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Comics Modern Age

Monthly (Comic) Book Club - June - Powers: Who Killed Retro Girl & Roleplay14819

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Powers #1-#11: Who Killed Retro Girl & Roleplay

Wk1 (5/31-6/6): Powers #1-3









Wk2 (6/7-5/13): Powers #4-6
Wk3 (6/14-6/20): Powers #7-9
Wk4 (6/21-6/27): Powers #10-11


Discussion topic ideas:

* Thoughts on the story or artwork
* Details in the story, artwork, or presentation
* References to outside events or other works of fiction
* Making of/Behind the Scenes details
* Editions you will be reading from
* Items in your collection pertaining to this week’s selection
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This is the trade I'll be reading for issues 1 through 6.







In terms of extra material, it has a decent amount. There are some comic strip versions of parts of the story that were published in the Comic Shop News as a preview. There's a full script for #1 as Bendis sent it to Oeming, which he specifies is not in 'proper script format'. He says it's how he does scripts for things he owns. Makes me a little curious what proper format is. There's a sketchbook of various characters as Oeming tried different things on the way to finalizing their looks, and a sketchbook of him working on the style in general. There are cover ideas along with the final product. The last bit is two pages of thumbnails of characters who cameo'd in the book along with who created them. Some are known characters, like Savage Dragon, some are new characters created by Bendis/Oeming, and some are new characters created by someone else to toss in the books.

Having just skimmed through those to make the list, I'll say at this point that the thing that jumped out at me is that Bendis did the colors/lettering for the comic strip previews and at least the colors for the covers. I didn't know him to do anything other than write, so that's kind of cool.
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I’ll be reading from the Definitive Edition hardcover which collects both of this month’s arc. I assume compiles the bonus features from the individual trades, which amounts to about 150 pages worth.





To start off, I’ve not been too impressed with what I’ve read of Bendis’ writing in the past, which has been limited to the House of M mini-series, Daredevil End of Days, his run on Elektra, and some of his New Avengers run, so I always found it odd that he basically wrote like half of Marvel’s titles for like ten years. Those were all Bendis working on Marvel’s characters so I’m curious to see how he operates on a creator-owned book.
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I've bought a number of the Powers trades, so I've read about 40 issues or so total so far. Coming back to number 1, the vibe at the beginning is interesting. It sets up a pretty straightforward cop story, with Walker getting called in to handle a hostage situation and all the associated cop banter and negotiation stuff. The twist is given away a little bit on the first page (and by the title, I suppose) if you notice the silhouette of a person flying in the sky, but otherwise it's a fun setup for having the hostage-taker blow through the ceiling with a jet pack. By the time you get deep in the series, it isn't all superhero action like a Marvel or DC book exactly, but you're pretty deep in superhero stuff. Issue 1 really sets things up as a cop story.

The little girl asking about the clitoris and then swearing while asking about cartoons is also good at setting the tone. There's humor that runs through the series, although it tends to be dark humor. I was going to say that it's weird it took so long to turn this into a show, since there was definitely a time when everyone was making funny shows with kids acting over their age, but I see it's been five years now. Time flies.

I doubt I noticed it the first time I read it, but there are a couple typos. Let's instead of lets and hold instead of holed. Since the trade has the original script, I can see the 'hold' at least was actually in the script. Maybe that one is supposed to be kind of like an accent?

Given the comment in Invincible about reusing art panels, I thought the conversation in the captain's office between Walker and Pilgrim was funny. It's a good use of shifting Walker's eyes though.

The cross between a cop story and a superhero story hits at the end when Walker and new partner Pilgrim (another standard police trope) get a new case, a dead superhero.

An oddity in my trade - there's no break between the issues and no page numbers, so I just kept reading into issue 2 without noticing. I had a question about a disconnect in the characters' talking so I went to check the script and saw that the whole scene wasn't there. Oops! I'll have to do a little detective work myself, looks like.

