate New York, his henchmen (with the exception of his female companion, Ms. Wanamaker) dress entirely in black, and have the names of famous scientists written on their shirts in white letters.

He believes the rise of superheroes have signified a Darwinian shift that has rewritten the laws of probability that require successful criminals to be supercriminals, and which predicts a tipping point in 2016 that will mean the end of the human race.

"[47] As the series progresses, she and her boyfriend, Hutch, become fugitives after the other superheroes, led by Walter and Brandon, murder her parents,[29] and the two hide in Australia while raising their gifted son, Jason.

[38] In addition to the ability to fly,[48] Chloe possesses a degree of invulnerability that allows her body to easily survive impact with vehicles traveling at high speed.

Despite his father's urging to do more altruistic superhero work, Brandon feels that there is no one "cool" to fight any more and that the great battles are in the past, with the best villains having died ten or twenty years ago.

Brandon possesses the power of telekinesis, which enables him to fly, allows him to lift objects as massive as a fully loaded freighter, and can also survive in outer space like his father.

During one battle between his elders and an escaped superhuman convict named Blackstar, Jules deliberately maintains his distance from the melee, intending to land a few blows near the end of it in order to avoid getting hit, and later complains of a cut knee, for which he is criticized by Sheldon.

After Walter and Brandon's forces find the mangled remnants of Jason Hutchence's gene meta-scanner on the Moon, Jules assures his father that he can fix anything, including the scanner.

[18] The power rod allows Hutch to teleport himself and others to any point on the planet by merely speaking the name of the location,[34] project energy that can briefly physically repel people like a battering ram, including other superhumans like Walter,[29] and remotely control vehicles.

[3] Rich Johnston of Bleeding Cool gave the issue a positive review for the depiction of the socioeconomic and political conflicts, Quitely and Doherty's art, and the soap opera plot of the characters' power plays.

[28] Jesse Schedeen of IGN gave the issue a 7.3 score of "Good", saying that he wished Millar would explore genres other than superheroes in his Millarworld work, and was disappointed that Jupiter's Legacy was not the book to break that trend that it had initially seemed to him.

Nonetheless, Wilkerson felt that the book harbored enough depth and potential to be a modern classic, provided that the creative team properly follow-through on the foundations they laid.

Houvouras said that Quitely's depiction of Utopian's defeat was "beautifully staged", but that the lack of information revealed about him made his death "ultimately meaningless" and "at best morbidly hilarious and at worst sub-par paper thin plotting.

[56] Jim Johnson of Comic Book Resources, who gave the issue an 8.0, took notice of the sense of wonderment exhibited by the 1930s "pulp-ish, old school feel" of the bedtime story that Chloe tells Jason, and the contrast with the cold, fascist reality of the present surveillance state in which the family lives, which Millar and Quitely effected with the full-page illustration of the monitoring station hovering over their neighborhood.

[13] On February 11, 2019, it was announced that Josh Duhamel, Ben Daniels, Leslie Bibb, Elena Kampouris, Andrew Horton, Mike Wade and Matt Lanter would star in the series.