The Power Fantasy is another take on "What if Superheroes were real?" It's a unique take, partly because the super-powers it imagines are really interesting. For instance, their superman equivalent is a black woman who's an angel sent from heaven to protect the Earth. Her counter-part, Etienne, is a black man who's a strict utilitarian who's an omni-telepath. (How many comic books have a superhero call himself a utilitarian?)
The definition of Superpower, as the cover of the books like to proclaim, is the power equivalent to a nuclear arsenal --- power sufficient to destroy the world. From here, we get the interaction between the super-powered beings and the nuclear superpower (the United States government), and the conflicts between the powered beings themselves, not all of whom are as good as the angel, or as forward thinking as Etienne.
Over time, additional super powers are introduced, some of whom make no sense to me as being part of the story. For instance, there's a girl whom everyone is scared of, because if she gets upset then the earth will end. That sounds like an easy thing for the utilitarian to get rid of, but we never get an explanation of what the consequences are.
We see a fully realized history, where multiple crisis happen some of which leads to entire continents being destroyed, yet the American government still insist on trying to get rid of part of the super-powered folks?
What I did find correct was that in the end, the angel agrees with Etienne, realizing that the only ethical approach is to let him take over the world. It turns out that a world that successfully kills Etienne quickly degenerates into a disaster.
The art is very good, though the letter could stand to do a better job not lettering words in red when the background is red--or maybe that's just an artifact of me reading this on a Kindle Scribe Colorsoft.
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