Powers: Book 11- Secret Identity by Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Avon Oeming

Christian Walker, the former superhero known as the Diamond, has gained new powers by joining an intergalactic group called Millenium, and beome their secret agent on Earth. He has also begun a relationship with a woman, but finds out he shouldn't connect with the Millenium while he is engaged in, um, "physical activity" with her. He confesses his past to her when she asks, but doesn't mention his current powers.

Meanwhile, a super group called "The Heroes" takes on a robot on Capital Hill, and takes the man behind it, known as "The Weasel" into custody. On the way home, Queen Noir and her friend Crystal talk, and Crystal tells her that she had a dream where she and Queen made love. This turns Queen Noir on and she goes home and masturbates, imagining such a scene in her head. But when she goes in to talk to her husband, she finds him dead in a pool of blood.

At the station, the cops are upset because the town's thugs are giving each other powers like a disease, and using them to kill each other, Unbeknownst to them, Deena Pilgrim, Walker's partner, has contracted the same powers/disease, and it is slowly eating her up inside. In a past book, she even killed her boyfriend in self-defense with them, but she covered up the crime and the evidence. His disappearance has her under investigation by IAD, and so she isn't supposed to be primary on any crime scenes. She and Walker get the call on Queen Noir's husband, and after viewing the scene and seeing Queen Noir disappear when one of the other cops nearly shoots her, they decide to interview the rest of the team to see if they know where she might have gone, or how her powers work.

They quickly find out that her husband was a former supervillain who was also her nemesis. However, they fell in love with each other, and he told her he would do whatever he could to stay with her. And he did. But talking with Crystal reveals that their relationship was in trouble when it lost the twisted vibe of them also being rivals. Deena is her usual grumpy self, asking if Crystal was Queen Noir's lesbian lover, which nearly gets them kicked out.

Later, they question another of her teammates, Dax, but he has an alibi, being alone with his kids all night. But when his teammate, the sorceror Teague, hears of the death, he decides Dax was responsible, and kills him, right in front of Walker and Deena. They arrest him after he surrenders, when they tell him that Dax didn't do it, and had an alibi, his kids.

At the station, there is plenty of publicity, and another costumed super appears, demanding that they bring him Teague. If they won't, he'll keep killing cops until they bring him Teague. He is killed with one blow to the chest by Crystal, who has come to tell them that she knows Teague and he would never have killed anyone. When Deena and Walker tell her that he killed Dax right in front of them both, she cries and searches the station house for him. She finds the room he is in, but he is also dead, his head messily torn off his neck and laid in his lap.

They look st who might have been pissed off enough at the group to try and take them down, and Deena suggests the President, who wanted to make anyone with powers register themselves. But The Heroes told him to go fuck himself, and were powerful enough to make it stick, which made other heroes do the same. Then Walker gets a call that asks him to come outside, and a member of the secret service shows him the interrogation tape of the Weasel on her iPod. He implies that someone at the highest level had him set up a distraction with the attack on the capitol so that Queen's husband could be murdered.

Meanwhile, the price goes up for a lot of merchandise involving The Heroes, and Queen Noir returns to her home, where she is seen by two cops. Crystal is killed right in front of the eyes of Walker and Deena, by something apparently invisible and intangible... except that it can kill Crystal easily. Afterwards, Queen Noir is gone again, but the cops tell Walker and Deena that she says she didn't do it, and they believe her. One of the cops also confesses he wants to spend the better part of an afternoon licking Deena's belly button, which just stops her dead. Then, realizing their shift was over six hours ago, they go home.

In Walker's apartment, he is approached by a man in the shadows, who tells him that the case he was working on is now closed, and Walker has a flashback to when he was fighting crime in the 30's when he was swallowed into the darkness of a villain's cape, but somehow made his escape. The villain was killed by the goons guarding Meyer Lansky, and they then surrendered to Christian, asking him to leave them alone.

The man in black reveals himself to be the Devil, and that Queen Noir's powers come from one of his sons. She sold her soul to him for him to possess her and give her powers over the dark, then used it to become a superhero. But his sons get bored easily, and now he is using her body to commit crimes, get her to go insane so he can take her over completely and use her body as a puppet. He asks Walker to look the other way so that he can take care of his son and take him back to Hell. But Walker is stubborn and won't do that, so Satan decides to mess up his life something awful, including making the building he lives in explode.

Outside, Deena wrestles with telling Walker about the powers she's been infected with, and sees the building explode. In her haste to go help him, and the other people affected, she sees Walker getting out of the rubble in his new Superhero costume, and feels betrayed that he has powers. Then, Walker is off to find Queen Noir, and convince her to commit suicide to prevent anyone else from dying. But will the demon inside her let her do so without a fight?

I love this series, and the stories are much more dark and gritty than the standard comics from the big two companies (Marvel and DC). They have a tendency to wrap their stories up neatly, but life, as we know, is rarely that neat and clean. Actions and Deeds in powers have consequences that last well beyond the current story, and are never fun for the people involved. It's very much the antithesis of most superhero comics while remaining about people with powers and the police force that deals with superpowered crimes.

This is a wonderful series that a lot of comic lovers would appreciate, and I know I do. If you enjoyed Watchmen, you'll find a lot to like in Powers.