weekly collection reviews part 15: Powers

[victorxd1999]

Previous reviews:

part 1
part 2
part 3
part 4
part 5
part 6
part 7
part 8
part 9
part 10
part 11
part 12
part 13
part 14

hello guys! I had a very busy weekend so I decided to use my last review I got from our mighty mod (thanks again NZ!). So, here is NZ_Inferno's review of Powers by Bendis and Oeming.

Powers Definite Editions Volume 1-6
(Spoiler free review)

Volumes 2-6 on the shelf, Volume 1 is on holiday


Bendis and Oeming both have had collected comics reviewed here, and with good reason as Bendis is one of the most popular comic writers around and Oeming has worked on a variety of popular comics but the book they are most closely associated with is Powers.

Powers was a breakthrough for Bendis and Oeming who both had been making comics for a few years, and it has won a variety of awards including Eisners, Harvey and Eagle awards.

Powers is a police procedural, crime noir with super heroes that follows two detectives, Christian Walker and Deena Pilgrim, as they investigate and solve cases involving superheroes or people with super powers which are called "Powers".

Similar to Gotham Central it shines a light on what the Police would have to deal with when super powered people exist in the world and how that would affect crime and justice.

Powers also looks at how the media and society view heroes. This series is very much written for trade and stories follow 6 issue arcs for the most part, with some underlying stories running much longer.

The Powers world has a full back story and several later issues go through time to give a sense of what motivates some characters and the history to the world. It is very similar to crime procedurals you would see on TV, and Powers will actually be on TV, well on PlayStation Network, in the near future.


"Bendis speak" in its natural environment


If you don't like "Bendis speak" aka all participants in a conversation being snarky or having one voice the this is not the comic for you. Bendis is in full flow here with his "What" "What" Mamet-style dialogue.

Personally I didn't really enjoy it in his Avengers books at times, but here it works very well with his own fleshed out characters and is much more suited to the discussions between characters in this particular book.

The only thing I didn't like at times is that the copious amounts of back-and-forth dialogue, meant so many speech bubbles were needed that it would occasionally cover up some of Oemings glorious art work.


Oemings Art


Oemings artwork for Powers is so perfectly suited for the story that it is uncanny. Stylistically similar to Eduardo Risso(100 bullets), Sean Philips(Criminal/Sleeper/Fatale) and even Batman the Animated series' art style his work captures the world and fully realises it.

The heavy use of shadows is effective at invoking the noir setting and tone of the book, while also playing off the colour palette that is steeped in red. Really one of the premier comic artists at work, and a constant through the entire Powers series.


The Powers Definitive Editions are Oversized Hard covers collecting the entirety of Powers, which has had 4 #1 issues so far. Definite Edition Volumes 1-3 collect the first 37 issues of Powers v1.

Powers then re-started following a change in status quo and Definitive Editions 4 & 5 collect the 30 issues of Powers v2.

The Latest collection is Definitive Edition Volume 6, which contains Powers v3 #1-11, after the events in Powers v2.

The Definitive editions are nicely put together, although the first one suffers gutter-loss on about 20 pages due to all of the Definitive Editions having glued bindings. Generally RRP is around $35US for 500 pages for a Definitive Edition.

These are extremely good value for oversized comics but there is that binding drawback on Volume 1. Volumes 2-6 are much better binding wise and tend to open easily enough. All of the Definitive Editions have comprehensive extras and good paper.


NZ_Inferno gives Powers a 8 out of 10.

Editer's note: Thanks a bunch again NZ, you and Diamond makes it a lot easier to deliver a review every week.

[The Cheat]

Yeah, the poor binding thing really sucks. Although we only lose speech bubbles in the first volume, even in the others I found it confusing sometimes as to whether I should be following the panels across two pages, or starting the next row and reading the spread as two separate pages. Good series though.

[Diamond]

I love this comic. Hell, I picked my username from the series' superhero... Diamond.

As for the binding, the gutter loss is at least inoffensive: the few speech bubbles we lose are thankfully superficial and irrelevant to understanding the story.

You don't have to thank me, Victor. Doing reviews is fun and well, it's been some time since I did a review. Hopefully, I can give you something this week.

[NZ_InFerno]

I'm just re-reading this again atm, up to Book 3 in next to no time and it's still a great read. It is a shame that the construction of the Definitive Editions is not as good as other great comics, I noticed Book 2 had the odd page where there was a lost dialogue bubble.

[mars]

Man, that first page. Woof.

I never got past Who Killed Retro-Girl?, but I remember enjoying it. Thing is, I don't like anything else I've read by Bendis so I just assume my tastes have changed. The review seems to support that assumption.

[Billy Batson]

I couldn't get past the first issue. Too much bendistalk.

[victorxd1999]

Man, that first page. Woof.

I never got past Who Killed Retro-Girl?, but I remember enjoying it. Thing is, I don't like anything else I've read by Bendis so I just assume my tastes have changed. The review seems to support that assumption.

I couldn't get past the first issue. Too much bendistalk.

Yup, Bendis talk everywhere. I've read a few issues but haven't gotten to collecting the whole series, tto much other stuff to buy

[Hero]

Powers is the only Bendis-written series I've read in which I could tolerate the "Bendis talk." I rather enjoyed the series (though it's been strongly eclipsed as a police procedural by Gotham Central for me recently), but I did stop Powers at the end of volume 2. I thought that ending really worked. I haven't had the motivation to push into volume 3 and The Bureau yet, and now we know that The Bureau is ending on #12 and Powers is being relaunched with volume 4 in December.

[Noodle]

Kind of interesting to see this here, as I'm currently going through the series at the moment. Finished vol. 1, working on 2 and have 3-5 sitting in my (massive) to-read stack.

Pretty solid series thus far, but I will echo the sentiments that the binding is terrible. I've noticed it the most in vol. 2, as there were many moments where I wasn't sure if there was a double-page spread or not, giving me issues with reading order. Outside of that, though, the hardcovers are nice. A TON of extras in those things.