The Power Fantasy #2 // Review
If you reach a point at which you have to apologize to the people of the United States for killing the president, things have clearly gotten a bit out of hand. Things are bad and they’re getting worse in The Power Fantasy #2. Writer Kieron Gillen continues a distinctly interesting super-powered drama with artist Caspar Wijngaard. It is very, very difficult to get a truly new sort of an idea to come across in the superhero genre. Gillen and Wijngaard do a remarkable job of dancing perilously close to some breathtaking new angles on super-heroism in another captivating issue.
She’s welcomed into Haven by a guy with long black hair who is covered in bandages. It’s not exactly a greeting that’s going to instill confidence in her given the nature of the situation. The fact that his name is “Heavy” doesn’t really help matters. The man who apologized for killing the president had told her that she could trust Heavy even if HE personally couldn’t. So things are complicated. And the man who apologized for killing the president hasn’t exactly made a whole lot of friends in the global community of super-powered people. It’s difficult to explain. In a world of dramatic physics wielded by otherwise normal people, some things just have to be done.
Gillen manages a breathtaking amount of nuance for a story that involves super-powered human gods walking the Earth. All too often, the basic parameters of a superhero world need to be heavily-defined going into a story like The Power Fantasy. For the second month in a row, Gillen drops the reader right into the world without any explicit introduction. The effect is pretty impressive, but it wouldn’t be nearly as impressive as it is were it not for the fact that Gillen does such a brilliant job of keeping the dialogue very believable and earthbound. These are just normal people. Totally relatable. And totally fantastic.
Gillen’s drama hinges pretty heavily on the subtle nuances of drama between totally believable people. Wijngaard delicately transfers that drama to the page without unnecessary amplification. Psychic conversation between super-powered people isn’t often given the delicate intricacies that it rally needs on the page. So often super heroes are so lost in the bigger elements of action to get involved in the deeper psychological ned of the visuals. There’s a really powerful kind of dramatic subtlety to Wijngaard’s art that dances quite deftly with Gillen’s script.
The X-Men found a really interesting exploration of dangerous superpowers in a real world in the course of its first couple of decades on the page. Alan Moore’s Watchmen tied that dynamic deeply into the socio-political world of the 1980s. With The Power Trip, Gillen has found a new level of detail that amplifies the dramatic potential of a cerebral super hero story in a way that feels fresh and interesting. There’s life in the genre yet...and it’s pretty remarkable life that shows a great deal of promise.
Grade: A+
