Ed. Note: This review contains spoilers for The Power Fantasy #1. If you’d like to read a spoiler-free version of this review, check it out here.

“Superpowered.” You have certain preconceptions. They’re incorrect. Here, that word has a specific technical definition. Namely, “any individual with the destructive capacity of the nuclear arsenal of the USA.” There are six such people on Earth. The planet’s survival relies on them never coming into conflict. The eternal fight against fighting starts now in The Power Fantasy #1 written by Kieron Gillen, art by Caspar Wijngaard, lettering by Clayton Cowles and design by Rian Hughes.

Sean Dillon: Hello and welcome to ComicsXF’s coverage of The Power Fantasy. I’m former Judgment Day correspondent and DIE player Sean Dillon.

Rasmus Skov Lykke: And I’m Rasmus Skov Lykke. You might know me from Kieron Gillen coverage, such as Judgement Day, Immortal X-Men, DIE the RPG, The Wicked + The Divine and Young Avengers.

Sean: I think I have your book on that last one.

Rasmus: Yes, I literally wrote a book about Gillen’s work (with the esteemed Jamie McKelvie). Needless to say, I am a huge fan. As such, I’m very familiar with his writing, but haven’t read much by Caspar Wijngaard yet, save for his collaboration with Gillen on Peter Cannon: Thunderbolt. What about you, Sean?

Sean: Both Home Sick Pilots and All Against All are phenomenal books. Highly recommended works. His Star Wars work is perfectly good stuff, though very much working in IP. I feel like I should reread Angelic at some point, though I remember quite liking it. And his Star Trek short is phenomenal in its usage of paneling and mirroring.

Rasmus: I have been meaning to read Home Sick Pilots and All Against All, and after reading this first issue of The Power Fantasy my desire to do so has only increased. This is one hell of an opening issue.

Sean: Amen!

Fell in Love Years Ago With an Innocent Girl

Rasmus: When The Power Fantasy #1 was first announced, it was with a different cover than what we see here. 

Sean: Yeah, the original cover gave off a vibe of something more along the lines of a WicDiv cover, where you would have the characters posing like a photograph instead of doing action stuff. The new cover, meanwhile, comes across as more in line with those action scene moments with the lone hero facing off against a sinister foe, dominating the world in darkness.

As to be expected from a Gillen comic, however, things aren’t what they seem.

Rasmus: It’s definitely not black and white, clear cut good versus evil.

Our looming foe from the cover, Etienne Lux, is also the first character we meet, on this gorgeous splash from Wijngaard.

Opening lines in stories are important. “Of course, the ethical thing to do is take over the world” is doing a lot of interesting things. It tells us that Lux might well be the bad guy from the cover, as he plots world domination. But at the same time, he clearly has good intentions, being preoccupied with the ethics of it all.

Then there’s the fact that he says it with such casualness, while eating a slice. It’s idle pondering, but due to the juxtaposition with the cover, we already get the feeling that he actually could take over the world.

It’s a great start, with a seemingly simple opening line.

Sean: Additionally, consider the way in which the two characters are drawn in this splash. The approach Wijngaard takes with them isn’t as looming figures dominating the page. If anything, they’re the smallest people in the page, background characters in someone else’s story. There’s a degree to which Lux and Valentina blend into the wall behind them.

There are a number of delightful details your eye is drawn to on this page from the psychedelic Peace Love billboard to the small bits of graffiti that dance around the building. But it’s Cowles’ letters that ultimately draw us in to our two focus characters for this scene.

And can I just say, I love the structure of this issue. All things considered, it’s rather simple. Essentially, it’s three scenes of conversations regarding the exact same subject: What do we do about superpowers? This first one, as you point out, highlights the merits of world domination with the casualness of eating a slice in New York City.  The other two scenes will highlight even more complexities to this concept, but the start highlights the full scope of the moment expertly.

Rasmus: It’s really carried home by the second page, with Valentina’s response to Lux’ question: “Is that instead of going to see the Lovin’ Spoonful or as well as?”

Yes, this is a serious book about what it would mean for the world if people with superpowers existed. But it’s not just that. It’s also about people and culture. One of Gillen’s stated inspirations for this series is Andrew Hickey’s excellent A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs and this opening exchange is already displaying that influence.

Sean: Hickey has long deserved the success he’s gotten and I’m quite happy for him.

Relatedly, the narrative keeps the pair in the background throughout the majority of the scene, often having one panel only characters overlap our two leads. It’s only when they’re the sole focus of the conversation, when Lux has deliberately moved other people out of focus with his powers, do they take the foreground of the scene. All building to a final panel that has the pair now the largest people on the page, in the foreground and at the center of things, truly spellbinding.

Considering their discussion is about whether to take over the world overtly or remain behind the scenes players, this visual language is key to the work.

Rasmus: Wijngaard’s storytelling is just top notch here.