On the whole, I enjoyed the issue (obviously, since I ended up reading so much). I could see the genre and style not working for everyone though.
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Issue 2 starts with Retro Girl's autopsy, with some intermixed TV news footage that tells us a bit about her. I mentioned thinking that there was some speech missing or something, but on a re-read I think I was just tricked by the placement of the bubbles. In the overhead shot Walker says that they'll get out of the ME's hair, then there's a beat, then the ME says there are no guarantees and Walker says 'I know'. I don't think I interpreted the beat as being kind of a shift in the discussion, and Walker's bubble being higher up made me read his speech first. I thought there was a question or comment missing, with the ME responding that he can't make promises. The comic could have made it a little smoother for me, I suppose.

Similarly, it's a little tough reading Walker and Pilgrim's half intermixed with the newscast. It sort of interrupts the conversations to get to the bottom of a page and have the broadcast. But they do pace it out well to give you some background on people and names when they show up, like Zora and Johnny Royalle.

It's sort of a nice touch that Pilgrim clears out Royalle's club. It usually is the new, young cop that goes ballistic, but having it be a small, attractive woman is a twist. Pilgrim plays his part by just staying out of it. Then the issue ends (if I counted pages correctly?) with their effort being sort of wasted as Kutter has already brought Royalle to the precinct for questioning. Kutter is playing the role of the slimeball counter to our lead detectives.
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Okay so issue 1. There were things I liked and things I really didn’t.

I enjoyed the art. I know I criticized Invincible a bit for it’s simple art style but I fee the stylization here lends itself better to it than in Invincible. It has that Alex Toth/Batman the Animated series feel to it and still incorporates good use of depth and shadow, which emphasizes that detective story/noir-ish feel.

I like the idea of the world where super heroes and villains are more incorporated into a more normal world where cops are shown taking down super villains even more regularly than the heroes.

What I really didn’t like, and this is an ongoing criticism I have with Bendis in general, is his love affair with his own dialogue. It’s almost overwhelming at times and I don’t feel that the dialogue adds enough to justify smothering page after page with it. There are a few pages where the art is allowed to do some of the lifting and I was glad for the respite. I mean, Pilgrim’s joke/anecdote took two whole pages!! I often feel that you could probably cut the amount of dialogue in half without losing the content or the tone and things would flow more smoothly.

The definitive edition hardcover doesn’t include the original covers interspersed but it does have chapter breaks so you always know if you’re starting a new issue.




For fun, here is an episode of Comic Tropes covering Bendis’ work. It’ll be interesting to see if any of these pop up in our reading
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Okay, so I just watched the video and I have to say...I’m kind of craving a cider lol. I’ve actually tried that pineapple cider before and I really enjoyed it as well.

As for the meat of the video, he’s pointed out some of the things I’ve noticed in Bendis’ writing though he seems to enjoy most of them where they end up being more peeves of mine, so I don’t regard Bendis nearly as highly as he does.

It’s one reason why I’ve had the Alias/Jessica Jones omnibus sitting on my shelf unread for a few years. I really enjoyed the Jessica Jones tv series but I really don’t don’t like Bendis’ writing so I’m afraid the comic will make a character I like feel like a boring slog.
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I'll have to watch the video so I know what annoys people I wouldn't say that I've read a ton of Bendis but I do like at least some of it. I like the banter here; I thought Pilgrim's story was like something you'd see in a TV show or movie. It takes a lot of space to print it, obviously, but it seems realistic. I also liked Bendis' run on Jessica Jones (the first one, at least). There's an issue people probably hate because it's like all dialogue, with Jessica and J. Jonah Jameson. I thought it did a good job of portraying Jonah as his usual crummy self, and Jessica gives it back to him pretty well.

Maybe it's like a Kevin Smith or Tarantino movie. If you don't like dialogue, or their style of it, you aren't going to like the movie.

