Powers: Bureau vol. 1 — Undercover
Credit where credit is due, Bendis and Oeming got the issues collected here out in a much faster and consistent manner than I ever expected. Then you start to consider the actual content of these issues and I’ve honestly read better from this team. For all of the hoopla about the focus of the title shifting from “cops on the beat” to “federal investigators” it’s pretty much business as usual here. On one level that’s a good thing, but the sense of urgency that has driven the best storylines in this title is missing here.
In the wake of the epic destruction that closed out the previous volume of “Powers,” all Powers-related cases have been re-classified as federal ones. For the series, this means that Federal Agent Deena Pilgrim can now (after a little hunting) bring her former partner Christian Walker onto this new beat along with her. They’ve got far more latitude in dealing with these kinds of crimes, access to cool new gear, and are able to take a more pro-active approach to their job. This time it involves a mob-run baby-making operation impregnating women with semen from an individual with Powers in the hopes of getting kids with Powers that they can control themselves.
Bendis’ writing is still compulsively readable and wittily profane while Oeming’s art is always slickly entertaining whether we’re being shown a bunch of talking heads or superheroes kicking the crap out of each other. More than the “regular people dealing with superpowered crime” premise of the book, these are the foundations of “Powers” and they’re in good form here. The creators have such great synergy that while we get several sequences of page-length monologues that they don’t feel boring at all. They also continue to be great at essaying character through conversation as seen in Pilgrim’s ball-busting of her new partner early-on, and the you-annoy-me-but-I-still-love-you rapport she shares with Walker. We see a lot of bickering between the two, but there’s a sense of genuine affection in all of their exchanges. Having a relationship carefully cultivated over seventy-plus issues and fourteen volumes allows for this kind of thing.
Where the volume isn’t quite as successful is in the title action. Halfway through the story, Walker is sent undercover to infiltrate the mob running this operation. It’s not an entirely successful move for a number of reasons. One, there’s the cognitive dissonance that the reader has to accept when someone as well-known as Walker tries to pose as a low-level criminal scumbag who went off the grid after the events in Chicago. Though the book offers up a number of reasons as to why this is a plausible scenario, it doesn’t account for the fact that Walker should have been recognized by someone in the superteam that shows up to kidnap the first pregnant woman early on when he gets into the organization. You’ve also got the simple fact that the whole “undercover” bit doesn’t go on long enough to dig into the more compelling aspects of this setup. Things are resolved by the end of the volume, and any hopes that this may have gone into some of the more compelling territory of good guys pretending to be very bad that was covered in”Sleeper” or even the Quinlan Vos stories in “Star Wars: Clone Wars” stories.
Things do end on an uncomfortable note with the indication that the win scored by Walker, Pilgrim, and co. may not be as solid as they thought. If nothing else, it does give you a reason to come back for the next volume beyond the simple pleasure of seeing Bendis and Oeming working together. At this point, that’s the main reason to keep reading this series as at this point it seems silly to believe that there’s any kind of over-arching story being told here. It’s just these two telling crime stories with superhero genre elements, and if you haven’t bought into it by now then there’s no chance anything here will convince you otherwise.
“Powers” does look like it’ll be heading towards an official hiatus in the near future as Bendis and Oeming bring us a new series, “The United States of Murder Incorporated.” Given Oeming’s commitments to his own “The Victories” title at Dark Horse and Bendis’ own obligations at Marvel, expecting more of their signature title at this time seems more than a bit foolish. Still, I’m certainly interested in seeing what the two have in store for us here after having worked so long on “Powers.”