The transition between the 20th and 21st centuries stewarded by superheroes is a vision comic book fans have witnessed many times, from Jenny Sparks of The Authority to Superman Y2K. The dawn of the new millennium represents the ushering in of a new era of modernity and shifting sites of power, which The Power Fantasy #1 subverts as its own stunning deconstruction of the genre. Using the fin-de-siècle and its anxieties as a bedrock, The Power Fantasy #1 interrogates the rarely overlooked but never fully resolved concept of incredibly powerful, earth-shattering, often called "omega-level," beings walking among the general populace.

The imagination and sophistication of The Power Fantasy #1 will come as no surprise to fans of Kieron Gillen, the all-star writer returning for yet another hotly anticipated original series with Image Comics — joined by illustrator Caspar Wijngaard, designed by Rian Hughes, and with letters from one of the most prolific people in comics, Clayton Cowles. In the world of The Power Fantasy #1, Atomics — folks with low-level supernatural abilities — are somewhat common. Standing a cut above them is "The Nuclear Family," the nickname given to the six Atomics with almost unlimited power.

Who Are the Nuclear Family? Are the Atomics Heroes or Villains?

Although The Power Fantasy #1 inarguably fits into the superhero genre, it has a profoundly different tenor to the "Big Two" publishers Marvel and DC, exemplified by its principal cast: the Nuclear Family. The fragile cooperation of the six of them is the only thing standing between the world and total annihilation at their hands, making their interpersonal dynamics the core of the narrative. This allows for a refreshingly character-driven plot that lets the world-building flow organically from the introduction of each central character.

Etienne, the focal point of this first issue, is incredibly powerful — capable of feats that would make Charles Xavier, at his best, wince with envy. He is also obsessed with ethics but from an apparently exclusively philosophical perspective. The duality between Etienne's almost unlimited power and his clear but clinical sense of moral boundaries creates a fascinating character, a hybrid Superman and Lex Luthor, who is pulled toward the right thing by intellectual imperative rather than an intrinsic desire to do good.

A Justice League With Competing Visions of Justice?

Gillen and Wijngaard problematize the familiar genre question, "What would it mean for the world to only be able to exist if a small group of people can get along at all times?" But in this context, Etienne is only held in check by what he can justify to himself as ethical. Heavy is wanted by every government on Earth and lives on a giant floating rock with his people (a la Magneto's Asteroid M). Masumi works on their art alone. Eliza clutches a rosary in the dark. Magnus is more machine than man, with a brutal attitude to match. Valentina is a jaded God-princess who watches Earth from the isolation of orbit.

The only thing that the super have in common are their powers, creating a grippingly dark and mature dynamic. In each of the six mightiest Atomics, there is the potential for a complex and fully realized narrative thesis on the implications of ultimate power, and this debut inspires every confidence that these arcs could be realized in really compelling ways. Each member of the Nuclear Family has a really individual sense of voice, carving out not just a personality for each of them but also a sense of perspective.

The interplay between characters already bears tantalizing glimmers of conflict and complication, building excitement for the ensemble to coalesce properly and explore those dynamics further. All of this is owed to Gillen's brilliantly wrought dialogue throughout The Power Fantasy #1 and bolstered by Cowles' letters, smooth and understated in a way that gives the words a sense of grounding and authenticity, emphasizing that these conversations about ethics and world domination are just a regular Tuesday for some people.

Wijngaard's Artistic Development Since Home Sick Pilots & All Against All

The missing component to what makes the Nuclear Family truly compelling, and not just intellectually interesting, is the animacy and nuance of Wijngaard's art. The sensitivity and capturing of expressions bear an immediacy of emotions that adds a great deal of depth, helping the characters feel immersive and dimensioned in their flaws and virtues. The distinctive design of each character also aids in this, communicating subtle touches of backstory and personality that feel really thoughtful and well-executed.

Above and beyond the characters and their aesthetics, The Power Fantasy #1 is, quite simply, an exceptional piece of visual art. Wijngaard is firing on every cylinder and has maybe invented some brand-new cylinders just to kick off the series with a bang. Managing to retain the moody, dramatic potential of Home Sick Pilots in places, Wijngaard demonstrates a terrific sense of range, tapping into a pastel pop-art-inspired style with buttery-soft colors to open the comic in a way that feels stunningly intimate.

How Does The Power Fantasy Compare to X-Men?

