Powers, Vol. 3: Little Deaths

Powers (2000) #3

by Brian Michael Bendis, Michael Avon Oeming

A selection of Powers' most intriguing and salacious stories to date, plus an explosive gathering of some of the most hard-to-find Powers material. Included in this volume are the stories "Groupies," a super-hero sex scandal like you have never seen before; "Ride Along," a tale starring Warren Ellis as himself; the very first reprinting of the entire Powers Wizard Edition; the complete, critically-acclaimed Powers Annual; and the Powers Coloring & Activity Book. Also inside, "Keys," a bonus crime story, plus a dazzling Mike Avon Oeming sketchbook, a cover gallery, an in-depth interview with Brian Michael Bendis and a brand new cover by Oeming.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Superheroes, Crime, Fiction, Graphic Novels Comics, Mystery

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

A comic book writer and erstwhile artist. He has won critical acclaim (including five Eisner Awards) and is one of the most successful writers working in mainstream comics. For over eight years Bendis’s books have consistently sat in the top five best sellers on the nationwide comic and graphic novel sales charts.

Though he started as a writer and artist of independent noir fiction series, he shot to stardom as a writer of Marvel Comics' superhero books, particularly Ultimate Spider-Man.

Bendis first entered the comic world with the "Jinx" line of crime comics in 1995. This line has spawned the graphic novels Goldfish, Fire, Jinx, Torso (with Marc Andreyko), and Total Sell Out. Bendis is writing the film version of Jinx for Universal Pictures with Oscar-winner Charlize Theron attached to star and produce.

Bendis’s other projects include the Harvey, Eisner, and Eagle Award-nominated Powers (with Michael Avon Oeming) originally from Image Comics, now published by Marvel's new creator-owned imprint Icon Comics, and the Hollywood tell-all Fortune and Glory from Oni Press, both of which received an "A" from Entertainment Weekly.

Bendis is one of the premiere architects of Marvel's "Ultimate" line: comics specifically created for the new generation of comic readers. He has written every issue of Ultimate Spider-Man since its best-selling launch, and has also written for Ultimate Fantastic Four and Ultimate X-Men, as well as every issue of Ultimate Marvel Team-Up, Ultimate Origin and Ultimate Six.

Brian is currently helming a renaissance for Marvel’s AVENGERS franchise by writing both New Avengers and Mighty Avengers along with the successful ‘event’ projects House Of M, Secret War, and this summer’s Secret Invasion.

He has also previously done work on Daredevil, Alias, and The Pulse.

Reviews

[Anne · Rating 3 out of 5]

You know what's fun to read in your comics?
Fake court transcripts.
Ugh. I hate that shit. Boring. And in an effort to be honest, I'm going to have to tell you that I skimmed the hell out of it. And the coloring book. And the crossword puzzle, and the...
So, I just basically stopped after I thumbed through the transcript stuff towards the end and saw the clusterfuck awaiting me. If you are a fan of that sort of thing - have at it.



The gist is that this popular superhero known as The Olympian is found dead. And he evidently had lots of random sex with women.
Our guys gotta find the killer!

Also, Warren Ellis shows up as himself and yammers on about how superhero comics are bad and that they need other genres of graphic novels out there. It's a cute issue. Sort of.



This one is (so far) my least favorite just due to all the nonsense crammed into it. I liked the simplicity of the last volume, so here's hoping volume 4 isn't more of the same talky-talky bullshit that's packed into Little Deaths.

[Baba · Rating 4 out of 5]

The opening scene sees a magnificent figure of a man, sadly deceased, but with a huge schlong (yes, schlong!)! which Deena Pilgrim, being a red blooded punk outlier female, can't stop talking about at the crime scene. Welcome to Powers.

Time for sex, salaciousness, celebrity and gossip to take centre stage! A very nice treatment by Bendis and Oeming, with an overt PG-type hyper celebrity visuals approach supported by an 18+ and beautiful, and funny script, with some nice digs at media intrusion. The story itself, is a bit grey - but yet again it's the art, the language, the nuances and the downright delightfully foul mouthed Deanna that continue to make this book stick out. 9.5 out of 12.

[Chad · Rating 4 out of 5]

Powers has from the beginning visited the underside of the superpowers set. Here the Olympian dies in the buff and we delve into the world of superhero groupies. Things get a bit skeevy in places. The issue that was turned into a magazine was a neat idea but made for a boring read. The Warren Ellis issue was interesting. I liked the meta element of it. The issue with the Shark was cool up to the point where I had to read the court transcripts. You know what I don't like to do with my comics? Read prose. Comics need art. I'll read a book when I want to read a book.

