America’s Got Powers

I despise reality TV shows. To me they are the lowest form of entertainment. They are great profit-makers for the TV networks as they don’t cost near as much as regular TV series. I’ve never understood why so many people get some perverse pleasure out of watching other people making complete fools of themselves. Go figure.

As much as I hate reality shows I love Image Comics’ new series by Jonathan Ross and Bryan Hitch: America’s Got Powers. Taking the whole concept of reality TV to an absurd level, the book centers on pitting superpower humans against one another along with challenges.


The story’s premise is that seventeen years ago a strange crystal anomaly lit up the San Francisco sky. As a result every woman in the Bay area who was pregnant (regardless of their term) painlessly gave birth. All the babies survived and gained super powers as they matured.


Fearing that the new super powered humans would get out of hand as they grew older, the government sets up a special arena show (much like the gladiators in the Roman Coliseum) that pits super being against super being in no holds-barred competitions.


By funneling the super youth’s pent up powers against one another the government successfully accomplishes two things. First is allows the government to monitor their strengths and weakness and control their use of their powers and it gives the general public a new form of entertainment.


But as most well laid plans it is about to fail—catastrophically! The military steps in order to indoctrinate the super youth for government use and things began to fall apart. And then along comes Tommy Watts, a supposed zero powered youth who works at a merchandise store at the arena.


Asked to work as game mascot one shift Tommy witnesses a super competition gone sour. After a series of mishaps the general public is left vulnerable to one of the game’s mechanized opponents. Tommy rushes in to save a child and then all hell breaks loose. It appears Tommy is not so zero powered after all. In fact, he may just be the most super-powered of them all and the crowd loves him. Thus is born Zero.


Great concept, great story and great art-now that’s the kind of reality show I like!