Reviewer: Daron Kappauff
Story Title: N/A
Written by: Brian Michael Bendis
Penciled by: Mike Avon Oeming
Inked by: Mike Avon Oeming
Colored by: Peter Pantazis
Lettered by: Ken Bruzenak
Editor: Jamie S Rich & KC McCrory
Publisher: Image Comics
Where to start?
It’s not a big secret that I retired from writing reviews once I had a big enough staff who could cover most of the titles that come out each week, but I just had to come out of retirement to write a review for this month’s issue of Powers. But please don’t misunderstand; I didn’t do so because of some primal urge that needed to be sated or because this issue was just so amazing that I just had to talk about it, quite the opposite in fact. Powers 31 was by far the worst issue of the series ever written…no strike that. Powers 31 is one of the worst comics I’ve ever read.
As I said before, where to start? Coming off the heels of the roller coaster ride that was the last arc (the first issue was really good, then we were stuck with 2 or 3 really mediocre issues, and finished with a bang) I had high hopes for this new arc.
What did we get?
What did we get? What I read, and I use the term loosely, was barely even a story. It was a long drawn out, grotesque, and often pornographic look at the early human/primate development of powers. Though this might sound somewhat interesting…it’s really not. The story breaks down into this: A bunch of human/primates sit around a pond in what looks like the desert having sex, yelling at each other in unintelligible sounds, and then beat the crap out of each other because there’s only one female to go around. Oh yeah, there’s a quick scene where some sort of prehistoric sabre-tooth cat attacks them and kills a couple of the human/primates, but then is killed by the apparent alpha male. And lastly to tie it into the actual title of the book, two of the early humans suddenly develop powers fight each other to a standstill. And that’s the entire issue, 29 pages of prehistoric grunting and animalistic impulses. A story that probably could have been told in 5 pages or less.
Did you say pornographic?
Yes that’s really the best way to describe it. This issue should have come with a parental warning disclaimer on it. Now I know Powers is an adult oriented book, and has shown its share of human anatomy before. But I’ve never seen a comic that showed full on close-up images of female genitalia before. Granted it was prehistoric half-human half-primate genitalia, but none the less this is not something I would want to have on the stand of my comic book store…not where kids could get a hold of it.
Prehistoric Powers?
Come on, does anyone here believe that if prehistoric man had developed powers at this stage of evolution that we would have really developed the way that we did. If humans (animals driven almost completely by instinct at this point) had developed powers I don’t think there would even be a society as we know it. Most likely the prehistoric man with the most power would have ruled if not killed most of what he would consider to be his competition. And this would pass on from generation to generation. I don’t want to get into a long discussion of the development of superheroes in relation to society, but I think it’s safe to say that prehistoric man would have no preoccupation with his using his powers for “good,†but rather for selfish/instinctual urges.
The only reason I’m not giving this issue a worse score than what I did is because after looking at the back cover I have a pretty good idea of where this story is going, and it looks as if it has some promise. (The development of “Powers†throughout human history.) But here’s a promise I’m going to make…if the next issue is once again filled with unintelligible gibberish and isn’t 100% better than this one it will be the last issue I buy of this series.
