Powerless: Some Constants

[thanekos.insanejournal.com]

in a world where radioactive spider bites just shrivel up your arm, industrial waste to the face blinds you full-stop, and secret government assassin programs just give you claws...

well, Powerless happens.

Six issues of seeing what happens in a world without anything super, as told through the eyes of psychiatrist William Watts and the odd visions of 616 he's having.

(warning: i'm lazy, so I'm using thumbnails.)



For example, look at some of the people Dr. Watts encounters, like this lady and her workplace problems:



or this guy, and his hard luck life:



or this street sorcerer:



or this guy, at his daily job:





or even this guy:





or this guy, who's got something of a temper:





or this little toy:



and the guy spearheading its development:



(how very movie!Tony.)

and, of course, this nutjob:



but you can't build an entire story on IT'S THAT GUY, BUT DIFFERENT. so things actually have to happen. like Project Iron Man and Oscorp corporate espionage, Eric Magnus's Phoenix Agenda and the killing of Charles Xavier, and the trial of Frank Castle for the murder of Leland Owlsley.

it's a pretty good read, with a few more cameos, and some neat endings. like logan's:



and the resolution of frank castle's:



and peter's, which has a hilarious death o'norman:



so yeah, check it out.

Comments

[blake_reitz.insanejournal.com]

And it was still way more upbeat than ruins!

[arilou_skiff.insanejournal.com]

There are things who dream of one day being pond-scum that are more upbeat than Ruins.

[jlroberson.insanejournal.com]

I preferred RUINS, actually.

Which is to say I wasn't so big on this the first time but I liked it better than this imitation.

[icon_uk.insanejournal.com]

If Ruins had had ANY upbeat parts it would sort of have defeated the point, no?

[freeman333.insanejournal.com]

I've said it before, and no doubt I'll say it again, but as someone in training to become a therapist I never cease to be annoyed at how poorly the distinction between psychologist and psychiatrist is made in most popular media, and how poorly understood the job of the therapist is by most writers.

Here's a hint, writers of the future: therapists don't fix people. Because people aren't broken. There are plenty of parallels between physiological medicine and mental health treatment, but the idea that you come to a therapist with a sickness and they "cure" you is simply untrue.

(Also, "transference" doesn't mean projecting a client's psychosis onto the therapist. But it's a tricky concept in general, so we won't get into that.)

[greenmask.insanejournal.com]

I have learnt from television that transference is when a patient starts to feel special feelings for their, uh, psychologist or psychiatrist (?).

[freeman333.insanejournal.com]

Not exactly. There is such a thing as "erotic transference" (or erotic countertransference), when a client begins to feel sexually or romantically inclined towards their therapist (or a therapist towards their client). But broadly speaking, transference covers any feelings that a client has towards their therapist (and countertransference, any feelings the therapist has towards their client), especially those feelings that are in reaction to the therapist as if the therapist were someone else in the client's life (like a parent, lover or friend). As such, transference is a useful source of information about the client's psychic structure; if the client feels constantly suffocated by the therapist (in the metaphorical sense, obviously) they same way they felt suffocated by their mother, it may be that the client's transference is revealing a system whereby the client feels suffocated by those who care for them, as if being cared for were reducing their autonomy or independence. Et cetera.

It certainly has nothing to do with "psychosis", and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with sex. But, like I said, it's a complicated concept to explain, and I'm not surprised that writers without training in counseling psychology would get it wrong. But the psychologist/psychiatrist thing isn't hard; psychologists can't prescribe medication, and psychiatrists can. The character in the comic seems to be a psychologist, in that he seems to be doing hourly counseling sessions rather than prescribing meds, but maybe there are scenes not posted in which he writes prescriptions.

This concludes the Freeman Educational Hour. Comics: The More You Know!

[greenmask.insanejournal.com]

I love this community.

Thank you!

[kingrockwell]

Who did the art for this? Looks interesting.

[omgwtflolbbqbye.insanejournal.com]

Michael Gaydos from the looks of it. He also did The Pulse and a run on Daredevil.

[houbanaut.insanejournal.com]

He did Alias, not The Pulse.

[felinephoenix.insanejournal.com]

Gaydos. If you like his art, you should also check out Alias. I fell in love with him there. (I believe he also did the art in some of Bendis's DD run?)

[dimesfornickels.wordpress.com (from insanejournal.com)]

I think realistic Dr. Strange should have looked like Alan Moore...

Anyway, I liked this, Ruins, AND Marvel 1985 as far as Mighty Marvel Meta Comics goes.

[halloweenjack.insanejournal.com]

I think that Gaydos intentionally made him look like David Blaine. Blaine used to be a fixture on the streets of NYC before he hit it big; Moore would have been out of place.

[felinephoenix.insanejournal.com]

Powerless! I loved Powerless, shame it's not more popular.

You forgot to mention that even with one arm, no powers, and STILL being hounded by Osborn -- Peter Parker is a total badass. I was so happy with how that subplot ended.