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POWERS ANNUAL #1
Recommended (8/10)
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Image Comics
Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Artist: Michael Avon Oeming
Colors/Letters: Pat Garrahy
Copy Editor: KC McCrory
Price: $3.95 US |
For me, the big draw of police television shows is the interrogation room scene, where the cops talk to people and slowly piece together what happened. It serves the same purpose as the old Columbo shows where Falk would gather everybody in a room and then run down his version of what had happened, but with a slightly more realistic edge. Brian Michael Bendis excels at these types of scenes, and Oeming has been probably the best artist paired up with him to do them. The second half of the story takes us into the courtroom, another rarely-seen aspect of law enforcement in comics, and although Bendis's dialogue style seems a bit too chatty for that environment, it's another interesting examination of super-heroes and police from Powers.
Bendis has a reputation for
great dialogue patterns, one that is well deserved. The repetition of
just-stated facts or opinions is a very real thing, if it isn't pushed too far,
and it works very well in the first story, and the dry humor of Deena and her
partner really comes off well, providing both chuckles and forward plot
movement. You had to feel a little sorry for the Shark as he was verbally
out-maneuvered first by the cops and then by attorneys. However, I did feel that
the defense attorney came off as a little too chatty and off-point in his
discussions, fitting Bendis's dialogue patterns to a tee but seeming unfocused
in the realm of "answer the question, and make it the answer I want" that we see
in most courtrooms.
Oeming and Garrahy really
capture the mood of the interrogation room. The sickly green light, cleverly
explained as a power dampener, is absolutely terrific for atmosphere, and Oeming
gives "the Shark" the perfect timid, frightened expression to match the
alternatively bored and sardonic expressions of the two detectives. The quiet,
almost motionless scenes in interrogation serve as a nice contrast to the more
standard heroic "splash" panels featuring the Shark and his nemesis or the
aftermath of the fall as well.
I was disappointed that the
second story was essentially a script with sketches rather than a full-fledged
story, but not terribly so. Oeming's pencil sketches are beautiful work and help
to capture moments of the script such that we can visualize the rest of it, and
since Bendis's dialogue is a big selling point of his work, having a "court
transcript" version certainly wasn't dull or lacking. And as always, the icing
on any Bendis book, the letter column is hilarious.
Bendis and Oeming are flirting with tough styles here, the oft-useless 1/2 issue and the oft-padded annual, and they've produced instead a pretty nice intro to the book or bonus for regular readers. This isn't quite as intense as the average Powers issue, and it's certainly not the best of the Powers stories so far, but it's a good package and an
interesting story for new readers and old alike. There's enough to figure out
the basics of Walker and Pilgrim without giving away some of the issues that
have been focused on in the series, a solid one-off story with an interesting
and darkly humorous premise, all without restating things to such a degree that
current readers would find nothing new here.
Email Randy Lander comments about this review. |
