scans_daily

It's an ongoing. Like most my creator owned work, I consider it a novel. I've an amount of story in mind, and we'll see how long it is. There's a potential that I'll decide to go a shorter length, but it has the potential to be somewhere between Die and WicDiv...Most don't clock WicDiv as a superhero book, despite the DNA...It's not a “if superheroes were real” book – it's a book about what if 6 people had an unimaginable level of power. One of the shorthands I'm using is “Watchmen, if there were 6 Dr Manhattans” - but the thing there is “how on earth do six world-ending people come to terms with one another?”

-- Kieron Gillen

Following the initial announcement in May, Kieron Gillen has been taking a unique tack in promoting his new creator-owned book with Caspar Wijngaard and Image Comics. For six weeks, each new press release has gone to a different online pop-culture site, previewing one of the six core cast - the "Superpowers" - exclusively.

Since this is my most-anticipated book of 2024, naturally I wanted to hype it up by putting them all in one place.

(Also, since I'm terminally illiterate when it comes to pop music, maybe someone could suggest which musicians they're meant to collate with?)

First up is Eliza Hellbound, the character we know the least about (Gillen: "She petrifies me.") The vibe I'm getting from her is Magik if there were lasting consequences to Magik's actions.

Gillen goes on to say: "...she's kind of our puritanical post-punk character who spent most the early 80s in a magical squat in London before (er) becoming who she became. She's called Eliza Hellbound, because she knows exactly who she is."

Next is Santa Valentina, quite the opposite of Eliza: she's a literal angel.

Gillen sez: "She's the ethical heart of the book. The good person, who really wants to save the world. Except she's not a person. She's an angel, who's come down to earth to save us all, and ideally catch as many quality gigs as possible while she's down here. Heaven is different in our universe, and it definitely doesn't have pop music.

Following that is Etienne Lux, one of the three most powerful of the "Atomics", a super-powered species of humans who began to arise post-1945. For some reason.

'The Power Fantasy'

Quoth Gillen: "...The Power Fantasy came from writing Immortal X-Men, and seeing stories in the vague space that would never work in the Marvel Universe. I think that may be truest with Etienne. Of all the cast, I think Etienne is going to be the one who gets comparisons. He’s a telepath and public intellectual who views himself as something of a spokesperson of his “people” – we call them the Atomics, or the Nuclear Family. It will be easy to make comparisons, and folk probably should. The differences will become swiftly apparent. It’s not just because he has hair."

The other most powerful Atomic on Earth is Heavy, aka Brother Ray Harris, a gravity-bending, 60s-inspired freedom fighter.

Gillen spake: "There's a fair few people with gifts of varying scales, but they don't matter strategically. This is a story about the big kids, and Heavy is very aware he's the biggest kid on the Atomic's side. As our story starts, he's in his late 40s, and at the head of a large commune of Atomics, called Haven...the quote I nearly had on the teaser was 'People treat us like us a sex cult, when we're a revolutionary movement. And a sex cult' but it was a bit too long...[t]he inevitable shorthand for him will be our Magneto to Etienne's Xavier. It'll do for a starting place, but the trajectories are going to spin off. Not least, this is a world where change is possible. We're not tied to a status quo. We can genuinely change the world."

Next up is the third of the three Atomics: Morishita Masumi aka Deconstructa, an artist whose power switches on whenever she's isolated or depressed.

What quote Gillen?: "Her life is about trying not to use her gift...Most of all, she tries to channel all these awful feelings – self-hatred, depression. shame, guilt – into her art. Many artists talk about how their art is what keeps them alive. Masumi thinks that her art keeps everyone alive. That’s horrible, but that’s just the tip of that particularly awful iceberg. Imagine everyone else around you knowing that truth, and then imagine how they then treat you. Everyone knows Masumi needs to be kept happy… which means Masumi, in her heart of hearts, cannot trust anything anyone ever does for her. She’s probably the most depressing character of The Power Fantasy."

And finally, this week, we got Jacky Magus, a magic user, a dirtbag and a sellout.

To hear Gillen tell it: "Something happened in 1945, along with everything else: Magic started working. Not ‘returned.’ Started working for the first time ever. Not a huge effect, but enough to turn the dial up on party tricks. It wasn't easy to learn, but with a lot of time and effort, you can do stuff. It's philosophically interesting, and has led to a lot of weird physics research, but it's nothing which was actually powerful. Until Jacky Magus properly emerged in the 1970s, and suddenly magic was the real deal...Johnny Rotten was a big influence in my thinking... specifically, him in his later years. When he's turned from that young firebrand to a guy who sells butter...I’ve said the pop cultural reference, but if you want it in [a] comic book one? John Constantine meets Doctor Doom. John Constantine meets Doctor Doom... who sold out."