The Power Fantasy #11 // Review
It’s Melbourne. 1999. There’s one person sitting in the middle of Docklands Stadium. (It’s called Marvel Stadium now. No kidding. They bought the naming rights a few years back.) Just one guy sitting there alone having a coffee and waiting for his friend to show-up. She comes flying-in with a cup of coffee and a birthday cake. It’s not for him. It’s not for her. It’s kind of a big day. Lots of people are going to show-up. It’s a bit of a summit in The Power Fantasy #11. Writer Kieron Gillen wraps-up another major plot arc for one of the most sophisticated comics on the rack today with artist Caspar Wingaard.
Etienne’s one of the single most powerful people on the planet. He’s like a god. And he’s sitting right there in the middle of a large, empty, 53,000-seat arena. He seems perfectly relaxed. There’s a lot of anxiety about going to the Docklands. Some of the people who are expected to show aren’t in the mood for a big meeting. And some of them know that there’s some kind of real danger, but it’s always so difficult to tell quite exactly what it is that’s going on when power of great intensity decides to have a conference.,,
There’s a lot about the end to the current plot arc that feels like it’s inverting things in a very unexpected way. A playful goddess arrives with birthday cake and asks Etienne if he’s worried. He tells her that he would only worry if she was upset with him. She puts his mind to rest in the most adorably omnipotent way possible. Things get complicated from there. Gillen has a brilliant sense of all of the individuals involved in a large and sprawling ensemble of gods, goddesses and all of the assorted people who are caught-up in their orbit. It’s thoroughly engrossing stuff.
Wingaard captures the dramatic complexity of the series with poise and subtlety while giving an immersive sense of atmosphere to the scene and setting. And there’s this incredible TENSION about everything that feels kind of overwhelming in its own way as well. There’s a great intensity about everything in the visual world...and then there’s that moment of climax the fills an entire wordless spread. THAT moment slams into the page with intensity that feels every bit as powerful as it needs to be. Quite an ominous feel of visual intensity that follows that climax.
Gillen really throws the readers one hell of a curve at issue’s end. It’s particularly unexpected blow considering the power ranking bit at the beginning of the issue, which is quite a bit of fun. All too often, titles looking to build a universe have a tendency to go with the old, outdated encyclopedic model for delivering comprehensive info on the world of the series. What worked for The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe won’t work for something like The Power Fantasy. There are way too many ridiculously powerful characters to do comprehensive look at fundamentals of the world. Better to compare everyone’s abilities against a single character and see what happens. Clever stuff.