With Gillen's recent experience writing similarly dense, lore-heavy ensemble pieces for Marvel's iconic X-Men, it's natural for fans to wonder how The Power Fantasy #1 compares as a unique and self-contained IP. There are many parallels between the two high-stakes worlds, balancing science-fiction with fantasy against a backdrop of geopolitical complexity and unrest, with the superpowered as a second society that has a complicated factional relationship with the rest of Earth.

Outside the Limitations of Marvel Continuity

Many of these obvious parallels feel deliberate — like these ideas germinated during Gillen's now-concluded time writing X-Men, but he didn't have the scope or freedom to incorporate them into a wider, shared project. The Power Fantasy #1 has the distinctive flavor of Gillen unshackled from the bounds of publisher-wide continuity and given full reign to take his ideas to their wildest and most dramatic conclusions.

In order to genuinely interrogate ideas of power, superheroism and geopolitics, there needs to be rhetorical space for it all to come crashing down and for that to be the genuine endpoint of all the thematic exploration. This precludes the crucial and underlying conviction of virtually all superhero comics that the superpowered are just and righteous, and those that oppose them are acting in misinformed fear or are outrightly bigoted and evil.

Gillen's challenge of this preconception gives him space to write something much more mature and morally gray than X-Men, who, even in their darkest eras, are still viewed as protagonists. Going even deeper than the individual writing, from the perspective of a run under Marvel or DC, even if a comic truly breaks the norm and makes the bold claim that superheroism is bankrupt, it can only ever be temporary. Even if done with complete conviction, besides a few rare exceptions like Invincible, the title will inevitably be revived and either reinvented or returned to its status quo and ultimately undermine that conclusion.

Trapped in the Shadow of The Fall of X?

Coming hot on the heels of Gillen masterminding the end of an era for the X-Men, penning Immortal X-Men, X-Men: Forever and Rise of the Powers of X, there's a great deal for The Power Fantasy #1 to live up to. It's a massive credit to Wijngaard and Cowles that this issue manages to match the operatic visual and dramatic heights of X-Men, the closing third of the comic being an absolute tour-de-force in delivering on stakes and tension.

Wijngaard's stunning illustration and Cowles' brilliant sound effects push the explosion of action through the stratosphere, aided by Hughes' well-paced panel design that ratchets up the tension. The slew of incredible set-pieces and full-page spreads that end this debut issue is absolutely transfixing in their visceral beauty, with a cosmic feeling of stakes that will resonate with fans of the concluded Krakoan Era of X-Men.

One aspect of The Power Fantasy #1 that may be difficult for readers to digest is that Gillen writes this world very similarly to how he writes the world of the X-Men. That is to say, he takes all the same liberties in world-building without the additional sixty years of comics, characters and weekly releases to provide context. Gillen's writing is deeply allusive and rarely explains anything that it is showing, let alone telling the reader anything outright.

This approach creates the feeling of a world with a deeply vested sense of history and conflicts that the reader is still on the very periphery of but is also inherently confusing. The ambitiousness of the project puts a lot of onus on the reader to jump to conclusions or to just be okay with not entirely understanding what everyone is on about at every moment of the comic. The slick dialogue and thundering progression of events reward the early patience of a reader in spades, but unlike X-Men, there are no useful primers that can help untangle the complexity.

Similarly, The Power Fantasy #1 takes a much more uncompromisingly intellectual view of itself, concerned with chunky ideas that could be interpreted as a little pretentious by somebody picking up a floppy comic for some escapism. Throwaway namechecks of Bertrand Russell and Immanuel Kant may evoke keen nods of recognition or frustrated eye-rolls, serving as a great litmus test for getting stuck in or steering clear. For the exact same reasons that The Power Fantasy #1 might win one die-hard fan, it might be lethally off-putting to another reader.

The Power Fantasy #1 is a blistering debut that presents a darker, more mature and philosophically thoughtful take on what sharing a reality with the superpowered could look like. It takes a top-down approach, working from the perspective of the superpowered, unlike something like The Boys, which asks similar questions in the converse direction. This gives space for the creative team to ask some profound and complicated questions about the nature of power and what it means specifically to those who hold it.

This line of inquiry is kept lively and engaging by the spark of interpersonal intrigue between the characters, which hints at a dense and complicated history waiting to be explored. Ultimately, The Power Fantasy #1 is what it would feel like if Hickman's Inferno was the first-ever X-Men book: thrilling, visually commanding, utterly bewildering and the start of a new comic book obsession for many.