At New York Comic-Con, Brian Michael Bendis unveiled the first footage for the TV adaptation of his comics series Powers, which is part superhero story, part police procedural. While the footage isn’t yet online, the first trailer is—and it looks like a pretty solidly faithful adaptation of the comic’s tone. Also, it’s premiering on PlayStation, which means it’ll be less constrained than other upcoming superhero TV series.
Warning: There are some f-bombs in the trailer.
If you’re not familiar with the comic, Powers follows Christian Walker (District 9’s Sharlto Copley), a former superhero (colloquially called “powers”) who loses his abilities and becomes a cop. He’s paired up with detective Deena Pilgrim (Susan Heyward) to solve crimes despite (or maybe because of) their bristly rapport. Even just in the trailer, you can see how she mixes exasperation with reluctant acceptance that he’s got invaluable information about his fellow powers.
With PlayStation launching the series, Bendis and co. were allowed to play around with saltier language and racier bits. He described the series as “feisty and rated R, sometimes a hard R.” (In the clip that io9 saw, Walker talks about how a girl he hooked up with got a “power high” by ingesting some of his powers in an unusual re: adult way.)
The panelists did caution that they won’t necessarily be following the comic books’ arcs; Bendis said that they were “cherry-picking the stuff from the comics that would make the best TV show.” For instance, while the first arc of the comics has Walker and Pilgrim investigating the grisly murder of a superhero called Retro Girl, her case doesn’t seem to show up in the trailer.
So, what kinds of powers will Walker have to investigate? Will he ever earn Pilgrim’s respect? And what’s that symbol on the back of his neck, and why does he keep touching it? Watch for yourself:
As of yet, there’s no premiere date for Powers.
