Occasional Personal Discomfort: Powers: Bureau #2 Review

This is a hell of a thing to say, but Brian Michael Bendis’s creator-owned books remind me of having herpes.

Hear me out.

To get herpes, you have to get laid (or really enjoy the taste of toilet seats, but I’m going to assume that if that’s your thing, this isn’t the Web site you’re likely to be visiting, what with the lack of the words, “girl” or “cup” in the URL). And that’s good. But then after a while, there is an itch. And that itch lasts for a good, long while, and while you’re waiting for it to pass, it is maddening. And then one day the itch is satiated, and that is awesome… until the itch comes back. And the itch stays for an indeterminate period of time, until the next respite. Which is great… but the whole time, you’re hesitant to get laid again, because as weird and satisfying as the agony-and-the-ecstacy cycle might be for you, it would be a hell of a thing to pass it on to someone else.

[ED. – Rob – this is STUPID. Bendis’s books have nothing to do with herpes. You just seem to want to write about herpes. Get to the Goddamned point… unless there’s something you want to tell me… Amanda]

Okay, here’s the point: Powers: Bureau #2 is the middle of a story in a book that is known as much for being delayed as it is for it’s general excellence. And this issue delivers the best of Bendis’s dialogue, with delightfully perverse imagery and some well-executed suspense and action, albeit with some leaps in logic and mildly confusing story points along the way. However, this issue was a week late from its last solicitation in November, and while the next issue is currently set for two weeks from now, I’ll believe it when I see it. So even though it’s a good issue, it’s like walking in mid-boink… and not knowing when the itching is likely to stop.

Special Agents Walker and Pilgrim are investigating the black market sales of the sperm of people with superpowers – sperm so powerful that it impregnated Pilgrim’s male partner in the last issue. The partners sweat a suspect in the box, wherein the suspect implies that the direct contact of some of the sperm on Pilgrim’s skin was enough to make her with child. Angry, superpowered child. Anyway, they find a lead pointing to a pregnant woman, and they use their newly-administrated Federal Agent warranting powers and toys to plant the bugs required to discover that the nice lady has a briefcase full of money she likes to rub on herself every night, and to start suspecting that maybe there’s someone with powers they can’t detect behind the pregnancy and watching over her. So they agents arrange a raid to take her into custody… only to find that, yeah, someone doesn’t want her falling into Federal hands…

Look: if nothing else, this book is worth buying, sight unseen as to whether you read the first issue or not, for the dialogue, particularly when Walker and Pilgrim are interrogating Hitch, and when Walker and Pilgrim talk to each other about the Feds that they suddenly find themselves working with. There is no one in comics who writes dialogue like Bendis when he’s allowed to work however he wants, as he does with his creator-owned books. If you’re one of those anti-naturalistic guys who complains about stuttering and lots of short back-and-forth in Bendis’s dialogue, well, you’re not gonna see anything new here. But how can you not be entertained with stuff like:

And if you lie to us one more time –

We’re going to personally drive you to ass-rape jail ourselves. That’s it’s name by the way: Ass-Rape Jail. When your mommy sends you letters she’s going to have to address it: Ass-Rape –

He gets it.

Okay.

That’s just good, fun stuff, and the book just crackles with it. There are times where I can stand by any Powers issue the way I can stand by almost any Hunter Thompson piece: sure, you might not give all that much of a shit about the actual story, but the writing is worth diving in and checking out, and Powers: Bureau #2 triggers that feeling for me.

The story moves along at a pretty good clip, moving from the interrogation through the planting of bugs and surveillance and the attempted arrest, and the most effective scene is that bug-planting sequence. Sure, it’s nothing new: we have a couple of people surreptitiously planting bugs while the target is coming home early while they’re finishing up, which is something we’ve seen in almost every mafia or heist movie ever made, but which is paced pretty well and works to add some tension to the story. What is less effective is the leap in logic that takes the Feds from watching the woman to deciding to raid the place. In literally one page, we go from planting the bugs to discussing what they’ve found – which is nothing except for pregnancy and a pile of money – to a fully-armed attack force on a suburban home, all based on a hunch from Pilgrim, who Bendis establishes earlier in the issue might be effective, but is not particularly well-liked in the Bureau. So we go from well-paced suspense to full-on action on flimsy justification on a dime, and while it doesn’t derail the story, it requires more heft of disbelief suspension that I would normally like.

Michael Avon Oeming’s art… well hell, what more can you say about his stuff on Powers? He works in a medium-to-thick lined, blocky and cartoony style that is incredibly reminiscent of Bruce Timm’s stuff on Batman: The Animated Series. The overall effect is to call back the epic grandeur of that series, while applying it to a grittier, more street-level and realistic kind of story. It creates almost a cognitive dissonance (and it always has), that elevates the story to that kind of legendary feel, even while the characters are talking about taking a load of jizz to the arm and the ramifications therein. Further, the juxtaposition of that cartoony style and the extreme and somewhat disturbing violence entailed in an armed and  superpowered attack on a pregnant woman make the whole sequence more horrifying than a more realistic art style would – your brain thinks “cartoon”, and seeing a brutal murder in that context is more jolting than you’d think. It’s good stuff.

This is the hell of reviewing Bendis’s creator-owned stuff: it’s hard to recommend it to the completely uninitiated, because you never know when the next one is coming out. Sure, Bendis has committed that the next issue is “guaranteed to ship,” but when it comes to Powers, Brilliant and Scarlet, frankly I’d put that statement somewhere in between “The check’s in the mail,” and “I won’t come in your mouth.” And, for good or ill, that inconsistency has to be considered when you’re trying to decide whether or not to recommend a book. But the shipping schedule doesn’t change the generally high quality of the book, which, despite having a weird leap in story logic or two, has killer dialogue and some interesting concepts going on. It’s just fun to read, and the dialogue and concepts are more than enough to overcome the quick rush to action at the end.

In the final analysis, I’m gonna recommend Powers: Bureau #2, even though there’s a chance it’s the last one you’ll see for a while. Sure, it’s a risk, but skipping it would be like skipping a chance to get laid because you’re afraid of herpes: sometimes it’s worth it. [Ed. – Rob: stop this herpes shit. You’re creeping out the straights. And I am one of the straights. Go sleep in the car. –Amanda]