The long conversations thing does remind me of the little kerfluffle on Twitter about writers enjoying their own words too much though. It definitely does get old if you don't like the dialogue or it's all exposition.
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Yeah, I definitely got that it was going for a what you’d see on a wordy cop show or Tarantino movie but this is one of those things that I feel works better in one medium and not in another. In a movie even if you’re not moving with an actor through a space you have the actor’s subtle mannerisms, inflections in their deliver etc, while in Bendis’ comics at least you have a few frames just swamped with white text balloons. Even that would work if there was some tension or stakes in the dialogue. Bendis’ dialogue is more for characterization I guess but I think the point has gotten across LONG before the dialogue stops.
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Issue 3 keeps the plot moving along. The part at the beginning is interesting in that we learn a bit about Kutter. From what we've seen so far, we know he's a smarmy ass. Now we know he's either clueless or so full of himself that he acts clueless. He dragged in a fairly (in)famous guy for questioning, who happens to have a ridiculously large lawsuit already filed against the department, with no evidence. It goes poorly, although we do learn that Johnny Royalle can teleport.

Most of the rest is dialogue, until we get the chaser at the end that the graffiti on the wall behind Retro Girl's body might be a clue. Although, speaking of smarmy asses, it seems like that applies even to the good guys in this world. Zora was not all that nice, and Triphammer is definitely an ass.

I did like the bit about Pilgrim testing Walker to see if he was secretly a superhero. They had planted some clues, like Walker knowing so many superheroes and Royalle recognizing him if he covered part of his face, but then Pilgrim puts him on his ass with little effort. Of course, Walker could just be telepathic or fly or do any of a lot things while not being invulnerable, but it's a nice misdirection.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dielinfinite
Okay, so I just watched the video and I have to say...I’m kind of craving a cider lol. I’ve actually tried that pineapple cider before and I really enjoyed it as well.

As for the meat of the video, he’s pointed out some of the things I’ve noticed in Bendis’ writing though he seems to enjoy most of them where they end up being more peeves of mine, so I don’t regard Bendis nearly as highly as he does.

It’s one reason why I’ve had the Alias/Jessica Jones omnibus sitting on my shelf unread for a few years. I really enjoyed the Jessica Jones tv series but I really don’t don’t like Bendis’ writing so I’m afraid the comic will make a character I like feel like a boring slog.


I enjoyed the video, and could go for a cider as well.

I think the video is pretty accurate, and we have already or will see pretty much all of those tropes in Powers. Like he says toward the end, the tropes aren't that bad if you like the dialogue/style. If you don't, you probably aren't going to enjoy this month's reading though.

Random video thought: looks like he might have been right near Daredevil 9 or 10, which is super hot right now. Bendis started on Daredevil after that, so he wouldn't have bought it for the video, but he might have just skipped past a cheap book at the time.
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So I enjoyed issue 2 a lot more than the first. The action is moving along at a nice pace and Bendis has reined in his dialogue quite a bit.

I was also thrown off by that “no guarantees” part of the conversation. Maybe it was Bendis doing the lettering lol

I didn’t really find the newscasts bothersome but I always ready the two facing pages before reading the newscast straight across the bottom.

I also noticed a typo in one of the newscasts where they mention that Royale filed a “law suite” against the city. Maybe the person on the teleprompter made a mistake.

But yeah, the action in the story so far is pretty standard detective murder mystery stuff with the rivalry between detectives, running down leads in the seedy parts of town, etc with the added wrinkle of having superheroes involved bringing issues like the ME not knowing is Retro Girl is technically human, or Johnny Royale getting restraining orders against various heroes. That level of realistic mundanity, the incomplete history from the newscast, and the story revolving around the death of a hero all give me a bit of a Watchmen vibe.
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Week 2 (6/7-6/13): Powers #4-6






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Quote:
Originally Posted by dielinfinite
I also noticed a typo in one of the newscasts where they mention that Royale filed a “law suite” against the city. Maybe the person on the teleprompter made a mistake.


