The story of The Magus and his surprising role in the fallout of Etienne’s attack on the US Government is revealed. Your Major Spoilers review of The Power Fantasy #5 awaits!

THE POWER FANTASY #5

Writer: Kieron Gillen
Artist: Caspar Wijngaard
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Katie West
Publisher: Image Comics
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: December 18th, 2024

Previously in The Power Fantasy: A group of super powerful beings, with the ability to destroy the world are called The Atomics. An attack on one of them, resulted in an Atomic named Etienne killing a portion of the US Government, setting a series of dominoes into motion.

PYRAMID SCHEMES

The Power Fantasy #6 opens with The Magus on a jet, learning that Etienne had avoided capture in Tokyo. Things then flashback to 1978, when The Magus is initiating a group of people into the higher echelons of his cult known as The Pyramid. A breakdown of the organizational structure is given, and he explains that if he ever begins acting like a typical cult leader, he should be taken out. In 1982, The Major meets with a group of Atomics, explaining that the US Government wants free reign to start a war in The Middle East. The Magus senses something is wrong and kills The Major. In 1989 Magus is forced to eliminate his organization. Back in 1999, The Magus has a meeting with the president and presents him with an interesting proposition.

ONE OF THE BETTER CHARACTER EXPLORATIONS

This series has established its storytelling style by this point. A few scenes from the present are shown, but a majority of each issue is the backstory of a specific character and how they interact around a few set events. The Power Fantasy #5 is one of the better explorations into one of these characters, The Magus. While none of The Atomics has been presented as outright evil, The Magus is revealed in this to have one of the stronger senses of morality and self-awareness. He also has one of the more emotional arcs. The path from saying that if things go wrong his organization should kill him, to him having to kill all of them is a satisfying circle to read. It also makes his actions towards the end of this issue actually make some sense and not come across as some twist to artificially generate a cliffhanger. The problems with this issue are more or less the same problems that have been plaguing this series. It’s clever, but a bit too clever. It’s non-linear approach to storytelling is compelling but leaves a lot of things ill-defined and makes it hard to play the game of piecing together the narrative. Also, while The Magus is shown to have a bit more charisma than most of the other characters, he also has a sardonic streak that is shared by most of The Atomics, which doesn’t make for a lot of interesting character interactions in this issue.

END OF AN ARC

In the essay at the end of The Power Fantasy #5, Kieron Gillen states that this issue marks the end of the first arc of The Power Fantasy. It’s unclear what sort of direction the series is going to take, but it should be said that this issue really brings the series to an interesting position. While the readers have been introduced to a fascinating world, filled with troubled and amazing people, they’ve also been given a whole lot of fragments to something bigger without a lot of glue to put them together. The gauge I always use when series start to do this, is how close are we getting to the comics version of the TV show Lost. Where there’s more mystery than story and it feels like complications are being thrown on top of other complications as a poor substitute for an engaging story. Now, The Power Fantasy hasn’t reached that level yet, but in this issue, you can see a lot of conscious decisions to unnaturally avoid details to create that sort of intrigue, which pushes the series as a whole closer to that level.

BOTTOM LINE: A GOOD ISSUE ON ITS OWN, NOT GREAT FOR THE SERIES

The Power Fantasy #5 would be an amazing comic if it was read in a vacuum. The character of The Magus is interesting and charismatic, the ideas of magic and his place with it is unique, and how he experiences the events of the issue are engaging. The problem is that we’ve already seen this multiple times in other issues of this series and we’re no closer to having a good explanation of what exactly has happened throughout the years. This issue deserves praise for its own merits, but don’t expect it to convert you into a believer in this series if it hasn’t been doing it for you already. 4 out of 5 stars.

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