[SPLASHES OF DARKNESS] POWERS FEARFUL AND DIVINE

Dethan's take on Houdini is a peach, captured beautifully by Stewart's inks. Harry is, first and foremost, a showman - devastatingly effective, cheeky, and fun

Comic-books are a medium, not a genre; they can tell any story and suit any palate. You want horror? I've got bottles of the stuff. Welcome to 'Splashes of Darkness.'

 SPLASHES OF DARKNESS: POWERS FEARFUL AND DIVINE
​(COMIC REVIEW BY DION WINTON-POLAK)

Okay, that's the last of 'em gone. Time for a lock-in. I've got something new out back for you to try... Here we are, take a sniff of this. We're calling it 'Powers Fearful and Divine.' Yeah, I know; gives it a whole gothic horror vibe. Now look, strictly speaking this isn't for public consumption - at least not yet - but you know what it's like. When you get hold of some shizz with a fair bit of fizz, it's...kind of hard to keep the cork in. Flavour-wise, think Hellboy for tone, Indiana Jones for setting, and Avengers of...all varieties, somehow. It's a heady mix of alternate history, playful pulp and perfidious plots.

Harry Houdini is more than an escapologist; he's a champion of the scientific method, dedicated to unmasking charlatans. Unbeknownst to history, he is also an agent of the Secret Service. It's 1925, and Harry's brought in for questioning, suspected of being a traitor. It seems he sent Sir Arthur Conan Doyle out to Ingolstadt, where he has found something so dangerous, so earth-shattering, it imperils the age of reason: a so-called Messiah weapon. In order to prove his innocence - and to save the world from a new global conflict - Houdini must team up with technological genius Nikola Tesla, and H.P. Lovecraft, a writer who claims to have certain esoteric knowledge appertaining to the case.
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Powers Fearful and Divine is a Kickstarter project from Blue Fox Comics, created by *Cy Dethan, one of my favourite comic writers. I've just had the pleasure of reading an advanced copy of the first issue, so I thought I'd share some thoughts.

Let's get the elephant out of the room first: despite one or two superficial similarities, this is not some twisted variant of **The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. The games Dethan plays here are philosophical rather than pop-cultural. In his own words, Powers Divine and Fearful is 'effectively a "retrospeculation" - playing "what if...?" with the tides of history. The interconnected lives of these people, and the ways their relationships and beliefs intersected and conflicted, are far more fantastical than the (comparitively modest) injection of Victor Frankenstein into the mix. In terms of its theme, we're dealing with a very real "culture war" between the forces of rationalism and spiritualism, wrestling over the soul of the 20th century.'
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The artwork by RHStewart reminds me of some of the European comics I used to read and review, with their muted tones, realist figurework, and love of the urban longshots. Time, place and tone are nicely captured without going overboard; where some Euro comics tend to excessive detail, Stewart gives us the gist, allowing colour blocks, shadow and the readers' imagination fill out the rest. The layouts are quite busy, but they flow pretty well, drawing the eye for full impact. Less successful are the speech bubbles which are a little domineering and occasionally confusing in their order. Of course, this is a preview and such elements will be tweaked as the Kickstarter progresses. Don't let it put you off because the story is a cracker.

Dethan's take on Houdini is a peach, captured beautifully by Stewart's inks. Harry is, first and foremost, a showman - devastatingly effective, cheeky, and fun. He's a man both outrageous to behold and full of his own rightious fury - a rationalist driven to understand how things work, who is dedicated to his cause and diligent in his investigations. I suspect these will help to develop him into something of a detective as the tale proceeds, which could be very interesting given his opponent  - the creator of Sherlock Holmes. I guess we'll have to see.

Tesla is a delight. I'm not sure yet whether he'll be fulfilling the Q role to Houdini's Bond, or if he's going along for the ride. Either way, I'm always happy to see him rescued from Edison's over-publicised shadow. His super-science should provide us with a lot of fun. Lovecraft is a tougher one to call, being the least active character on display. Given his obsessions, I found it odd in some ways that he's placed on the side of the rationalists, but Dethan is no shmo. In his words, Lovecraft's '...personal horror at the concept of a universe indifferent to human existence stemmed inescapably from his own atheism.' Interesting stuff. I'm suspect he'll have a part to play - for better or for worse - in bridging the two sides of this conflict. He may even stop Tesla disintegrating sheep. Who knows...?

That's about it for now. The Kickstarter [has just begun], so help Cy and his team get their project off the ground by backing it today. (I've already done so.) Now, hurry up, folks. I can't wait to see how all this plays out.

​​Written by Cy Dethan
Illustrated by RHStewart
Lettered by Nic Wilkinson 
Published by Blue Fox Comics
Kickstarting Now! 
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/simonbirks/powers-fearful-and-divine-1
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Reviewer: Dion Winton-Polak










* Forgive my returning to him so soon. I'd already submitted the White Knuckle review when I found out about this project - and timing is everything when it comes to crowd-funding.
 ** The awesome, intricate, meta-cultural comic by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill, rather than the crappy film adaptation. 

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