The Power Fantasy #1-5 (part one)

This review was commissioned by @toxinvictory


This recent (2024) Image Comics series was born of the question: "what if there was a superhero comic about the capes not fighting each other?" Not a comic in which the capes don't fight. A comic that's actually *about* them not fighting.

If that sounds like fluffy slice-of-life stuff that defeats the purpose of being a superhero story, well, here's a helpful in-universe dictionary quote - included by author Kieron Gillen at the end of the comic's first issue - that gives us some context:

Definitions 1 and 3 are copied from real life. Definition 2, and the (archaic) tag for 3, explain what this comic is all about. Nuclear politics, in a world where a handful of individual people are the equivalent of nuclear powers. A web of mutually assured destruction strung up between both nations and people in costumes for whom MAD is the only law that restricts them.

...

Another thought going through the author's head when he started writing this is...well, I actually think Spacebattles and its sister sites might have some culpability here.

Kieron Gillen looks into your very souls, Versus Debaters. And he finds them wanting.

...

Refreshingly, despite the premise's capacity for such, this also isn't a grimdark deconstruction (seriously, is there even anything about this genre left to deconstruct at this point?). It strikes a good tonal balance, essentially hitting the same notes as a geopolitical drama with all the same light and dark notes that those tends to entail. Just, everything is much more personal when some of the "nuclear-armed states" are people.

The setting lore and status quo are drip-fed a little more slowly than I'd have liked throughout the first few issues, but the presentation is elegant even if it's slow paced. Mostly told through a collection of interviews, memories, and in-universe documents, positioned in a way that feels like a natural part of the narrative as we get to know the main characters. The long and short of it is that in the summer of 1945, at the exact moment when the first nuclear bomb was tested, a baby with supernatural powers was born.

Others followed soon after. The vast majority of these so-called "atomics" have only very minor abilities, along the lines of "make my fingertips glow" or "sense the emotions of people who are right next to me." They don't wear costumes, and the ones who fight and/or commit crimes generally do so the same way that normal humans do.

Six of them, however, are known superpowers.

As you can see, there are at least three (almost certainly related, but the details are unknown) origins for these powers. The angels and demons - of which only two are known to exist, both of them among the superpowers - are immortal spirits inhabiting human bodies (one was born into such a body, the other is sharing an existing one). The other atomics, which include the entire world's population of powered-but-not-superpowered people, seem to be normal people with normal childhood development aside from their powers. The green-colored "magicians" have managed to acquire power artificially, though the only ones shown so far have been part of the same organization and may actually just be getting their power from leader Jacky Magus.

The author apparently had a famous run writing X-Men comics, and in one of his notes he says that he had the idea for The Power Fantasy while working for Marvel and that the influences probably show. Sure enough, you can see a lot of X-Men sensibilities in the way the common, non-superpowered atomics are portrayed, and the tensions between them and greater human society. More obviously, two of the superpowers are pretty transparently inspired by Professor X and Magneto, with another having some fairly heavy-handed Dr. Doom-isms (though his costume looks almost more Cobra Commander, come to think of it, heh). Once again, I'm happy to report that none of these characters are deconstructions or satires or exaggerations or the like of their inspirations, but they also have enough unique traits and narrative roles to make them more than just generic-brand ripoffs. It strikes a good balance.

...

I'm glad it seems like we've left that era of comics fully and truly behind us at this point.

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Since the exposition, character introductions, and plot are all set up atemporally throughout these first five issues, I'll just go through the dramatis personae before getting into the actual story.

The character who's featured most prominently so far - arguably the story's main protagonist - is Etienne Lux, no cape name. The aforementioned Professor Xpie.

Can't get a dramatic action shot of him, because that's not how his powers work.​

Part of the first generation of Atomics born in the 1940's, Etienne's powers manifested during childhood and have been getting stronger over the course of his life with no sign of slowing down. He is, to put it mildly, the most terrifying entity on the planet. Able to telepathically reach out into the minds of any number of people, at any distance, and do just about anything with their minds. "Assuming direct control" is the very least of it. He can adjust people's personalities, wipe or create memories, and even implant irresistible subconscious compulsions that will activate on certain contingencies.

He's also one of the most ethical human beings alive. He's been a student of moral philosophy from childhood onward, and he takes it seriously. However, a quirk of his psychology is that he has conscious control of his own emotions as well as anyone he chooses to reach into, which in turn means that his sense of right and wrong has no instinct or "gut feeling" to it. It's all rules he rationally, dispassionately chose to commit himself to. Another superpower describes Etienne as being "supremely ethical, but absolutely amoral," which I think is fairly accurate.