It might be hasty on my part, but I assume typos like this are a sign of independent books. I got some random indy books (like, stuff I never came close to hearing about before) and they had a decent number of typos. Now we're seeing a good number from a known writer but also on an indy book. I assume the editing process just isn't as tight when you have to watch every dollar, and/or don't have the scale (and stakes) of being Marvel or DC.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dielinfinite
That level of realistic mundanity, the incomplete history from the newscast, and the story revolving around the death of a hero all give me a bit of a Watchmen vibe.


That's interesting. I see what you're saying, but Watchmen was so obviously soaked in history and impending doom that it felt much heavier to me. Powers is about serious stuff but with the banter and things like that it feels much less weighty to me.
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@xkonk I mean, I didn’t say it was identical to Watchmen, just that it gave me similar feeing, specifically in the setting and world building. And yeah, Watchmen was soaked in history but it was doled out over the course of the whole series so you didn’t know everything from the onset. And Watchmen still left some blanks as the history was often told by third parties who were not privy to every detail, similar to how the news report gave a history of Retro Girl’s activities from a public’s point of view.
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@dielinfinite yeah, I see what you meant. I just wouldn't have made the parallel myself.
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So issue 3 continues down the same track as the previous issue.

Even without the lawsuit, randomly bringing in a suspect on a case you’re not even involved with seems like a pretty stupid move. He does seem like the kind of guy that would do something just to get his face on tv but did he just expect Royale to confess?

One thing ai keep noticing is ambiguously attributed word balloons that can make dialogue a little difficult to parse out. In this issue it was when Walker and Pilgrim were being hounded by the reporters. The reporter is repeating “detectives” over and over and the trail is linked to her in two different frames and then one word balloon has it’s tail dangling ambiguously between frames but closer to Walker in the next frame than the reporter. And then the speech balloon when Pilgrim asks Walker to get some street food (another detective story trope) has no attribution at all but it starts out closest to Walker so I thought it was him asking, but then two balloons later you see him responding, so I have to assume Pilgrim did the asking despite not appearing to say anything in the frame. It just seems a bit sloppy.




Triphammer definitely comes off as a bit of an ass but rereading the meeting with Zora, I didn’t really find her to be mean. She wasn’t cheerfully bubbly or anything. Yes she did bite at Pilgrim a little but I think it was pretty clear that she was there to talk to Walker specifically so Pilgrim was essentially butting in.

Pilgrim’s powers test was pretty and some repeated art later (there is seriously a lot of it in this issue) Walker demands payback in the form of helping out with the kid, who then asks what Chaotic Chic meant, which reminds Waker of the graffiti at the crime scene, begging the questions, what does the graffiti mean and is the little girl connected to the murder?



I was also a little curious about the adaption that came out a few years ago. I saw a few minutes of the first episode. Not much but what struck me right away was that the guy playing Walker looks more like he should be playing Kutter instead. The first season of the show looks to be a lead-up to Retro Girl’s death but it doesn’t seem like it’s meant to be canonical to the comics since I guess Pilgrim is still partnered with Walker early on so in the show the two work together for a bit before Retro Girl’s death. Also those few minutes I did watch might’ve spoiled something for me but we’ll see if that comes up in the issues we’re reading this month.
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It sounds like the main thing we agree on so far is that they should've gotten a different letterer
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I think you hit the nail on the head earlier in that indie books often need to make sacrifices since they don’t have a big budget or big, well-oiled machine to help crank books out.

It reminds me a little about Futurama. On the commentaries they noted that when the show was revived on Comedy Central, the cable network budget was not nearly as high as when they were on the Fox Network. As a result, they couldn’t afford to revise and refine the show scripts as much as they had before.
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Issue 4: This one went by pretty fast. Picking up from the previous issue left off, Walker and Pilgrim are running down the “Kaotic Chic” lead dangled at the end of issue 3.

