If you're anything like me, you’re a 30-something white guy from West Virginia with a love of baking sweets and an expanding waistline. Wait... maybe that's too specific.

If you're anything like me, you like reading comics written by that great superhero writer—who authored a great run on The Avengers, who shocked us over and over with Thunderbolts, who kept us rapt literally for years with JLA/Avengers, who chronicled the exploits of the Marvels; who created Shock Rockets, Arrowsmith, and my beloved Astro City, etc, etc.—his Royal Stuffed-Sinusness, Kurt Busiek.

So when in early 2001 it was announced that Busiek would be creating a new hero title for DC featuring several all-new characters tied directly into the rich history of that "universe" (a device he used to fabulous effect over at Marvel in Thunderbolts and The Avengers), naturally you could consider my interest pre-piqued.

Then there it was. The Power Company…sigh.

This series was roundly criticized for being too wordy and heavy-handed with the exposition, not to mention chock-a-block full of ideas that ranged from questionable to downright awful. So what if Busiek held an on-line poll and let readers pick the newest member of the team, only to find he had to use The Haunted Tank when it won?

Maybe that's where the review should end, but now that it's a new year, I feel like it's time for a look back: a review of the good, the bad and the ugly about this title that only the perspective of three years and approximately $58 I’ll never get back can give.

Here then is what I'm calling Kyle's Top Ten Reasons Why The Power Company Series Really Wasn't As Bad As All That:

10. Founding character Josiah Power was gay! There, I thought I'd get that out of the way right up front. Never mind that he was one of those superheroes I have a bit of a problem with, i.e., he just had undefined, unexplained "powers". A number of characters just said "His energy readings are off the scales", or "Gee, he sure is chock full 'o power!" Crackling lightning and glowing eyes and turning all big and hard are all well and good (especially the big and hard part), but when the guy's biggest victories take place off-panel, we're left wondering—and not in the "Who is the Confessor?" good kind of way.

9. It was set in San Francisco! As most who know me will tell you, I moved here nine years ago and started a serious love-affair with this beautiful, magical City. Despite the artist’s tendency to work the Golden Gate Bridge, Coit Tower and the Transamerica pyramid into shots they have no business being in, I have to say that seeing familiar sights, street and place names in this series gave me that warm-cockles feeling I think New Yorkers probably feel when they see their city in popular media. They’re just not allowed to acknowledge it. Luckily, we San Franciscans aren’t afraid to show our soft underbelly. Must be all the organic stone fruit, field greens, and wheatgrass juice.

8. Witchfire had a cool way of casting spells! Don’t you just hate reading stories where magic-users shoot bolts of light at each other? Me too. I kind of had an issue with the team’s resident sorceress Witchfire for saying things like, “Oh, I’m just going to hit with the Rune of Eternal Whoop-Ass” or whatever and then firing a bolt of light. But when Kurt really wanted her to show off, she’d invoke some demon name and end with something like “Featherlight” if she wanted to fly or “Stonestrong” if she wanted to punch hard, or “Knifesharp” if she wanted to slice a tomato veeeeeery thin for her grilled cheese sandwich. Sure, most of the time it was just blasting flames and her head floating above the scene and stuff, but those word combos were kewl. Ugh. Did I just type that?

7. Witchfire was a solid inside, like a potato or a radish! This was clearly a development Busiek didn’t get to use due to the untimely cancellation of the book. Here’s how it went down: Witchy was searching for a magical sword in a swamp somewhere (so that’s where I left it!), and was attacked by the requisite swamp monster. Far from her burning from it’s touch (guess she knew no fear or somesuch), it just clipped off her arm. What she saw inside wasn’t flesh and bone or even fembot circuitry, but some solid orange-glowing substance. Her arm practically crawled back onto her body and re-attached itself. This took me totally by surprise, and I’m sorry we didn’t get to find out more about it, if for no reason but that it would have offered more scenes with that fabulous foppish occult Auntie, Baron Winters, whom Witchfire went to for help. Can’t you just hear him saying, “Bitch, I know you didn’t just mis-pronounce homunculus!”

6. The book had the same art team throughout the run! Sure it was Tom Grummett who made most of the women’s faces look like some bizarre Barbie/Kewpie Doll amalgam, but a consistent look is something to strive for! Right? Right? Besides, when there was a fill-in, it was our little brotherhood’s own Stephen Sadowski! Props to our homegirl, SAD. He rules.

5. Characters added to the cast during the run weren’t lame ones like Firestorm or the Haunted Tank or anything! Er… sorry. Reverse that.

4. There was an Asian guy in the cast! Striker Z wasn’t the main character, but he did have his own solo story during the run, and actually wasn’t a constant background character. I mean… Shang-Chi, Lady Deathstrike, Jubilee… there just aren’t that many big Asian characters. He didn’t even use Kung-Fu or nothin’! Oh wait – yes he did.

3. And hey look! A black woman was their leader! Skyrocket was one of the coolest characters in the book, and the most developed. In her we got to see the chief internal conflict of the book: be a selfless hero or a paid gun-for-hire? I thought it had a lot of potential as a concept. For the most part it really worked, and kept the story unified. Too bad the dialogue was so wooden and blatantly expository. “Now my Cadre, guard me well. For this is the key moment, and as my energy flows upward, I am at my most vulnerable,” said series arch-villain Dr. Polaris, adding, “If anyone was going to attack me and turn the tables on me, this would be a great time to do it. Reeeeally fantastic.” Sorry. That really wasn’t about the great minority representation in the book. My bad.

2. Kurt Busiek loves to do his research and use it! With very few exceptions, you can be sure that every supporting character, team of super-cannon fodder, place or event he uses was probably not ret-conned in. From Invasion! to the Strike Force to Christine St. Clair to Ayrn the Underlord and his “Undermen” to frickin’ Carl Bork (“the King of the Gotham Docks”, who actually showed up as one of the main characters after a single appearance in some backwater issue of The Brave and the Bold), Kurt resurrected the throwaway people, places and things of the DC universe and used them to often great effect. And just so you’d be sure not to miss them, he would often throw in footnote panels on the letters pages! Let’s face it: superhero comics appeal to us geeks, and what’s geekier than annotations? I love ‘em!

1. There was friction aplenty between the characters! The very first thing you learn in Literature class is that there is no story without conflict. We can once again thank Lee & Kirby and their many legacies, not the least of which was the self-doubting superhero (Spider-Man), the freaks uniting to save the world from itself (the X-Men), and the dysfunctional family that still works as a team now and then (the Fantastic Four, the Avengers, and…the Power Company). When relations between the main characters go from bad to cat-fight, it’s even more triumphant a moment when they finally prevail as a team.

So you see, The Power Company really wasn’t as bad as all that. It only lasted 18 issues and poor Kurt had to really tie up loose ends in a hurry. Plus, unlike some other books I have re-read for these reviews, I actually enjoyed this trip back into the distant year of 2002. Naturally that won’t stop me from eBaying these suckers ASAP. I may be a geek, but I’m no fool.

Kyle Minor has tried time and again to cast spells on himself like “Razorwit,” “Walletfull,” and “Horsehung” with only occasional success.

All images and characters TM and © 2004 DC Comics, Inc. Review © 2004 Kyle Minor.

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