The Power Fantasy #15 // Review
Eliza is understandably upset. She’s been lied to be everybody. Not exactly a nice thing to do to a person who is responsible for saving the world. She’s going to Hell and she knows it. Recently found out exactly what that’s like and there’s no way to change it. Jacky Magus says Eliza is praying to a god that doesn’t exist to save her from a Hell that definitely does in The Power Fantasy #15. Writer Kieron Gillen delivers a powerful chapter in a thoroughly satisfying series that’s being brought to the page by artist Caspar Wijngaard. Things are beginning to unravel as one of the most powerful people on Earth is beginning to change her mind...
Eliza’s attempt to assassinate Etienne led to Heavy actually killing him. Etienne had killed the U.S. President. So things have been getting progressively worse. Eliza HAS been trying to change for the better. She’s asked a man of the cloth to absolve her of her sins. At the Vatican. Multiple times. Every time that she looks to see where she’s going, it all comes back to Hell. She’s not happy about that. And she’s powerful enough to essentially be a god herself, so everybody’s in danger if she feels like she’s going to Hell.
In Watchmen, Alan Moore explored the delicate complications of a mortal-born god with the character of Doctor Manhattan. In The Power Fantasy, Gillen takes the Doctor Manhattan idea in a completely different direction with the character of Eliza. What happens when one of the most powerful beings on the planet happens to be religious? What happens when she knows she's going to hell? The whole world is in danger. It's fascinating drama that takes the intensity of horror fantasy and amplify it to a ridiculous degree. It's fascinating stuff.
Wijngaard conjures the intensity of the drama to the page with vivid color and emotion. The powerful and intense luminosity of the characters come across with it remarkable clarity. There's enough in the background to suggest the distinct atmospheres of the different locations involved. The very human face of very intense power is given quite a bit of psychological gravity as the story moves ever closer to the big climactic event, which is going to be going on next issue. There's real power to the visuals that never pull very far away from the emotional heart of everything.
The Power Fantasy is incredibly dense stuff. It's easy to want to have every character fit really neatly into some sort of an allegorical map of the millennium. Really, though, it's just people. People are dealing with the hell of the responsibility that goes along with the power that they have. Damn people are rarely need enough to fall into any kind of simple allegorical framework. Gillen and company have conjured a very clever horror that passionately clings to the page. There’s an intensity about it all that feels incredibly overwhelming. Really, the issue, though is that there are so many people on the page. You seem so interesting and there's no way that the series is going to be able to satisfy one of them with respect to a story that might live up to their potential.
