What's so special about POWERS?

it's great! very different from top ten, even more different from raymond chandler.

I think the cartoony art makes it much more enjoyable than the similarly-themed Astro City.

top ten -> hill st. blues knockoff

powers -> basically l&o (or the 'l' part in any case) though it stole one big aspect from homicide; still basically it's the l&o model, which is the old dragnet template (what hill st. blues radically overthru).

i'd like to see a comix cops wire knockoff. does the nick fury stuff sorta work as comix cops (in any case comix feds right?), or is it just seeming that way since i'm pretty much only been exposed to revamped fury (via ultimate comix, 1602, the pulse/alias, etc.)? did classic fury, um, explore the whole 'what's the cia like in world with superheros?' angle as much (did they just pretty much immediately reach the conclusion 'it's awesome - that's what it's like!')?

I'm similarly underwhelmed by Powers and in fact much of what BMB I've read, though I attribute much of my dislike to a disagreement with his dialogue aesthetic more than anything.

About Powers specifically, I do find it predictable, as well.

So, if we have:

Top Ten = super-powered cops in a super-powered world

Gotham Central = normal cops in a predominantly normal world (+ costumed freaks, of course)

Powers = normal cops in a super-powered world

I guess we need a book about super-powered cops in a world otherwise without super-powers? Or not.

that last one's jla pretty much

The dialogue aesthetic is probably the thing I like MOST about Powers.

I did like the story arcs better when they were about blase, "just another day in the life" superhero crime-solving rather than character/world redefining epics.

Yeah, you're right Blount, but at least the JLA gets to fight big universe-annihilating cosmic menaces every few months (or wait, do they still?).

Top Ten totally reminds me of the old school Legion of Super-Heroes.
Gotham Central sometimes wholesalely rips off Homicide, but does so in an enjoyable way, and the cast has evolved into their own characters, just as the cast off H:LOTS evolved away from their counterparts in David Simon's book from which the show sprung forth.
Powers is pretty NYPD Blue.

xpost.

This month in the JLA, Hawkman and Batman talk about their feelings, so, um no.

I suspect that the reason I enjoy all of these books so much is that I'm the only person in the western hemisphere who does not watch police/lawyer tv dramas.

i probably prefer bendis' mamet to sorkin's - he cuts closer to the abbott and costello (something i can probably get answered right here, right now: which came first - 'who's on first?' or waiting for godot?).

xpost he could stand to do alot more single issue or two issue (at most) arcs that end/resolve in 'you gotta be fucking kidding me' way that alot of homicides did (or as happens in the wire though it's never the end of anything there). i did like that the huge HUGE epic (the forever one maybe? the monkey fucking one) basically wrapped up in such a small scale, the arc ended up seeming to exist mainly to allow him to define or explain things in the powers universe.

This month in the JLA, Hawkman and Batman talk about their feelings, so, um no. - sounds like jla is the one that's nypd blue!

omg csi: miami -> batman???

Wikipedia sez:

Waiting for Godot is an absurdist play by Samuel Beckett, written in the late 1940s and first published in 1952. Beckett originally wrote Godot in French, his second language, as En attendant Godot (literally: While Waiting for Godot). The simplicity of the dialogue reflects this French origin. An English translation by Beckett himself was published in 1955.

The comedy routine was first featured in the team's 1940 film debut, One Night in the Tropics. The duo reprised the bit in their 1945 film The Naughty Nineties, and it is that version which is considered their finest recorded rendition. They also performed the routine numerous times on radio.

Oh, and also in this month's JLA, they take on the Secret Society of Super-Villians and Despero the World Destroyer.

Old school JLI was Seinfeld...BEFORE SEINFELD!

abbott and costello were seinfeld before seinfeld!

JLA right now is basically Gilmore Girls meets Power Rangers.

"i'd like to see a comix cops wire knockoff."

I can scarcely imagine.

I do like the fact that the basic setup of POWERS seems to be mutable--after the latest issue, I really have no idea how Deena can continue to be a character in the capacity she's had up to now.

I think it's terrific and totally idiosyncratic, but the story conclusions are always a little Scooby-pull-off-the-mask-meh.

The BMB-Mamet dialogue works best for me on the autobio stuff -- Fortune and Glory is absolutely wonderful.

I like Bendis as Mamet ever since he went mainstream and reined himself in somewhat. Back in the Goldfish/Jinx days, when nobody cared and he wanted to be making movies so bad every comic screamed it (those photo-traced panels...) he would regularly get out of control and indulge in issue long monologues or exchanges between dark, semi-shadowed faces.

Now, when he does it (the entire recent Decalogue DD arc) it seems to serve the wider narrative better, his dialogue is tighter, and he works with better artists.

Powers - bought the first few issues and was not impressed. Seemed a mix of elements from other, better work.

Hey, what's the fucking deal with Decalogue anyway? How can it be a Decalogue with only FIVE chapters? Fucking Bendis.

If only Tep were here to break it down on these comic/tv show parallels.

How many people were in the room, Huk?

Also, Answers.com tells me that "Decalogue" = "Ten Commandments" & that's all.

so i finally read vol. 1 of this and... well... i thought it was pretty terrible! gotta say it's crowded on both sides by top 10 and gotham central and is neither as imaginative & fun as teh former or engrossing/emotional as the latter. while i liked some aspects (mostly having to do with dude's backstory with the superheroes), here's what i don't like:

1) the art, which i am really not down with
2) the subplot with the adorable precocious kid
3) the l&o-knockoff main plot which resolved in a really zzzzz, unsatisfactory way

also i think i'm not really onboard with the whole bendis segmented dialogue-bubble panel layout jazz

You didn't like the art?
The art was the best part!

hahaha huk i guess we just ending up swapping crappy bendis books for crappy bendis books!

It's like an O. Henry story!

or the twilight zone!

I liked Powers Forever or whatever that one was where he was the mystical warrior throughout time or something.

i also liked the first one, but the others i've tried to read don't do much for me.

I didn't care much for the art at first, but it grew on me. Especially after reading Bendis' gushing praise of Oeming noir-ish style (in the first trade's afterword?).

Wait until the monkeys, if you keep on going.

Reading trades, it's hard to wait, but oddly, both Phoenix: Endsong and the last Powers trade ended up with (SPOILERS, beware) female characters amped up in powers. Now to wait and see where Emma and Deena go from there.