The overall shape of Etienne's ethical system is basically "rule utilitarianism, but with exceptions made for exceptional circumstances." Obviously, in a world where some individuals inherently have so much more power than the others, there can't be one consistent ruleset for the greatest good. Multiple-ruleset-utilitarianism, perhaps.

Etienne long ago concluded that the most ethical thing for people like him to do is kill themselves, because the existence of superpowers necessarily makes the world worse and more dangerous for everyone else. However, the knowledge that 1) if the ethical superpowers all killed themselves only the unethical ones would remain, 2) any attempt to kill the unethical ones would likely result in the destruction of the world, and 3) other superpowers with unknown moral stances may emerge after the fact, has kept him from putting this into practice.

Because of the reach of his telepathy, Etienne acts as a go-between for the other five superpowers, facilitating dialogue and negotiating compromises as needed to keep the planet intact.

Now for the Magneto-alike. Ray "Brother Heavy" Harris.

Pictured above dealing with an unsuccessful American attempt at creating an artificial superpower to defend NATO's imperial interests.​

Controls gravitational forces on both macro and micro scales. On the macro end, he could literally peel off Earth's crust if he wanted to. On the micro, when he gets injured he telekinetically holds his flesh together with such perfect precision that the pieces can eventually heal themselves back in place. He can do this constantly, with no multitasking issues, even while asleep. He does take a lot of painkillers though, which doesn't exactly make him a safe or stable person to have access to so much power.

Not much has been revealed about his origins yet, but somehow or other this former hippy ended up leading a commune of atomics. Most atomics are very visible, but not very powerful, and the anxiety that most of Earth lives with as a result of the superpowers makes them an easy outlet and scapegoat. It's a better justification for the persecution of mutants than the Marvel Civilians were ever given, heh. Anyway, like his magnetic inspiration, Brother Heavy sees himself as representing the interests of the atomics as a whole, and many (though definitely not all) of the world's lesser atomics feel likewise. He has created a flying island, powered by one of his artificial singularities, inhabited by hundreds of atomics who have either chosen to join him, or who fled into his arms out of desperation. Proximity to this core also interferes with Etienne's powers, meaning that there's no guarantee either of them can be sure they could kill the other before retaliation occurs if it came to that.

Sadly, they used to be good friends, and motivated by a common desire to protect humanity. At some point though, Brother Heavy shifted into atomic nationalism, and their relationship has been increasingly strained ever since. Once again, the comic is wearing its X-Men inspirations on its sleeve.

The irony is that the atomics living on this skyship are only as "free" as people being suspended miles above the ground by the whim and will of a Valium-addled god king possibly CAN be. Which...is actually still pretty decent in practice, because Brother Heavy has so far done a good job of being a hands-off leader as he promised them, but that could change at any time for any reason that happens to convince him.

Next up is an unusual case. More of a curse or a possession than a superpower, at least as far as the comic has shown thus far. Morishita Masumi, and her monstrous alter ego Deconstructa.

An emotionally-immature, narcissistic frustrated artist who turns into a rampaging Cthulhu-lookalike when she gets sufficiently unhappy.

...heh, I didn't realize until I typed it out just now, but she's probably a play on the Incredible Hulk. Heh.

Unlike the others, Masumi doesn't really want to play politics or balance powers. However, her emotional wellbeing requires her art to be seen and acknowledged, thereby keeping her in the public eye and keeping the public eye on her. And anything that upsets the public might in turn upset her. So, she needs to be consulted whenever a superpower does anything, even if she wishes that wasn't the case. Deconstructa's power also provides his host/projector with physical and mental imperviousness, so neither assassination nor psionic mood-stabilizing will work.

One of Etienne Lux's more unpleasant tasks is mind-controlling the people around Masumi to keep them from upsetting her, while being subtle enough about it to prevent her from finding out and getting upset about her life being a lie. Etienne tries to get the informed consent of as many of these people as possible before he tampers with them, but sometimes it isn't an option.

Sharing Masumi's decidedly nonheroic end of the spectrum is Jacky Magus, he of the Dr. Doom-ish trappings. Jacky is an effective foil to Etienne, by being proof that having the most noble goals in the world still won't help you if you're a big enough douchebag.

Sometime in the late 1960's, Jackie figured out how magic actually works, why it started working again for the first time in ages in 1945, and why no one else was able to get it to work without happening to be born with it. How he learned these things, no one besides him knows. But anyway, despite being an anarchist punk antifa type (he neeeever shuts up about this being his "real" ideology), he decided that the best thing to do was start a brutally hierarchical cult to control magic before someone else does. He was transparent about this. He actually described his pyramidal cult as a cult, and literally named it "the Pyramid." He preaches about the problematic nature of power and the evil of hierarchy to his underlings, while reminding them that he is their absolute leader and also that they should not respect or look up to him because authority figures are inherently illegitimate.