The line-up of interviewees was kind of fun. We see a few of the same faces we saw back in Invincible’s funeral issue. I can name Savage Dragon and Madman and I recognize the black and silver guy. Not sure how many of these are cameos and how many are original. Some look like parodies like the Aquaman-looking character.

We eventually make our way back to Triphammer who is about as helpful as everyone else. Which is to sag not at all. He does give Walker a mysterious package. He he tells Walker to open it in private and is pretty secretive about it with Pilgrim.

I thought the bum on the street we see after the meeting with Triphammer was a bit prominent, almost like he was somehow important. That may or may not be the case but I do like how he is used as a reference for the camera rotation around Walker and Pilgrim. Might just be the old film student in me thinking of the “180 degree rule” and the three frames are a textbook execution.

It was kind of funny how nonchalantly Walker and Pilgrim react to the property damage by the super hero/villain fighting. I imagine it would get old hearing about it on a daily basis. It does give them the idea to start asking bad guys about the “Kaotic Chic” graffiti.

So we get another spread of faces but none that I recognize so I’m not sure if there were any cameos here, though I assume there are. We get a lot of nos until the very last guy. A pretty nondescript guy in prison orange. He apparently has perfect memory so is able to list several places he’s seen the graffiti. He does recommend Walker and Pilgrim should talk to the Wolf, another super villain.

The Wolf is an old man but he’s supposed to be a big deal. We see him strapped to a chair almost like Hannibal Lecter or something. He does suggest a familiarity with Walker. Something more than just knowing him socially how Walker has tried to describe his relationship with all the heroes he’s acquainted with.

I’m not quite sure what they were supposed learn from him. Just possibly more info on the graffiti, I guess, which he doesn’t. What he does reveal however is that he was already interviewed by Detective Kutter.

I think it’s a little strange that Walker and Pilgrim only learn about it now. It seems like getting the Wolf set up for the interview was a bit of a hassle at the prison so I’d be surprised if the prison workers wouldn’t complain to them about the hassle about having to do it twice. Or even if there were several shifts, I’d imagine there’d be a prison log or something.

I’m also wondering how Kutter knew to speak to the Wolf in the first place. Walker and Pilgrim only got to him by speaking to one person out of dozens about the graffiti , and even then it was a last minute suggestion. I guess he could’ve had the idea to run down the graffiti lead himself. It’s not like the graditti itself was hidden or anything but he doesn’t seem to have the contacts in the powered community.

Anyways, Kutter gets rightly chewed out for interfering in the case again. After doing so so brazenly a second time so soon after the first seems a little beyond just being a glory-seeking jerk. Combined with the lead that we’re not sure how he got, it’s more than a little bit suspicious.

After the spar with Kutter and the Captain, Walker storms off. Pilgrim is left alone at Walker’s desk with the package and she just can’t help herself and opens it. Inside is a photograph of Retro Girl and another hero. Another hero that looks an awful lot like Walker…

Again, the episode went by pretty quickly. It doesn’t feel like too much happened but Walker and Pilgrim continue running down leads in classic detective style. I wouldn’t say I’m hooked but questions are popping up that I’d like to see the answers to and Bendis isn’t exhibiting the habits I find more objectionable so it’s a nice read so far.
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Issue 5: So the two main events in this issue are that Pilgrim and Walker hash things out over Walker’s Past and the Kaotic Chic lead finally pays off.

So things start off with the ME saying he has nothing to contribute to the investigation, forcing Walker to go on the news in hopes of getting help from the public. Things are understandably icy between Walker and Pilgrim after her invasion of privacy at the end of the last issue.

Pilgrim’s persistence forces Walker to come clean and he tells Pilgrim that he lost his powers in the middle of a deadly fight and Retro Girl saved him.

