The Stakes Are High As We Reach The Endgame: ‘The Power Fantasy’ #15 Advance Review
by Olly MacNamee
Summary
Eliza Hellbound is very much living up to her name in this issue as her emotional rollercoaster of a ride continues, with all of reality at stake. Can she even be stopped? ‘The Power Fantasy’ #15 is a highly emotional, tragedy-in-the-making that beautifully and brutally sets up the promise of a shocking grand finale next issue.
Overall
10/10All roads lead to Rome? Well, if they do, anyone following them will find that once they get there, the Vatican is missing. A last-ditch attempt by an all-powerful Eliza Hellbound to gain spiritual guidance and repentance. But, she knows it will do no good. They all know. Which is why the dispersed Atomics need to take her out of the game. The results are an issue that is wrought with emotions and tension. After all, who cannot feel pathos for Eliza? A young, super-powered individual who sacrificed her eternal soul for humanity and now cannot help but stare into the abyss, an itch she can’t help scratching, to paraphrase writer Kieron Gillen’s dramatic dialogue.
And while it’s not all bad news — we also get to see a rekindled romance in the dying embers of the world — it mostly is, as Gillen and artist Caspar Wijngaard set out a path for another grandiose finale next issue. A final that would have been the definitive ending, if Gillien and Wijngaard hadn’t (thankfully) had second thoughts about retiring this series. But, in the here and now, we get an emotional depth readers can tap into thanks to the amazing character development we’ve seen Eliza, and all her comrades, friends and lovers undergo throughout this cerebral comic book’s run.
Once more, lavishing this script with the artwork it deserves is partner-in-crime, Wijngaard, who can render the beautiful and beatific just as remarkably as he can the beastly, as shown not only on this issue’s cover, but also in his creation of Eliza, this issue’s focal character, for all the wrong reasons. Her world is one of demonic darkness, raw red, and sinful scarlet, raising the temperature of the issue and the stakes. As if Hell had come to Earth. But then, for Eliza, as for Mephistopheles in Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, Hell is all around her, if seems. Whether she looks at it or not. The heart of her pain is seared into the colours applied by Wijngaard.
And so, with the heat rising and a sudden, shocking cliffhanger, one is left aghast and gaping for what happens next? To Eliza, to the Atomics and to the whole of existence? Will there even be any roads leading to Rome?
The Power Fantasy #15 is out Wednesday, 21st January from Image Comics.