[Oscar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good series!

[Mohan Vemulapalli · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Powers: Little Deaths" is a slightly uneven but generally strong third volume for the much celebrated "Powers" series. The book is composed of three story arcs, of which, the first, "Groupies" is by far the best.

As implied in the name "Groupies" focuses on the power that immense popularity and fame creates. This story harshly lampoons, the tabloid press and both those who exploit their own fame and those who would willingly be exploited. As the story unfolds, we find that with great powers comes great opportunities to get laid. Although, the story is fairly tame there are no punches pulled and very little left to the imagination.

The second story was written by and features a cameo appearance of a now disgraced British writer. There is not much to this story arc and no reason not to skip it.

The third and final story arc "The Shark" features a lame superhero attempting t make a come back with disastrous results. This one is a fair amount of fun and definitely worth a read, but it does not hold a candle to "Groupies".

Expect great and vacuous "People Magazine" style content focusing on various Powers, a deceased superhero found in a compromising position, a little black book, Deena saying shtupping - a lot, a lot of shtupping, 32 redheads, a rebranded hero, a not so repentant villain, the stupidest person since high school and, as a nice treat, a whole bunch of extras at the back of the book.

[James DeSantis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Almost at a 4 but not there yet!

So this is Bendis first long running series really and I can see it getting better and better. The longer we stick to our agents the better they become. However, in this volume, what I loved was the case itself. The mystery behind our one of the most beloved heroes died by...sex? Yes. In a way that was what the story was all about. However, we do have another story in here as well about a guy who was once a hero killing a villain by mistakes...or was it? The trial goes on and on until it results in a very dark and twisted ending.

Good: I really enjoy the outlook on this one. I especially love how they did the case with the once hero stopping a villain only to find out the truth. The ending was downright fucked up. I'm also loving the two main leads interactions with each other and the other people around the scene of crimes. So funny.

Bad: The olyumpia case kind of went south and in a weird way by the end. I liked the start of it but the reveal wasn't what I had hoped. Also a whole issue on Warren Ellis was...questionable.

Overall this was fun at points, sad at others, but I enjoyed my entire time reading. I have a feeling the best is yet to come but I'm loving going old school Bendis for sure.

[Sean Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm getting the vibe of this series - I understand how it flows, I'm enjoying the characters. I like the mix of cliches and shocks. Prototype The Boys? Probably, I don't know enough.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not sure if Bendis is doing this intentionally but this seems a great reflection on what fame does to people - some use it wisely, some reject the idea that they should be role-models, some seem it as the only currency there is. This is becoming more and more a crime series that is a vehicle to depict how messed up our society is when it comes to the famous. Imagine if reality stars or amazing athletes were superheroes instead .... this is how the tabloids, competition, sex, government agencies, fans etc. would behave.

[Abby · Rating 3 out of 5]

Racier than the other Powers volumes so far. I can't decide if I like or hate Deena, sometimes I think she tries way too hard to be a tough girl and other times I think she's funny. She's no Keema from The Wire (my favorite fictional cop), that's for sure.

[Shannon Appelcline · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a collection of shorter stories, this is an unusual volume of Powers.

Groupies (12-14). Another super bites the dust. But that mystery isn't really the point of the story. Instead the point is a deconstruction of the supers genre that goes beyond anything that Bendis did in the previous two volumes. We get a super (Olympia) with real human needs and a real life. It's well done and interesting, and it also suggests that Powers can be more than just noir mysteries.

This story also contains the (in?)famous issue #13, which is laid out as an issue of Powers magazine. I love the high concept, and I love the insights it gave us into a world larger than just Walker & Pilgrim's murder cases ... but the actual issue wasn't that interesting to read.

Still, overall a fun and interesting arc [7/10].

Ride Along (7). This could be a cool bit of metatextuality, since it's about the writer of Powers riding with Walker. But it gets mired down in comic-book rants, then opts to be super-cool by not having an ending. Out of the Powers corpus, this could be the one that's totally skippable. [5/10]

The Shark (1/2). A nice little story that manages to show off Deena's character and some nice humor in a short amount of space [7+/10].

This volume also has even more useless "bonus" material than most. I literally don't care about the last third of the book.

