Not all of the moments in my personal Comics Canon rely on displays of emotional gravitas or superhuman strength designed to pop your eyes out. Some moments simply stun you and leave you free to feel however you will, like this instance from Powers, #9.

However people feel about decompressed storytelling in comics, it offers readers a chance at a more personal sort of experience. It can, for example, let you experience those seconds that can make or break a character's ordinary, average day. If you've ever borne witness to someone else having a proverbially bad day, you know how it can stop you in your tracks. I'm not talking about rubbernecking at the scene of a fender bender. I'm talking about watching the fender bender happen. I'm talking about those instances when time slows down in the second between "Oh, shit!" and "Damn, that's a shame!" with that micro-second tacked-on where you realize that it's all good, since it's not your day that just got ruined.

And, however people feel about Brian Michael Bendis, he's a master at writing those moments. In the book Powers, Detectives Christian Walker and Deena Pilgrim investigate homicides involving said Powers (i.e. superpowers). In this issue, they're having a hard time with their current investigation and they're forced to turn to teleporting mobster Johnny Royale for help.

His reaction isn't a big surprise. It's almost a normal occurrence, like one car closely following another in traffic. What gangster just up and helps cops? But when one driver gets pissed off at the other one and tries to do something about it, that's when the hairs on your neck start to stand on end. You get that sick feeling that something bad's about to unfold.

And then it does.



As in real life, you're free to react to this moment a hundred different ways. You're allowed to be sympathetic or apathetic, to revel in the schadenfreude, or be focused on your own personal inconvenience. But, you won't feel any of that until afterward. In the meantime, you're caught up in watching the whole thing play out, because you happened to be at the right place at the right time. This scene from Powers is nothing less than art intensely imitating life.