I also love the casual way Lux is using his powers. The first few instances even flew by me, as I was engrossed in their conversation. He just gently nudges people’s attention away, without any effort. Using his mind control to make the pair effectively invisible, as they talk. Which, both given what is to come, but definitely also the cover image, is actually scary. That he has so few qualms about messing with people’s minds, despite proclaiming his ethical aspirations, is alarming. Nothing is as dangerous as a righteous man, as Valentia also points out.

Sean: It’s also worth noting, given the conversation at hand, how relatively moralistic Valentina is here. It’s not that she’s lecturing Lux about his usage of powers, but rather holds a strong moral conviction about the ultimate plan he has for world domination. She is willing to kill him because of his aspirations

Rasmus: She is an angel, after all.

Sean: Yes, and it is often the case that angels are known for saying “Be not afraid” as they do untold damage. Even lovely angels are known to end civilizations, even by accident. Their power, as Lux notes, is fundamentally immoral. It’s telling that Valentina rejects the view of her being a God. Angels, after all, serve a cosmic will. The immorality lies in what that will mean for the people who aren’t Gods or Angels, as we see in…

I Know That There Shall be Peace in the Valley

Sean: 1999! Interestingly, we once again open on a similar shot to the opening splash. It’s a single panel with our two focus characters (an elder Lux and a writer named Tonya) in the background. Wijngaard’s colors this time draw us into their conversation, having Lux’s yellow coat pop out in the shadowed background as opposed to blending into the walls.

Rasmus: It’s a subtle clue to let us know that this is not the same Lux from the opening scene. 30 years will change a man. Even if he will most definitely swear he is the same good person that he claimed he was in the last scene. And yet. Tonya thanks him for granting her “an audience,” like he’s the Pope. He wants to be seen like one of the common people, even as he’s anything but.

Sean: And he still mind controls people with a “psionic jimmy” to leave him alone. Though, interestingly, not dogs, as we see when the couple walks away under his control and their dog is confused. He’s still in the background, still apart from the people he claims to be aligned with.

This becomes all the more telling when we meet our newest major figure in the story: Heavy. Can I just say, I love the character design work Wijngaard does here. We learn so much about who these people are by virtue of what they look like. We can see how time has aged Lux not just from the gray in his beard, but from the furrow in his brow.

And Heavy is perhaps the most flagrantly great example of this. At once looking like an aged hippie guru and a world heavyweight champion, we can see the utopian vision of the world he has, the hard fought battles he endured in the process, and the brutality he is capable of all from a single image.

Rasmus: It’s one of those brilliant designs, where the second I saw him, I wanted to know more about him.

Speaking of design, as we move further into the story, in 1999, we also see a storytelling trick lifted from Watchmen, with people’s fashions not resembling the actual 1999, but instead the 1999 of the story. The presence of these characters have a far reaching impact.

Sean: My favorite small detail in this regard is Tonya’s recorder, which aesthetically looks like a recorder from the 90s, but functionally works more like one from the modern day, complete with touch screen interface and a lack of buttons. It feels like it was taken from years in the future, but made to fit the era.

Rasmus: The thing about these small things is that they add so much to the story being told. It’s the things that make this feel like a world that’s lived in. A world with history. It’s the same when Tonya and Lux talk about his history, and he mentions his regrets about the Second Summer of Love, The Signal, etc. There’s history here. It’s like the best moments of superhero comics, where you hear about The Mutant Massacre or something, and want to track down those old comics, because they’ll tell you more about the world. Except here it’s hinting at a past that we’re going to encounter in future issues, as the series spans five decades.

Sean: It’s worth noting that the best artistic moment of the whole issue that speaks so many volumes is when Tonya brings up Tokyo, and you can just faintly see a horrifying (or perhaps more aptly horrified) face screaming in the background. Just adds to the implications of that one line. You can feel the weight of history and all that it implies. A part of me wants some moments to remain lost to the reader. Forever unknown as real history often is. So many details are often lost to figures with great power deciding to remove them completely. And in a story about the immorality of power, it would be apt to not see the full scope of their damage.

Rasmus: The hint we get of it here in the first issue is staggering.

Heavy, as the old hippie he clearly is, wants to show ‘the man’ that he can’t be controlled, that they should respect him. Which he does by flying his flying city over Manhattan, in a clear demonstration of power. Something which the other superpowers have clearly tried to talk him out of. Because they know what will happen. This is obviously not an isolated incident, or a new situation. They know the kind of impact they have on ordinary people and how scared they’re going to be. And how much of a hassle it’s going to be for them to deal with.

It never seems like Lux is trying to talk Heavy out of doing this out of concern for ordinary people. He is focused on what it means for the Family – the people with powers – and especially the Nuclear Family, our six leads. It’s not that he doesn’t want to kill all those people. It’s the inconvenience that’s bothering him.

