Mr. Vertigo

The Power Fantasy Volume 1: The Superpowers
Kieron Gillen, writer; Caspar Wijngaard, artist; Clayton Cowles, letterer; Rian Hughes, designer
Image Comics, 2025

When Kieron Gillen created The Wicked + The Divine, he was ostensibly telling a story about a group of people who were gods, with supernatural powers. But it could be argued that they might just as accurately be described as superheroes. With this series, he tells a similar tale about a group of super-powered people with comparable group dynamics. The present-day action begins in 1999. There are six super-powered individuals (collectively known as the Nuclear Family, due to their powers being created somehow by the use of nuclear weapons), each powerful enough to destroy the world.  Should they come into open conflict, the results would be catastrophic.

The setup sketches out an alternate history, similar to the legendary comic book series Watchmen. But there is a significant difference: these six characters are each as powerful as Doctor Manhattan, while the rest of the former Minutemen/Crimebusters were significantly less so (several of them had no superpowers at all). The timeline begins in 1945, when the first atomic bomb was detonated, and Valentina was born in Brazil. In 1953, Etienne Lux awakened from a coma after his family dies in a crash.

In 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis ended with the destruction of nuclear sites in Cuba and Turkey, and in 1966 Lux went public. An attempt to assassinate Valentina killed thousands in the New Mexico Festival Massacre. Jacky Magus established the Pyramid (devoted to the study of magic) in 1971. In 1978, The Signal arrived on Earth and attempted to overwrite the minds of a billion people before it was dispersed. Ray “Heavy” Harris founded the atomic city-state of Haven in 1983, and in 1989, The Queen arrived from outside existence, triggering The Second Summer of Love. But her attempt to destroy reality caused all of the western Eurasian landmass up to Moscow to be destroyed, resulting in the collapse of the Soviet Union.

So the planet has been literally reconfigured. The Superpowers have saved the day multiple times in the face of unprecedented threats, but they are still mistrusted by the normals. They pose a special threat to governments and others in power. Not to mention the threat they pose to each other as they exert checks and balances on each other’s powers. The story is a massive feat of world-building, and this first collection feels like it is only the beginning. Wijngaard’s art portrays epic scale when necessary, while still maintaining an intimate hand-painted look.