Powers 25 Volume 1

by Brian Michael Bendis, Michael Avon Oeming (Illustrator)

184 pages, Paperback

Published July 21, 2026

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

[Alex Sarll]

Powers was game-changing when it began, the breakthrough Bendis book which would pave the way for his massive impact at Marvel; its template of police detectives in a superhero world would shortly bear fruit at DC too, with Gotham Central one of their best books this century in its own right. But where Gotham Central ran a couple of years and then stopped, reputation intact, Powers' scheduling stuttered, resulting in a confusing run of relaunches and renamings, the epic saga running out of puff. And there's always a concern when a long-running property announces a big anniversary relaunch and you think, hang on, it's only a few years since we last saw it, and it didn't seem to be doing ever so well then. Nor does the opening issue of Powers 25 do much to allay those fears; it's overstuffed, the new lead struggling to establish herself before our focus is back on the long-running characters now settling, some more comfortably than others, into leadership roles. Which is painfully reminiscent of one of the many problems with the Star Wars sequel trilogy, even before we get into the way the back-and-forth Bendis dialogue, so fresh at first, can now feel more like a tic.

Thank heavens, then, that after that difficult reintroduction is out of the way, things soon settle down just enough that it feels like Powers again, rather than an overcaffeinated Powers reenactment society. We meet the other new lead, the dynamic between the pair carefully calibrated by Bendis and Oeming so they feel like Walker and Pilgrim in some ways, without simply being a reskin. We see more of how the world has changed. And we get a case, based in part on a callback to the original run, but not in a head-scratching way, and paired with a new and concerning development which soon sees the department in big trouble and ends the volume on a cliffhanger whose resolution feels genuinely involving, as against the last couple of volumes, which were revisits that scratched an itch but never left me anywhere near the edge of my seat. It undoubtedly helps that, where even at its best OG Powers was sometimes just comics about comics, the.story here feels like it has more of a real-world connection, what with one of the people concerned being "the richest science fuck in the land". "That's the magic of this asshole. He does so much stupid shit, so often, everyone forgets about the last ten stupid-shit things he did in the name of fucking science." And yes, it's cheap, and in some cases I am tiring of seeing this archetype get fictional comeuppances while the real ones sail on unmolested. But for whatever reason, this iteration clicks and I really want to see him go down, hard.

(Edelweiss ARC)

[Lucas · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not very familiar with Powers, only read a few issues of the original series and have been meaning to read the rest for ages. I'm also always wary of "relaunches" like this.. But these guys are doing it so right ! It's building on what they did before, while still very much being its own thing. The crime noir/superhero blend still feels fresh, and the mystery is fairly gripping so far. And Oeming's art is absolutely killer, kind of in that Marcos Martin lane which I really love. Watch me go back and read the entire original series while I wait for the rest of this to come out