Waker’s decision to go public pays off and they get a tip from a guy who reveals that he was part of an anti-powers message group called Kaotic Chic which they tagged wherever they saw powers getting out of line. One of their group was getting a bit too radical and might be involved.

I felt this exchange might have been dipping back into Bendis’ over-wordiness but not egregiously so. Adding that the next few pages are entirely silent, I can cur it some slack.

The police raid the guy’s house but find it empty. On their way back to the station Calista has snuck out of her day care. She’s staring at a wall and it happens to be the suspect tagging “Kaotic Chic”
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Issue 6 wraps up the arc and it’s a little anti-climactic.

The guy they arrested tagging near the police station killed Retro Girl, as the police suspected. He tries to deny it but confesses rather quickly thereafter. He was obsessed with Retro Girl, seeing her as an ideal that he didn’t want to see fade with time.

As the prisoner is being transferred Triphammer shows up and immolates the prisoner saying the trial would be a circus and just give the criminal a platform. Triphammer then disappears and the case is closed.

Back at his home, Calista asks Walker if it’s done. When Walker says it is, Calista tells Walker about the dream she had where a beautiful girl told her a story. The suggestion is that the girl in Calista’s dream is retro girl and that part of the murder’s idea was right along with the theory we heard on the tv that Retro Girl might have been many powerful women throughout history.

The issue and the arc ends with a candlelight vigil and two heroes flying across the moon. Maybe Retro Girl is one of them. Not sure who the man would be though.


So I thought this first arc wasn’t bad but a bit unsatisfying in its conclusion. Reading some of the bonus materials I get the feeing that Bendis generally wanted to avoid thpical comic book cliches. I am not certain if that was the same approach he wanted to take with the story and thus avoided some of the more familiar story structure we might expect. Maybe he was aiming more for a Law & Order detective story structure and really leave the super heroics more of a background or setting element.

Starting at the conclusion and looking back, I think I would’ve liked the anti-powers movement as well as drainers and their use introduced much earlier. Not necessarily make them front and center but at least introduce the concepts in the world building.

You would think, given how tough the ME had it trying to cut Retro Girl for the autopsy that someone would have gotten the idea that a drainer or something similar could’ve been used to weaken her enough to slit her throat.

The comic had opportunity to bring up the drainers early on when we see a few super villains at the police station and one had to be subdued. I actually went back and checked to make sure I didn’t miss it but no, he’s just beaten with police batons.

The show did something similar to my suggestion, though I don’t know if it eventually follows the comic but it introduced a power-draining tranquilizer used on super villains in custody in the first few scenes.

Hindsight is 20/20 of course but it does sometimes feel like mysteries are built up without the payoff quite sorted. I felt something similar happened with Daredevil: End Of Days, which Bendis also worked on.

The series built up a mystery without the writers actually knowing what the solution would be. In Powers’ case, I fee like you could slide just about any solution into the mystery since we only start getting at the actual solution until the end of issue 5. You could keep everything else the before that point the same and have “Kaotic Chic” turn out to be a new supervillain and murdering Retro Girl was how he chose to introduce himself to the world and it would work just as well.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dielinfinite
The line-up of interviewees was kind of fun. We see a few of the same faces we saw back in Invincible’s funeral issue. I can name Savage Dragon and Madman and I recognize the black and silver guy. Not sure how many of these are cameos and how many are original. Some look like parodies like the Aquaman-looking character.


Here are the cameo pages from my trade. If something isn't readable and you're curious, let me know.








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I don’t know how I missed it but my hardcover includes the same cameos gallery
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I saw you ran through the rest of the issues, so I did too. I'll just do some reactions.

Issue 4 - it is kind of unexplained how Kutter figured out to talk to the Wolf. Maybe he's sort of a criminal mastermind type, so Kutter thought he would just try it? Or maybe Kutter is more capable than the impression he gives? Either way, still not very smart.

