Throughout the "Sellouts" story, I've been complaining that while it was all well and good, it felt a little familiar. Corruption in a super-hero group leading to murder, we went through this with "Supergroup" and while it's still fun, it wasn't really giving me the thrill of earlier Powers story. Well, I've never seen what happened in this issue before. There's a pretty radical shift in the story, as what started as a murder investigation turns into something of a rumination on what you do if the world's going to end and there's not much you can do about it, even if that's technically your job. Some amazing, world-shattering stuff in here, as Bendis and Oeming give us a ground-view look of super-hero apocalypse in a way I haven't seen since a tidal wave crashed over a photo-real Manhattan in the pages of Marvels. Of course, this is Powers, so it comes with more swearing.
Certainly the conclusion of the last issue, which promised nuclear devastation in Utah and at the Vatican, raised a few eyebrows. That's nothing compared to the opening of this issue, which not only gives us some stunning and disturbing visuals of these events thanks to Oeming and Pantazis, but offers up a couple more surprises that serve notice of the level of severity of what's going on. There's a sort of feeling in most super-hero universes that the super-heroes and super-villains will balance each other out, and while there's certainly a level of danger, actual apocalyptic threats and events never make their way down to the street.
Except that in Powers, the whole thing is viewed from the street, and so instead of seeing how Megaman will deal with the latest threat from the evil Dr. Scrotum, we see how the cops react to a massively powerful superhuman seemingly gone rogue. The reactions are many and varied, and as you would expect from Bendis, they run the gamut of amusing human emotion. Deena's reaction is perhaps the funniest (certainly the loudest) but I also liked the quiet determination of Agent Lange or the denial that pretty much defines Kutter's reaction.
Really, though, what impressed me about this issue was not just the notion of what the normal people do when the super-heroes freak out, but actually seeing the super-hero freak out in progress. Bendis, Oeming and Pantazis do not hold back in showing the disintegrating sanity of the antagonist, nor do they hold back in the depiction of his actions. This is not clean, super-hero type destruction, this is messy, weapon of mass destruction type stuff. It's so completely different, so much bigger, than what I was used to from Powers, that I was completely taken off guard.
I am fairly certain that Bendis hasn't decided to end Powers by blowing up the world, so there's sure to be some surprises to come in the next issue, as hinted at in the final pages of this issue. While my enthusiasm for this story and the title had been flagging, suddenly I'm right back on the edge of my seat, counting the days until the next issue so I can see how all this turns out.
