The Power Fantasy #3: Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes

In 2015, Steel Crate Games released Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes, a co-op game where players must work together to diffuse a bomb. “Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes” also seems an apt description of Kieron Gillen, Caspar Wijngaard, and Clayton Cowles’ series The Power Fantasy. The Power Fantasy follows the struggle of six er… empowered individuals (the narration insists they are superpowers rather than having superpowers) trying to prevent global annihilation through constant conversation and compromise. Since its first issue, published the anniversary week of America’s bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, The Power Fantasy has never been subtle about its exploration of nuclear peacekeeping through a subverted superhero narrative. The Power Fantasy #3 is no less subtle, its opening page creating a striking visual juxtaposition between the world’s first nuclear test and the simultaneous birth of one of its six protagonists: the angel Valentina. 

While cool fight scenes and global annihilation are the bread and butter of the superhero genre, The Power Fantasy is a series about making sure the cool fights don’t happen. In a visual medium like comics, however, it is far easier to engage the audience when your subject is Superman punching the sun (Future State: Superman/Wonder Woman #2) or Norse gods fighting a skeleton dragon (The Mighty Valkyries #5). A conversation-forward comic like The Power Fantasy is in some ways harder to pull off. Gillen’s dialogue is masterful and the plot deftly teases readers with mysteries and unspeakable tragedies, but these things alone only make for a good prose novel. Badly done, a conversation scene earns the derogatory description of “talking heads.” The Emmy-winning political drama The West Wing famously avoided the “talking heads” problem by pairing its snappy dialogue with the “walk and talk,” which The Power Fantasy also relies on to great effect. But while comics are often understood as filmic, the medium is static. There can be no flicker of hesitation in the eye, no wavering of voice, beyond what artist and letterer together convey.

One is quickly reminded of artist Wally Wood’s famous “22 Panels That Always Work!!,” in which Woods offers a variety of panel compositions for conversation-heavy narratives (e.g. having one character in silhouette, using a newspaper clipping, or doing an extreme closeup). The Power Fantasy takes full advantage of both Wood’s suggestions and the “walk and talk,” but takes things even further: one scene in The Power Fantasy #3, for example, sees Valentina floating in outer space as the telepath Etienne think-talks to her from a plane while running from the law. Wijngaard’s clever compositions and bold, unconventional color palettes add a great deal of visual interest, as does Cowles’ varied approach to lettering dialogue. The result is a conversation-heavy anti-superhero comic that isn’t simply successful but engrossing.