The Power Fantasy #8 [Advance Review]
The Power Fantasy #8 continues its intoxicating descent into mythic rave-soaked geopolitics, and at the center of it all - sometimes silent, but always watching - is Etienne Lux: a character who haunts this series not through page time, but sheer psychic gravity. While the spotlight may have shifted to Jacky Magus’s backroom dealings in the previous issue, and Valentina’s ongoing attempts to solidify a desperate alliance with Eliza in this one, it’s Etienne’s invisible hand that remains the true pulse beneath every storyline. His emotional manipulation and omnipathic influence give him a godlike presence that twists the narrative quietly but forcefully. He doesn’t need to shout. The world bends toward him anyway.
Kieron Gillen’s writing remains as fiercely intelligent as ever, layering metaphor with metacommentary. “The Second Summer of Love” isn’t just a clever title - it’s a philosophical remix of MDMA-fueled idealism and post-Soviet disillusionment. Gillen’s fondness for cultural touchstones (especially British ones) turns what could have been a straightforward superhero comic into something denser, weirder, and infinitely more rewarding. This issue hums with thematic dissonance: revolution as ritual, power as performance, and legacy as a house beat echoing across decades.
Meanwhile, Valentina’s reluctant participation in Eliza’s rituals isn’t just character development, it’s a study in submission and belief, in trying to preserve some moral center when the ground beneath your ethics keeps shifting. We also see some additional repercussions from Jacky Magus’s partnership with the U.S. government - which further reaffirms one of the series’ most biting ideas: that charisma weaponized is just another form of tyranny. Yet behind their moves, you feel Etienne’s influence…his quiet psychic tendrils pulling everyone closer to a future only he can see. In my view, Etienne is a figure that has grown to such power and influence in the eyes of the reader that his absence is more threatening than his presence. Indeed, even when Etienne appears and interacts with his brethren, Wijngaard renders him with an eerie stillness that radiates power: like a god calmly flipping switches on a cosmic mixing board.
Speaking of Wijngaard’s art: it continues to level up with each issue. His work here is immersive, electric, and fluid, like the comic itself has been dipped in glowstick ink. There’s a hallucinatory clarity to it all, sharp and surreal in equal measure. Panels breathe. Layouts bend to mood. It’s all in service of that throbbing, ecstatic feeling that something spiritual is breaking through the page.
I’ve really been enjoying Gillen’s episodic essays that round out each issue, and the most recent one, “The Pizza Theory,” is a masterclass in self-aware rambling that somehow connects Spider-Man’s moral code, Watchmen’s iconography, and acid house warehouse parties. It’s deeply nerdy, deeply human, and perfectly on-brand for a book that refuses to separate the personal from the political, or the sacred from the silly.
By its eighth issue, The Power Fantasy has crystallized into something more than a postmodern superhero comic. It’s a manifesto about influence: who has it, who abuses it, and who, like Etienne Lux, wields it so subtly that by the time you notice, it’s already too late.
He may not always be in the frame, but I have a feeling that soon enough it will be made abundantly clear just how much of what’s going on is ultimately his story. To what end, we have yet to see.
