Brooding Menace And An Art Show: ‘The Power Fantasy’ #4 Reviewed

Kieron Gillen says it best when, in The Power Fantasy #4’s accompanying essay, he describes this issue’s focal character, artist Masumi as “one woman with an awful power trying to get through the day”. A woman who just wants approval from the art world she so desperately wants to conquer. But if she doesn’t, the whole world could suffer. 

It’s another issue that fizzes with tension as the unstoppable few wielding superpowers go about their day without fear of being stopped. As such, a character like Etienne Lux can walk through an airport knowing he is the most wanted man on the planet after having assassinated the President, and he won’t be, can’t be stopped. All he wants to do is visit his friend’s art exhibition on opening night. But, in holding so much power, he may walk causally and calmly, but that only adds to the possibility that he may turn his powers on humanity at any minute. Much like Masumi who is pandered to by a sour-faced art critic in fear of what she may do should she face a poor review. 

The calmness, the casualness, it all helps create the brooding menacing mood that underpins each issue of this comic book. A series where the few who hold all the power rarely use it. An inaction comic, if you will. But, when those powers are unleashed, as we’ve seen, it is fast and it is devastating. For all Lux’s gentlemanly ways, he has the ability to be a monster whenever he wishes. Even threatening some poor saps family rather than be taken into custody. He seems to be a man who would do anything to remain at liberty, even if his very existence threatens everyone’s liberty on the planet. How can one claim to be ethical living with this dilemma daily?

Helping to forge this world is artist Caspar Wijngaard, who stuns with his art style. Clean, modern and beautifully effective, his characters are instantly recognisable, and filled with emotive impact rather than all-out action, as is usually the prerequisite of superhero comics. A comic book series that teases the reader of cataclysmic events of the past and ones we haven’t yet been privy to, but are exposed on the timeline of the previous issue. Gillen is his own Dr Manhattan, seeing the past, present and future, and choosing which ones to revisit and which ones to tease out for another day. In this issue, we get the hint of a previous Lovecraftian-like disaster released on Italy when Masumi was only a schoolgirl back in 1982. Another good example of the brooding sense of danger always bubbling up just under the surface of this exceptional series. 

The Power Fantasy #4 is another successful study of the superpowered living their very own Cold War, with the world at stake should any of them every feel aggrieved. And we know how that can turn out from the evidence of the first four issues alone. And out now from Image Comics.