Hey, did you know that Bendis writes super-hero comics? OK, that may seem like a stupid question, since he's writing Ultimate Spider-Man and Ultimate X-Men, not to mention Powers, but really, most of his work has a different flavor than big epic super-hero work. Teen drama in his Ultimate work, adult drama in Alias, cop drama in Powers... but with this latest arc of Powers, Bendis has decided to do something a little different, a little more time-spanning super-hero epic, and it's working for me big-time. It also gives Mike Avon Oeming the chance to draw super-powered kung-fu masters, and for that alone it probably deserves the Eisner nod.
So it seems, three issues into this new story arc, that Walker may be a lot older than he looks. It's not just a reincarnation thing, as I thought, but an actual immortality thing. Bendis isn't going with the birth of power during World War II, which has been the defining moment for the big two super-hero universes, he's gone a little further back than that, and given that he's writing one book and not a hundred (well, some months it seems like he is writing a hundred books, but only one of them is Powers, which is my point) the epic story is more coherent and focused than just about any crossover I've ever seen. And yet... it has the same scope as something like Crisis on Infinite Earths or Unity, but with a more down-to-earth point-of-view character for the whole thing.
Now Bendis is a great writer, but he does have some dialogue habits that place him pretty strongly in the modern age. That's actually my only complaint with this issue, that some of the dialogue between Goran and the rest of the monks feels a little too snappy and modern, and it comes across as overly cute, drawing me out of the story a little bit. However, it's easy not to get too far out from the story, because Bendis also does a fantastic job of setting up this temple where the super-powered beings have withdrawn from humanity. It's a great idea, a neat twist on the history of super-humans, and it sets up the larger questions of Powers, about whether or not humans can really effectively police super-humans given their powers along with being a perfectly good idea to explore in a setting like a monastery, which is all about retreating from the world and into oneself.
Mind you, while Bendis is the one who set all these pins up, it is Oeming and Pantazis who knock them all down. The artwork on this book is always impressive, but this issue it is simply phenomenal, some of the best work that I've ever seen Oeming do. His one-page splash of the temple, seen from below, is gorgeous and powerful, and the two-page splash of Goran climbing the mountain equally powerful. And while the storytelling throughout is great (save those moments of "do I read across or down?" that seem to plague all Bendis books), I have to say that the pages that just took my breath away were the splash pages. The shot of the temple, a visual that immediately establishes just what Goran is getting into (and reintroduces a familiar face from Powers), is beautiful, and that two-page splash that finishes up the book is worthy of a poster. It also happens to be a perfect capper to the story, and is a great example of artwork that works not only as a piece of art but as a piece of storytelling.
If you're one of those people who ditched out on Powers because of the monkey issue that started this story, it's time to come back and give the story another chance. I really think this might be the best story that Bendis and Oeming have told in the pages of Powers, although it couldn't be told until a few arcs establishing the modern world were done. Of course, I also really liked the monkey issue, so you might want to flip through this one in the store before you just take my word on it.
