The Death Ray by Daniel Clowes

A lonely 1970s teenager discovers that smoking grants him super strength and leads him to a devastating weapon capable of killing from a distance, drawing him and his manipulative best friend into a morally ambiguous experiment with vigilante justice. Told through fractured timelines, the story tracks his uneasy evolution into adulthood, probing the corrosive allure of power, the ethics of revenge, and the hollowness behind superhero myths.