Still, considering just the sequential material, this is a good volume, not up to the heights of Powers, Vol. 1: Who Killed Retro Girl?, but a step up from Powers, Vol. 2: Roleplay. It offers a deeper look into the world of Powers by going beyond just the procedurals that create the comic's framework. And it gets back to some of the humor and character that went missing after volume 1.

[Ryan Werner · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not sure if this is a deviation on the format of the trades thus far or an odds-and-ends collection. It's got a coloring book, a court transcript, an issue where Warren Ellis plays himself, and a short from Jinx where Bendis and Oeming first hooked up. That stuff is fairly dispensable, though I could see someone who is a bigger fan of the series than I am really enjoying it.

The stuff that focuses on Olympia and his death is more what I think Powers excels at, the procedural stuff and occasionally-irreverent officer drama. The magazine format for the one issue was maybe my favorite thing about the series so far, and it did a lot to build the world.

The library doesn't have Vol 4 and neither do I, so this is probably the end of the road for me and Powers. I have Jinx on my shelf to give Bendis another shot--though I'd rather find more Oeming, as I prefer his art to Bendis's writing--but I'm left pretty much in the middle on this series. Makes sense why people like it, but it just didn't click with me.

[Daryl Nash · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Groupies storyline is weakened by the fake tabloid in the middle, and the resolution was anti-climactic. No pun intended. The Warren Ellis issue was clever. The Shark story was talky and the jury transcript ending was annoying. Then there's the coloring book. I dunno if this book was too meta for me-I think it's more that the meta was clumsily handled. The worst Powers book so far, but still not bad enough to turn me off the series.

[Scott Lee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Still an excellent genre mash-up, and a lot of fun, but it felt to me like our detective protagonists--the only charactres in the story we'd already been made to care about--were as important to this one. Great noir story, with just enough superhero stuff to make it POWERS instead of something else, but...yeah. Not enough with the two main detectives.

[Octavi · Rating 3 out of 5]

En este tercer volumen el caso a resolver tiene cierto interés pero meh, la gracia de este número está en la forma de presentar el tbo, que es original. Y ya.
Otro flojito. A ver, que molar, mola. Pero comparado con el primero... NO. Espero que mejoren los siguientes y se pongan a la altura del primero.

[Koen Claeys · Rating 2 out of 5]

2nd time I read this volume. Last time was 15 years ago. I forgot how disappointed I was (and still am) with this. I wanted to read how the ‘Groupies’-storyline continued but instead I get mediocre one-shots, some courtroom drama prose and a colouring book ...

[TJ Shelby · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Warren Ellis cameo was gold. Mix in some Superheroes vs pop-media crossover and this volume was enjoyable.

[Surly Gliffs · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gary recommended Powers to me, and on a recent library visit, I found the first three volumes available for checkout. I'm reviewing them as a unitary work. Not exactly fair, but my view is that you can't judge a comic on a couple of issues. There are too many titles that just don't hang together past the first volume.

I generally like Bendis' more recent work for Marvel. While Powers substantially predates that, it shows his budding talent for dialogue, even if it took him a couple volumes to flesh out the principal characters.

I got the sense that Bendis initially didn't have much in mind beyond HARD. BOILED. NOIR. The principals, Det. Walker (square jaw, straight man) and Det. Pilgrim (blonde, incongruously bare midriff), are respectively gruff and crass until it's necessary to use fists and guns. There are a couple points where Bendis writes simply awful dialogue for Pilgrim---men talk about "power," hot women apparently disclose too much about sex---but by Volume 3 some genuine character traits really start to emerge. Sure the plotting is a formulaic (and sometimes lame), but isn't character really what makes it rewarding to follow a comic?

Oeming's artwork follows a similar curve. He takes inspiration from Frank Miller and Paul Dini, but at first seems to draw too much clutter from Miller and not enough clarity from Dini. The first volume suffers from no shortage of compositional flaws: too much shadow (this is NOIR after all), panels running across the fold, dialogue crowded around the subjects, claustrophobic angles. But by the third volume Oeming is doing fairly clean character design, the principals really start to pop off the page, and composition is far cleaner and more open.

Also by Volume 3, which is a pretty weak volume as far as plotting goes, you see Bendis starting to find his tone: a little less noir and a little more crass, with the courage to make a more stupid jokes along the way. Overall not a bad library pickup and may check out more volumes in the series, either from the library or off the bargain rack. Powers offers cheap noir superhero thrills with a bit of woodenly sexist dialogue. Recommended with reservations.

