Last year's interactive fiction comp featured a game by Robb Sherwin called A Crimson Spring. I didn't give it a very high score, because I found the coding to be pretty shoddy and the writing to be not up to the standard of Sherwin's previous work. But the concept was interesting: a noir-ish world where superhumans are just another subculture along with the ravers and h4x0rz and whoever else. And now a superheroine is dead, and it's off to the bars and comics shops and other places where the costumes hang out to find out how and why.
Reading the first Powers collection, Who Killed Retro Girl?, I wasn't just reminded of A Crimson Spring; if I didn't know that the timelines made it impossible, I would've sworn that one was ripping off the other. This is, guess what, a noir superhero piece in which a superheroine is dead and we tag along as the story explores the seamy corners of the superhuman subculture; the difference is that this time we're following the detectives, not the victim's ex-partners. Or are we?
The art style is highly stylized, reminiscent of the "Adventures" style popularized by Bruce Timm but not quite as pretty and bolder in its use of blacks (as befits a noir piece.) I think I would've preferred a slightly more realistic style, and some of the Photoshop effects are less than professional-looking, but the art certainly wasn't a dealbreaker. And the story, while far from moving or profound, is certainly entertaining enough; the creators seem to have aspired to the quality level of good TV, and they hit their mark.
One thing, though. The writer, Brian Michael Bendis, has gained many plaudits for his dialogue, and it's easy to see why: it's got a very in-your-face style, sort of like Mamet minus the naturalism. Bendis's dialogue is so mannered it makes "Sports Night" look like improv. It seems he can't go a page without at least a couple panels of rapid-fire repetition. It was bad enough in Ultimate Spider-Man, where he has Uncle Ben say, "I needed some pants. So I bought some pants." and Aunt May say, "This is a banana bread. Potassium is in bananas. Bananas are in bread. You will eat the banana bread." Now, with Powers, we meet a Detective Walker who says things like, "It's my thing. It's private. It's my private thing." and gets into exchanges like, "But I have cases." "This is true." "I have cases." "We all have cases." (beat) "But I have cases." It gets old really fast.
Still, Who Killed Retro Girl? is certainly worth checking out. And if you liked — or, y'know, if you wrote — A Crimson Spring, it's an absolute must.
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