Most of the time when we as comic book nerds think about “superpowers,” we’re thinking about its definition in terms of a character’s powerset—flight, superspeed, optic blasts, pyrokinesis, and so on. We don’t usually think about the term in its actual, geopolitical sense: a sovereign state or supranational entity that has the capability to single-handedly impact change and project that power on a global scale. The Power Fantasy wants to mash those two definitions together, to immediately compelling effect.
Coming this August from Image Comics, The Power Fantasy—the next team-up from superstar writer Kieron Gillen (Immortal X-Men, The Wicked + The Divine, DIE, and many, many more) and likewise superstar artist Caspar Wijngaard (Home Sick Pilots, All Against All, Detective Comics, and many, many more) imagines a world where just six people have superpowers: abilities so overwhelmingly powerful that the safety of the world depends on them never coming to blows with each other. But while Image has show a few teases and covers for the upcoming series, much is still unknown about the book—and some of what we do know is changing, like this brand new main cover for the debut issue by Wijngaard, making its new debut here on io9.
The new main cover contrasts with the more intimate, perhaps more human cover by Wijngaard that was previously solicited by Image, trading a vast sense of scale of what it really means in The Power Fantasy‘s world when these superpowered beings face off with each other. “We loved our first cover, but realized that while it showed off our characters, it didn’t actually showcase the tone or sheer scale of the book. The thrill is the movement between the thrill of realistic people with impossible abilities acting at a petrifying scale. Caspar’s new cover sells that perfectly,” Kieron Gillen told io9 in a statement over email. Check out a few more covers for the series below: incentive covers for The Power Fantasy #1 by Stephanie Hans, Tula Lotay, and Rian Hughes, with the latter also providing a variant cover for issue 2!
“Getting guest artists to join us is just a fun part of the doing a book like this—seeing our cast through the prism of our talented friends,” Gillen continued. “Tula’s just an expert at this, and I adore her stuff. Also, when your designer is Rian Hughes, doing a set of variants which showcase the his iconic skills and use a fancy pantone ink to really make it pop… well, if you have the choice, why wouldn’t you?”
The Power Fantasy #1 is set to hit shelves August 7.
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