The Power Fantasy #1-2 - "Heroes and Villains"

[laughing_tree]

One classic critique of superhero comics is to dismiss them as simple power fantasies, and say they're at least borderline fascist in their Might Makes Right tendency. That normally prompts defences describing all the other many things they can do -- the living metaphors, the moral play, the soap opera, the poetry, and a whole lot more. They're good defences.

But as I looked at chat around the big-two comics, I wondered whether we were just deluded.

There is so much conversation around power levels. Issues are picked over for more "feats" (characters showing their abilities at ever greater levels). The demands to make more characters "Omegas" (X-Men terminology for the apex mutants whose powers can't be transcended). I was especially unnerved when I saw people say the most powerful characters should be the leaders. There's a word for that.

-- Kieron Gillen








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Issue 2 -

Comments

Not that I disagree with Gillen's general point...

[lego_joker]

But I'd love to see him crack open a couple Shonen manga someday. If you think powerscaling is bad in Ame-Comi fandoms...

[blues32]

...are they all dead? On their feet?

[icon_uk]

The cops in the station? I doubt it. Given he's psionic I think he's just left them frozen in a fugue state until he and the journalist have walked away.

[huntleyhaverstock]

I'm quite impressed at how this series wastes no time going right to the darkest corners of "If you had the power to do anything, and you thought of yourself as benevolent..."

The way Lux's dialogue makes it clear that his high-and-mighty talk is at least partially full of $#!%, and that a lot of his ethical moralizing is just him justifying whatever he really wants to do, is particularly effective. (Shades of "effective altruism"!)

[donnblake]

Valentina (the angel) pretty well calls him out on it in the first issue, too.

[shakalooloo]

The third option is to do nothing until that theoretical 'true monster' arrives. If no one man should have all that power then just don't use it unless necessary, and satisfy your ethics that way.

[twistedkaijuu07]

I'd argue that still option b

[thanekos]

Diversity win - the one-scene " cop who smugly intimidates someone in custody and then is on the receiving end of something " is an older lady!

(Genuinely can't fault matter-of-factness like that.)