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| POWERS No. 3, May 2015 |
When the co-creator of “the original comic book series” somewhat detrimentally refers
to it as “Powers TV’s lesser known sister”, it is arguably clear which of the
two mediums is of paramount importance in their minds… And is presumably the
reason why Brian Michael Bendis’ profanity-laden soulless narrative to Issue
Three of “Powers” is so lamentable. Certainly it is hard to fathom out why
else a five-time Eisner Award-winning writer would produce such staid almost
child-like dialogue, overly-long stagnating scenes and arguably illogical plot
points.
In fact it is hard to find anything within this periodical’s
twenty-five pages worthy of praise. Except perhaps the Cleveland-born author’s
handling of ‘good girl turned bad’ Rainbow'. Whose panic attack at the prospect of
incarceration leads her to seriously ‘fly off the handle’ and amply demonstrate
why Deena Pilgrim is such a ‘cult figure’ within creator-owned comics. However even
this colourful four-page scene depicting the homicide detective eventually bringing down her prisoner with a bullet, appears overly-long and disappointingly contains some of
the worst language imaginable.
Admittedly Bendis’ storyline is not devoid of action. In
fact once the reader has endured a tediously long conversational piece between
Pilgrim and her Chief, as he drags the cop ‘back to the Police station
specifically to rip her one’, there isn’t a moment’s pause to be had. But all
each ‘set-piece’ seems to do is provide the Wizard Award-winner with even more
opportunities for having his characters prolifically swear or curse, whilst giving
artist Michael Avon Oeming the chance to once again demonstrate his all-too
inconsistent and amateurish-looking ‘animation-style’ line art.
Indeed the American penciller’s illustrations are decidedly
substandard throughout this comic and badly undermine what little interest
his collaborator’s script generates to the point where it even has a negative impact upon the long-awaited much-anticipated return of Christian Walker as the 'superhero' Diamond. Such a notable decline in the artwork is
especially evident when it can be so readily compared to some of Oeming’s earlier
work on the title courtesy of a back-page advertisement to buy the 2010 comic
book series digitally. It’s therefore little wonder that the sales for so lack-lustre
a magazine saw this issue’s circulation figure drop to just 10,485 copies in
May 2015.
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| The variant cover art of "POWERS" No. 3 by David Mack |
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