Looks like Walker is/was a superhero, which makes a lot of other things in the issues so far make sense. More plausible than him just having been around all these heroes and villains enough that they recognize him as a cop.

Issue 5 - Walker's backstory makes perfect sense for what we've seen, but is still mysterious. How does someone just lose their superpowers? Maybe something that gets resolved in the future.

The 'open up the tip line' is another classic cop trope. I can't decide if it's messing up the trope to not have a bunch of crank calls and false leads, or if it's nice to just cut to the chase.

Issue 6 - I suppose the case does wrap up kind of tidily. I don't know if that's writing without the ending in mind, or maybe it's supposed to reflect how a case would actually play out. Maybe police cases usually catch a valid lead and then things go quickly from there? I don't honestly know.

The comic has also been pretty committed to only giving us Walker and Pilgrim's side of the story, so it would be a little out of place (or just a different choice) to cut in with things that other people were up to. Keeping the Law and Order analogy, it's much more L&O and less Law and Order: Criminal Intent. If the detectives had thought of drainers earlier, they probably would have gone down some rabbit holes figuring out who could build such a thing on their own, who was buying appropriate parts, etc. If there was a anti-hero movement with any popularity, they would have been talking to those people already, etc. Which I say only to say that those things could have happened, we just would have seen a different investigation if they had.

I was glad to read this again, because the bit with Calista makes the last trade I read (some 40 issues and a different publisher later) make more sense. It's been long enough that I forgot all about it.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by xkonk
The comic has also been pretty committed to only giving us Walker and Pilgrim's side of the story, so it would be a little out of place (or just a different choice) to cut in with things that other people were up to. Keeping the Law and Order analogy, it's much more L


I still think they could've introduced some of the concepts earlier without breaking the conceit of a one-sided point of view. The drainers, for example. If they are used to depower villains in jails and prisons then it could've easily been mentioned or seen used at the police station. Heck, Pilgrim is even the one that recalls the name of the device when interviewing the guy at the copy shop. So clearly they should've been aware of them and in retrospect not bringing them up as a possibility seems to either point to writing without an ending on Bendis' part or shoddy policework on Walker and Pilgrim's part.

Yes it could've resulted in an entirely different investigation or Bendis could've introduced the drainers and explained why they weren't explored significantly in the investigation. Even a line with the me like Walker asking "What about Drainers, we use them at the station to weaken powers when we bring them in" and the ME replying "I told you I have nothing, one way or the other. I'm just utterly useless and just here to eat up pages." Okay, maybe not that last sentence but these logical gaps shouldn't just be left open because the story is supposed to be a certain way, it's the author's responsibility to cover them.

I know I'm heaping a lot of criticism on Bendis on this point but I did enjoy the story for the most part. It's just that on a mystery I think it's important to stick the landing and I don't think that happened here and as I mentioned, it's not the first Bendis mystery with this same out of nowhere ending that doesn't quite hold up against the rest of the buildup.
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Yeah, that's fair. There could've been a "no one has portable dampeners" or something like that.

Since I typed it out loud though, I will say that there's a benefit to showing just the one side of things. When you get a scene of someone leaned over a table in a dark room soldering something, you know it's going to be important later even if maybe you don't know what they're making. When you never see that stuff it keeps more mystery and more options open. It does put more weight on making sure the protagonists act reasonably though, and leaves the story open to the kinds of questions you're asking.
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COLLECTOR dielinfinite private msg quote post Address this user
Wk3 (6/14-6/20): Powers #7-9






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Monthly (Comic) Book Club - July - Thunderbolts Red Scare/Infinity





Thunderbolts (2013) #7-18


Wk1 (6/28-7/4): Thunderbolts #7-9
Wk2 (7/5-7/11): Thunderbolts #10-12
Wk3 (7/12-7/18): Thunderbolts #13-15
Wk4 (7/19-7/25): Thunderbolts #16-18
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600834 49 30
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