What are you left with when you take away a superhero's origin story? A costume, some powers, and…that's about it. Origins are huge part of the standard comic book character template—especially in movies—but they can also present problems. As I mentioned in my last piece about the Phantom Stranger, some superheroes bend under the weight…
Ask me my favorite superhero—that's easy. The one character whose comics I want to be buried with; the guy I would dress as at Comicon, were I to be so lame; the hero whose powers I would most want to have: the Phantom Stranger. No question. Part of the appeal is that the Phantom Stranger…
So, where are we left at the end of Powers? Where has the journey led, and what have we discovered from this hard-to-categorize show? What, exactly, did we watch? A little evaluation of the series, before I get to the episode summary: the reason why I said, at the outset, that Powers was a sci-fi…
Episode 9's official title is “Level 13,” but for a show that favors music-related titles, a fitting one here would be “Who's Zooming Who?” Christian Walker (Sharlto Copley) has agreed to join Johnny Royalle (Noah Taylor) on his excursion back to the prison known as The Shaft to kill Wolfe (Eddie Izzard), before Wolfe becomes…
A recent query from Criminal Element asked which overlooked superheroes would be deserving of their own movie or TV show. One logical answer to that is DC's Deadman, except for one thing: Deadman has already had his TV shows and movies, many times over. Allow me to explain: Created in 1967, Deadman was a circus…
We were wrong about Johnny. So, remember that drug Sway that Johnny Royalle (Noah Taylor) was making from DNA he stole from Wolfe (Eddie Izzard)? The drug that he was peddling to “Powers Kids” all over the place? The drug that killed Olympia (Adam Boyer)? The drug that Walker took, which allowed him to temporarily…
The direction of this series hasn't always been clear—the way it jumps in and out of various genres can make it tricky to anticipate—but at this point, there's a definite shape to the ten episodes: Setup (Episodes 1 & 2), engagement (3), initial conflict centerpiece (4 & 5), and, in a moment of downtime, reassessment…
The first stirrings might have begun with the Deadman, an acrobatically-inclined ghost who inhabited the bodies of mortals for a few moments at a time; or it might have really become a trend when the Swamp Thing arose from eons-old muck to stalk horrors in a world blotted with shadows; and maybe I never noticed…
If Episodes 4 and 5 headed into Aliens territory, Episode 6 opens like a tribute to Silence of the Lambs; Wolfe (Eddie Izzard) is back in his cell, which now has a drainer to keep his powers repressed so he doesn't need a daily icepick to the brain anymore. The drainer's inventor, Triphammer (Andrew Sensenig),…
Although Episode 4 ended with viewers smack in the middle of Wolfe’s (Eddie Izzard) rampage through his prison, Episode 5 opens in the 90s, at a nightclub where young Christian Walker (Sterling Beaumon) and Johnny Royalle (Sasha Feldman) are buddies scoping out the ladies—one of whom is a sultry Retro Girl (still Michelle Forbes). This…
