powers: so good
Oh man, and also? I don't have the capacity for talking about ongoing series that I do for talking about standalone works, and I don't have the capacity for talking about comics that I do for talking about film, but Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Avon Oeming's Powers series? How is this not considered one of the pinnacles of the post-superhero superhero genre? Aside from Watchmen, I don't know of anything I think is more powerful and exciting than Powers. I sometimes forget that, but it's imminently rereadable, it's got amazing characters and scene design (both narrative and graphic), it's structured beautifully and never hits a dry spell, and it explores the human side of being a superhero better and in more nuance than any of its peers. The world is more generic but the writing and the characterization is light years beyond Y: The Last Man; it's less "big idea" and poetic than Preacher or Sandman, but it's easily their match in both the richness of its world and the artful way it explores the darker side of the human psyche; it lacks the pedigree and intertextual nature of Moore works like League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Swamp Thing and V for Vendetta, but it manages to cover similar (if not equal) ground without ever losing its veneer of noir-y "cool." It's fucking fun to read. And you care what happens. And what happens... each time I think they've topped out, they go farther without feeling cheap.
But damn if volume 12, finally out after a forever kind of wait, didn't just knock my socks clean off. I am literally barefoot with shock and awe at the end of this thing. And closure? Clearly I hope it's not over yet, and I don't know but I think there's at least a 13 in the works (this is easy to verify, but I'm tired and just not going to right now), but if there weren't, 12 ends on such a bittersweet beautiful note for the whole series. I would not be heartbroken if Deena's haunted memories interrupting her endless vacation were the last thing we were given in this story.
I want to go on and on and tell you why, but it's hard in a single blog entry to address something as big and sprawling as a 12-and-counting-book graphic novel series. Maybe someday I'll read them all again and stop after each volume for some detailed notes. (Probably I won't do that, but it'd be fun.)
Anyway, yeah. Seriously. Powers: so good. If you like detectives and cop stories or superheroes at all, you are doing yourself a disservice by not reading them. It's maybe the only comic series I've read more than once all the way through. FX and Sony are now working on a TV series, and I'm withholding all judgment on that for now, but the comics/graphic novels? Easily up there with any of the genre's classics.
Do yourself a favor.