Powerless doesn't, to be honest, sound like a desperately promising idea when you read the solicitations.  The big idea is that it's a world where all the Marvel characters exist, but none of them have got powers.  Same people, normal world.

This isn't a hugely original starting point, and the usual answer tends to be thoroughly unexciting: the characters are fundamentally unaltered.  Insert dreary homily about the power of the essential human soul to conquer all.

However, Powerless gets off to a rather more promising start.  While the basic idea is a world without superpowers, the story is done from the perspective of psychiatrist William Watts.  Watts has just woken up from an inexplicable coma having been dreaming of the Marvel Universe.  For some unfathomable reason, everyone around him is a Marvel character, even down to the minor names in his appointment books.  The general insinuation is that this isn't a completely freestanding story - it appears more likely to be a "Marvel Universe transformed by cosmic accident" story.

There are some nice ideas about the way the characters operate in a world that isn't so much devoid of superpowers as devoid of all the plot conveniences of the genre.  There's no advanced science, so Reed Richards is working happily in a hospital.  The Punisher doesn't have genre conventions on his side, so he's a lunatic on charges of murder who got caught fairly quickly.  Dr Strange is a street corner nut.

Norman Osborn, however, still has the aura of a scheming villain about him.  (In a nice touch, he's still wearing the colours from his Green Goblin costume.)  The Kingpin also seems to have made the transition relatively intact, because there's a real world role for him to slip into - a relatively close analogy where he could plough on much as normal.

The first issue is largely about setting up the puzzle, and there's a certain degree of infodumping going on.  Watts also seems to be acting more as a tour guide than as the point of identification for the audience which is presumably the idea.  Nonetheless, it's an intriguing puzzle, and artist Michael Gaydos (from Alias) is a good choice, keeping the characters recognisable but at the same time stripping them of their larger-than-life status.  (Except for Norman.  He seems curiously immune to the rules.)

Obviously, with books like this, much depends on how good the explanation turns out to be.  But this is a surprisingly interesting start.

Rating: B+

back | continue