She Was Right in the Rain of the Bullets That Eventually Brought Her Down

Sean: So naturally, the US government does what it always does to left leaning types with get uppity about the state of the world, and kills them. It’s fitting that the methodology used to try to kill Heavy is an Orbital Space Laser. For those unaware of the sheer absurdity of the Reagan administration, there was a Cold War era project in the works called, and I shit you not, Star Wars, in which Ronald Reagan wanted to have an orbital space laser built to target the USSR. A literal Deus Ex Machina that would judge the Earth and those who trespass against the US.

The invocation of Reagan’s foolhardy efforts is further emphasized by a moment in his time as Governor of California, wherein a group of hippies were protesting a park being bulldozed to be replaced with a parking lot. His response to this was to have armed soldiers shoot at the protesters with shotguns. As he noted, “If it takes a bloodbath, let’s get it over with. No more appeasement.”

So naturally, this historical context has implications for a book about people who can’t get into a fight.

Rasmus: Reagan’s statement has a lot of similarities with Lux’ “If you have decided someone has to die, you kill them. Declarations of war are for Victorians.”

There are two possibilities with Etienne Lux. Either he really is the hero of our story, the way he is trying to position himself as, always speaking of ethics. Or he’s the villain, as he justifies atrocities to himself, as his lies being necessary and only killing as few people as possible. Everyone is the hero of their own story, and Lux is definitely the hero of his. The interesting thing is to discover if he’s actually a good person in the universe of The Power Fantasy, as he claims in the discussion with Valentina.

Because he has no qualms about doing what he does here, in response to the failed assassination attempt on Heavy. 

Sean: The only thing he has any qualms about on that front is going full in on the revenge aspects. He’s not interested in killing families. Innocent people who are tangentially related to the assassination, sure. Their direct families, not so much.

The question of the book isn’t if these are good people with powers. As Lux notes to Valentina when she asks “In what universe are you a “good person”?” with the simple response “This one.” The fact of the matter is the moral question of good and evil is being sidestepped in the name of relativism. In a world where there are six superpowered beings, everyone is stuck picking the lesser evil. Between cult leaders, ethics spewing murderers, and terrified monsters, there don’t seem to be that many good options.

All of which to say, this is an extremely fascinating book and I can’t wait to see where things are going to go next.

Rasmus: Yeah, the truly impressive thing about this issue is that not only do Gillen and Wijngaard create a world full of wonder, truly awesome powers at display and the logical implications of treating superheroes as nuclear weapons, where there’s so much tension at work and we’re left at the edges of our seats wondering what will happen to Etienne Lux, but they also create a cast of characters that we’re interested in seeing more of.

It’s not only the plot that’s interesting, it is much more this cast of characters. I’m more interested in seeing them interact more, than what happens in the story. And I’m plenty interested in what happens in the story.

As Gillen has jokingly said for months, as he was developing The Power Fantasy, this is the new Saga. Come for the story, stay for the characters.

Fantasizing About Power

• ComicsXF’s coverage of The Power Fantasy will involve a rotating cast of critics exploring the implications of the book each month. We hope to see you there.
• The final page once again inverts the first page, this time having only Lux in the foreground, dominating the page the way he didn’t in the opening page. Tonya’s lack of importance to the grand scheme of things is highlighted by her smallness. And yet, she is granted more importance to the narrative via her color and size in comparison to all the other people behind her.
• Speaking of Watchmen, the obvious comparison to make with regards to the sequence wherein Heavy flies up to destroy the orbital space laser and Lux makes contact with the various allies is the 8th issue, “Old Ghosts,” in which we see the world of Watchmen in the lead up to Rorschach’s escape as Dan and Laurie plan it all out.
• Rian Hughes’ design work is, as to be expected, top notch. I especially love the opening title spread for the series, our first image going into the book, in which the title is barely visible and fades into the darkness.
• For those — like me — too lazy to count the power icon in the early pages, there are 182 of them, with the 48th being highlighted. Does this mean anything? I doubt it, but who knows!
• You can feel the shift in New Yorks between 1966 and 1999. From the cleanliness of the city at the cusp of the century with its lack of graffiti to the brickwork and color of the buildings. I can’t wait to see if Wijngaard depicts the grimy decay of 80s New York. Or, for that matter, the number of other historical places left to offer.
• Wijngaard’s depiction of Valentina, as she shifts through displays of her power, is stunning. First a subtle halo, then white eyes and flight, until she becomes a full fledged angel, shining bright light around her, as she grows wings and full body halos. Just stunning.
• Judging by the invocation of Texas as the state responsible for the President being elected, Bill Clinton lost to HW Bush. So three Republican Presidents in a row results in Star Wars being a thing.
• The back page of the issue is taken up by indicia. The diligent reader is rewarded for reading through it.
• In the Dropout exclusive series Smartypants, Ross Bryant postulates that music is heading towards a homogenization that will lead to its damnation. His response is, in his own words, “not musical salvation. This is musical accelerationism.” Specifically, he calls for Swing Revival Revivalism. Do you think this act of flagrant retromancy will be enough to save music from the encroaching forces of homogenization?

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