[Jack Herbert Christal Gattanella · Rating 5 out of 5]

though it shouldve been closer to a 4.5 out of 5, I cant carp. This is magnificent satire, sometimes so funny that I could barely contain myself reading in the library. I think I was at first going "this is very very good, maybe shy of being great" as I didnt know if the final story.

This is sort of in three parts in this volume, the first story being three issues around the sudden death of Olympia, a superhero that looks like a slightly younger and healthier Mr Incredible - and could it be murder by one of the many women he had "casual affairs" with - the second a one issue lark that is fucking brilliant for fans of Warren Ellis, basically what I imagine is a good old ribbing from one comics creator to another, and then the third is about a dumb guy named Shark, nay Meteor, who gets arrested for possibly murdering in very foolish fashion a friend he was corresponding with in prison.

This third story I wasnt so sure of at first, by this I mean if it might be too... slight compared to the first story, which is simply a blast and also a sharp satire in fame via the "Powers Monthly" magazine spread, or the quick fun of the Ellis issue, like it seemed it shouldve been a side story but.... Then I thought about it more, and how this story of this poor sod Tommy Mills ends up, and this second/last part of the story being all presented in court document testimony with him on the stand.

In its way Bendis's presentation makes a diffrence, like the Powers Monthly spread (certain in jokes aside), but this story actually stuck with me as the day went on after finishing it. Its slightness, of it being about a guy trying to "reclaim" his glory possibly made for something thought provoking about what people expect out of superheroes, but more to the point what superhero comics expect of their own characters. Its the best writing in the volume even if its not the best artwork.

Love this series!

[Jacq · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mi è piaciuto leggermente meno dei primi due volumi, perché è un albo "patchwork" che racchiude tre storie separate che rendono poco omogeneo il volume. In sé le storie sono piuttosto riuscite: bella l'idea di inserire Warren Ellis come guest star ne "L'accompagnatore" (albo USA n.7), bella la storia che fa luce sulla vita privata e le abitudini sessuali del defunto supereroe Olympia (albi nn.12-14) e piuttosto buona anche la storia dell'Annual "Lo squalo". Voto: 8+/10.

[Peter Evett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Half of this is still great, half of this is pretty mediocre. The look into the private lives of Superheroes is cool - and very Bendis/Oeming style. Our detectives remain great and the crime solving is cool. The courtroom dialogue is poor - yes still mostly well written but meh. Was he busy with the fairly lame comic book. As conceits, say a page or two long that would have been cool. I'll guess Oeming was unavailable for some reason or other.

[Timo · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first story arc that continues the main story arc of Powers was pretty damn good. Sexy police procedural drama. Very nice. But about half of this collection was stuff from Annuals and such. Even these stories made my point stronger: Annuals are only places for half baked ideas that should've not even be published. Nice art in those, I admit, but.... why?

[Aerin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book hasn’t reached the same height as the Retro Girl arc yet, but still good, albeit this one has a lot of filler that to be honest I didn’t love. Groupies arc was good, and the Shark story was interesting.

Confession: I skipped the Warren Ellis arc because I’ve yet to read any of his books and I don’t know much about the guy, but I’ll circle back when I upgrade my editions of these books

[catechism · Rating 3 out of 5]

The mysteries in this one are so-so but I did enjoy Warren Ellis: useless ridealong wanker. There was also a lot of superfluous stuff in here that was semi-enjoyable but did not actually add anything, like a coloring/activity book and a tabloid and a court transcript.

[Isaac Lambert · Rating 4 out of 5]

fun stories and continuation- the underbelly of the superheroes are continued to be explored here. continues to try different, interesting formats, but the courtroom transcript- while I appreciate the style, is a weak ending

[Shaun Phelps · Rating 3 out of 5]

Solid start and witty banter with an end that doesn't feel like an end and a pile of extras for the sake of filling space. I AM usually interested to read everything written in a series, just this all felt gratuitous for the 3rd volume in a 14+ volume series.

[Mark Cameron · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this volume more than the first two. The character of Olympia is shown as a more complex superhero than is usually presented.

[Belfry · Rating 3 out of 5]

Actual rating: 3.5

[Steven W · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really like this series!

[Lavell]

It was supposed to be a murder mystery but a secret playboy hero took over the story and led me to disappointment. It was okay could have been better. But Bendis is fun to read.

[Heather · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not my favorite