Comic Review: Powers

Powers

Now that my thesis is done, I can sit down and really sink my teeth into some good comics. My buddy Rami let me borrow 11 books of Brian Bendis and Michael Oeming's Eisner award-winning 'Powers.' Now I'm going to be blunt, when I see anything that says 'award winning' I buy into it. I love that shit, I don't want to waste my time and if something at least received an award, that means somebody out there liked it good enough to toss it a bone. On the flip side, I'm really critical of anything award winning because I expect it to be phenomenal.

The storyline for 'Powers' is pretty clever and certainly its innovative. Basically, it takes place in a world where superheroes are a daily occurrence are given licenses and regulated by the government as they fight against renegade super powered villains. Set against this backdrop are 'Christian Walker' and 'Deena Pilgrim,' two homicide detectives who specifically investigate the death of people with super powers.

As a superhero comic 'Powers' is a forced to be reckoned with. Not only does it take the standard comic book and flip it on its head (looking at heroes from the bottom up, rather than from the top down) but it also challenges them by focusing on oft unspoken elements of the superhero genre. What do I mean by this? If superheroes did exist, could you imagine how media crazed we common fold would be about them? It'd be like Lohan and Spears on crack. As well, if you were a hero, wouldn't you capitalize on your brand and make a fat ton of cash? Or, since heroes are just as human as anyone else, what would you do about the insane amount of people of the opposite sex throwing themselves at you?

Stalker fans, Capitalist branding and horny groupie sex are just the tip of the ice burg of Bendis and Oeming's book and just as much as these comics are a commentary on the superhero genre, they easily extend into a social critique of ourselves living in modern society. Moreover, its unapologetic in its slinging around of violence, swearing and nudity to hammer its point down in as realistic a means as possible. Far beyond shocking (as most comics use these for) it become simply fitting in the overall writing of the project.

The art too is simply astounding. Reading an interview the two tried hard to move as far away from the standard comic book cover art. This includes common stereotypes like the hero flying 'out' of the page, or a cinematic fight sequence to lure the reader into wanting more. Instead, covers of 'Powers' have paid homage to The Beatles's 'White Album', pulp film posters, and even E! Online's website. As I mentioned before, the comic is consistently innovative not just in it writing but in its art.

While as a book on superheroes the story like does wonders, as a detective comic the plots of the several trade paperbacks (which encompass the various story arcs) seem kind of lackluster. The villains are far from interesting, the 'mystery' we are hoping to solve often fall flat onto cliche, and the reader is never really challenged. A lot of the time the endings of the stories are solved in blitz and whirl of events in the last few scenes, often coming straight of left field in a kind of deus ex machina sort of way, and to be frank, a lot of the times it feels like cheating. Unlike other cop dramas, we get no hints or clues that we can decipher on our own, but are served all the answers on a plate when the writer is good and ready.

But perhaps the flaw is my own. I approached this comic as a detective comic first and a superhero comic second, which really isn't the case. In fact it isn't even a superhero comic first, it is first and foremost clever social commentary, secondly a novel and interesting take on superheroes, and third (and only as an afterthought) it is a crime story. If understood in that context, these books are solid gold.