This is literally part of the orientation pamphlet he hands out to Pyramid recruits:

Because being ironic about it makes it not bad, amirite?

Jacky Magus and his organization did do a lot of good, especially in their first couple of decades. However, unlike Etienne and Brother Heavy who had their powers thrust upon them and no ability to share them, Jacky deliberately cultivated his own powerset, and decided that he - alone in the world - should be the one at the pinnacle of the pyramid. Jacky justifies this with the claim that even *one* person knowing what he knows is a bad thing, and having others know it would be that much worse, but unlike Etienne with his cold hard moral rationalism, the Magus' logic is pretty transparently egotistical and self-serving. The kind of person who he is - who he always was - ends up eventually souring all his works.

Jacky can build magitech devices. The really powerful ones (such as the psi-shields that proof him against Etienne) are few and costly, but the minor magic weapons and devices are mass-producible. Additionally, the more people there are in his Pyramid cult, ritually bound to himself, the more his power (including his gadget-making abilities) grows. A literal pyramid scheme. In the wake of an event in the late 1980's that cost him nearly all of his followers (more on this in the next post), Jacky has turned desperate and paranoid. He's at the point where he trusts national governments more than he trusts the other superpowers, and believes that everyone besides him is one step away from going completely lolevil and destroying everything. At the time of the main story's start, he's decided to try and take over the United States and use official power to rebuild the Pyramid. He also may or may not be legitimately trying to kill all the other superpowers.

Next up is Eliza Hellbound. A former Pyramid member who somehow got her hands on knowledge she wasn't supposed to have at her tier, and used it grow beyond Jacky Magus' control.

She and him are still on decent terms. Just, there's also a lot of resentment and fear going both ways. Either way, Hellbound has mostly kept to herself since leaving the Pyramid.

The first five issues reveal very little about her motives, her powers, or her origins. What they do reveal is that she used her forbidden knowledge to invite a possessing demon. It's not clear how much control the demon has over her, or if she and it are even separate consciousnesses at all. The demon's goals and her old human self's presumably align to some degree, but that's all that can be inferred so far. We don't even know what a "demon" actually is yet. Eliza Hellbound is sort of the X-factor, at story's start.

Finally, Santa Valentina. The first and easily the weirdest of the superpowers. The baby born at the moment of the first nuclear detonation, and who floated up into the air and articulately greeted her mother and the attending doctors during her first thirty seconds of independent life.

She aged to physical young adulthood very quickly after this, and has stayed there for the rest of the twentieth century.

Valentina is an angel born into a human body. She was sent from a place that she claims is analogous to our religious concepts of heaven, on the orders of an entity analogous to our religious concepts of God, in order to save humanity from self-destruction now that it has the power to destroy itself. She doesn't have any specific memories or details besides this, but she's very, very sure of it.

Santa Valentina is very close with Etienne, being his complementary opposite. Valentina has an innate understanding of good and evil, an even more innate commitment to good, and the knowledge that her angelic heart can always be followed...but she can and does make mistakes in the exact details of how best to put her goals into practice, and for that she needs his philosophical analyses. She's also his opposite in terms of powerset; while he's a squishy human whose mind can reach across the world, she's a completely indestructible goddess whose biggest limitation is that she can only be in one place at a time. However...over the decades, their mutual respect and cooperation have also become accompanied by a deep fear and mistrust of what the other might end up doing someday, and both are prepared to kill each other if they deem it necessary. It's almost happened at least once. A tragic necessity of caring about humanity and knowing each other's threat level.

Santa Valentina might be the exception to this comic not doing any cynical subversions. Only, she's really a double subversion. A deconstruction of a deconstruction. Some readers think that she's a spin on Superman, but I think that she's actually a bizarro Doctor Manhattan.

Radiant androgynous angelic battlemode.​

She's got the religious anxiety element, the heavyhanded thematic connection with nuclear bombs, and the radioactive-looking lightshow powers. However, she was born with her powers AND her adult intelligence and perspective rather than stumbling into them later in life, she cares about people inherently and often needs to be the one convincing others to not give up on humanity, she's passionately social and gregarious, and she's a dark skinned woman.

Intensely fuckable muscle-mommy resting state.​

In some ways, this brings her back around to being something Superman-ish. In others, it really doesn't.

Anyway, Santa Valentina is the heroine that mankind needs, but almost certainly not the one it deserves. Much more about that in the second post, but for now I'll just say that she needs to live in Earth orbit in order to protect innocent bystanders from the people who want to kill her and don't care about collateral damage. Sad for her, given her "more human than human" desire for friendship, love, and community, but it's the only way.


So, that's the characters. Next time, the story.