The Power Fantasy #1: Atomic Monde

From the Hulk and the Fantastic Four to Doctor Phosphorus and Firestorm: The Nuclear Man, superhero comics are filled with tales of people turned monstrous by encounters with radiation. It is a genre landscape saturated with anxieties about the ongoing Atomic Age. Its deconstructions are likewise irradiated. 

The Power Fantasy, written by Kieron Gillen and drawn by Caspar Wijngaard, is the newest of these deconstructions. The series focuses on a group of people punnily called the Nuclear Family/Atomics, each possessing what comics readers would typically call superpowers. Within the context of The Power Fantasy, however, “superpower” has three entangled meanings: 

“1. A nation state of such extreme power that the world’s political stage is divided into these nations and their affiliated nations.

2. an individual with the destructive capacity of the nuclear arsenal of a major world power.

3. (archaic) Any extranormal abilities possessed by a fictional superhero.” 

In other words, people in the context of The Power Fantasy don’t have superpowers. They are Superpowers. The Power Fantasy’s first issue focuses first and foremost on the telepath/philosophe Etienne Lux—one of six people known as “Superpowers.” Given Gillen’s X-Men work, it’s hard to ignore Etienne’s similarities to Professor X. Should Etienne and the other five Superpowers come into conflict, the world would be completely and utterly annihilated (not unlike nuclear warfare). Wijngaard’s character designs for the central six figures all feel quite distinctive, whether it’s the fashionably professorial Etienne, petite paint-splattered artist Masumi, or boxer-inspired Heavy. The specifics of some of the Six’s extranormal abilities—and how their abilities came about in the first place—are never narratively explained. You can learn far more from IGN’s teaser introducing Power Fantasy character Eliza Hellbound than you can from her brief one-page appearance. While the first issue is scant on exposition, the character dynamics and tense atmosphere are nonetheless wildly compelling. Interestingly, Gillen plays with the boundaries between definitions 1 and 2, with individual characters often behaving like national entities. Like the nuclear-enabled nations that inspired them, The Power Fantasy’s central six are constantly navigating fragile alliances and violent compromises in a desperate attempt to maintain peace.  

The Power Fantasy is made all the more captivating by its contrasts. Wijngaard’s now-signature pastel-dominated palette is refreshingly contemporary but unexpected for a “realistic” superhero story where readers might anticipate browns and greys. These soft shades, letterer (and frequent Gillen collaborator) Clayton Cowles’ round mixed-case fonts, and the comic’s often mundane settings all gesture towards a calm, meditative atmosphere. When Etienne weighs the philosophical pros and cons of world domination, he and the angel superpower Valentina are eating pizza on a street corner. Decades later, when another of the Six threatens to destroy New York, Etienne is calmly discussing historical atrocities at a café. While the scene is likewise rendered in soft pastel colors, it’s disrupted by a black background behind his conversational partner’s head featuring a barely screaming face in dark charcoal grey. In such moments, it’s hard not to gasp—hard not to think what it means to go about our daily lives with the Doomsday clock 90 seconds to midnight. 

For anyone familiar with Gillen and Wijngaard’s other work, it may be equally hard not to think of their previous collaboration on a different superhero deconstruction: Peter Cannon: Thunderbolt—itself a deconstruction of the acclaimed superhero deconstruction comic Watchmen. In Watchmen, a nuclear physics researcher becomes the omnipotent Doctor Manhattan after a research accident, then attempts to stop the quasi-hero Ozymandias, who has created a faux alien invasion to unite global superpowers and prevent nuclear apocalypse. Doctor Manhattan fails. The villain of Peter Cannon: Thunderbolt is an alternate universe version of the hero himself who saw his reality destroyed by a nuclear disaster and, like Ozymandias, now uses faux alien invasions in an attempt to save other realities. Much like The Power Fantasy, both comics exist in the shadow of the atomic age, asking how high is too high a price for peace. In both Watchmen and Peter Cannon: Thunderbolt, nuclear war results from the arrival of nuclear superheroes (Doctor Manhattan and Nucleon, respectively). As Thunderbolt explains, Nucleon was “a ‘super man,’ Nietzche’s fantasy in lurid purplish colors…a power fantasy, simple, comforting morality. Little else.” However, Nucleon’s existence escalated the Cold War to such an extent Thunderbolt felt only he could stop it. While Peter Cannon: Thunderbolt is first and foremost an exploration of Watchmen’s legacy and the formalist constraints of the 9-panel grid, anxieties about nuclear annihilation constantly bubble to its surface. The Power Fantasy expands on those ideas, stripping the “lurid” Nietzchean superhero fantasy of its “simple, comforting morality”—and doing it in soft pastels.