The Power Fantasy vol. 3: The End of History

Surprise, Etienne is alive!  Despite the best efforts of “Jacky Magus” and Eliza Hellbound, the Apex Telepath survived his assassination attempt at the end of the previous volume.  You would think that, having proved their untrustworthiness, his fellow Superpowers’ days would be numbered.  Except that Etienne is a man who’s lived his life by doing the ethical thing and he may have other ideas about how to handle the fallout.  Starting with Heavy’s newly-revealed Superpower son and ending with… Well, that would be telling, wouldn’t it?

The first two volumes of this series from writer Kieron Gillen and Caspar Wijngaard were very much of the Good, But Not Quite Great variety.  There was lots of stuff to recommend them in the writing and the art, yet for all its effort in doing superheroes outside of a corporate-owned shared universe there hadn’t been anything that genuinely surprised me in them.  That changes with this volume as its subtitle turns out to be quite true regarding the story being told in this volume.  Yes, Everything Changes here because they can’t continue on as they always have and this series has the freedom to make those changes.

Vol. 3 also represents a significant amount of payoff for things that were set up in the first two volumes.  Things like Heavy and Etienne’s rivalry, the visions Eliza was getting, Masumi’s fraught relationship with Isabella, Etienne and Valentina’s fateful first meeting – all of these things come into play here, and elegantly so.  Perhaps none more so than the revelation behind the psychic bomb failsafe Etienne told everyone he put in place should he be killed.  It all leads up to a thrilling final few pages that promise to reshape the world of this series in a way that I can’t wait to see!

…in 2027 when we’re told vol. 4 will be out.  Everyone who’s been enjoying this series in single issues will just have to wait for them to arrive later this year.