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Nicolas Ayala is a Senior Writer for the Comics team at ScreenRant, with over five years of experience writing about Superhero media, action movies, and TV shows.
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The X-Men have finally met their match. Marvel's mutants have tapped into some of the most universal themes in superhero fiction. Their innate powers are a metaphor for otherness, and their team is driven by a shared fight against oppression.
The X-Men have inspired countless other comics to explore the superhero family dynamic from different angles. The X-Men's predecessors Doom Patrol lean into dysfunction, and the Umbrella Academy depicts super-teams as deeply broken siblings. Marvel's own Runaways and DC's Teen Titans (and Young Justice) examine generational tension within heroic families. The X-Men formula is timeless, though not unrivaled.
Power Fantasy Is Image Comics' Answer To The X-Men
Written by Kieron Gillen; Art by Caspar Wijngaard
Written by Kieron Gillen, Image Comics' Power Fantasy is a high-concept superhero series that, like Marvel's X-Men, interrogates what happens when godlike beings exist among regular humans in the modern world. But rather than focusing on costumed villain-fighting, Power Fantasy focuses on how the mere presence of a small group of near-omnipotent individuals reshapes geopolitics and culture. It treats superpowers as an inherently destabilizing dilemma and questions how society adapts when a handful of people can rewrite reality and topple entire nations.
Power Fantasy's comparison to the X-Men is inevitable. Both comic series explore the fear and the social consequences that comes from extraordinary abilities. However, Power Fantasy strips away the metaphorical safety net the X-Men often rely on. There's no school, no decades-famous superhero team, and no interactions with other superheroes. Where X-Men often soften the consequences of the mutants' long-running heroics, Power Fantasy commits to a scarier and more honest world of superheroes.
Power Fantasy's commitment to realism gives it enormous potential. In the near term, Power Fantasy remains a complete, uncompromising statement about power in the twenty-first century. In the long term, it offers a blueprint Marvel could learn from, with fewer safety rails and higher thematic ambition.
Power Fantasy Is Free From The X-Men's Biggest Problem
Power Fantasy's Characters Kick Off Their Story From A Blank Slate
One of Power Fantasy’s greatest strengths is that it begins from a true blank slate, completely unburdened by decades of narrative baggage. Its characters are not haunted by endless resurrections, reboots, parallel timelines, or cyclical apocalypses. Their story unfolds in a world encountering godlike power for the first time, which allows tension to build naturally. Every decision feels consequential because neither the characters nor the world have been numbed by repeated extinction-level events or narrative resets.
The X-Men are trapped in a loop of escalating misery. Every attempt to move beyond persecution or near-annihilation is inevitably undone by an even larger catastrophe, from Genosha to Krakoa to 2025’s Age of Revelation. While necessary for a franchise as big and action-packed as the Marvel Universe, this constant escalation undermines any sense of evolution. Power Fantasy is on track to avoid this trap entirely.
TV Show(s) X-Men: Pryde of the X-Men, X-Men (1992), X-Men: Evolution (2000), Wolverine and the X-Men (2008), Marvel Anime: Wolverine, Marvel Anime: X-Men, Legion (2017), The Gifted (2017), X-Men '97 (2024)
Video Game(s) X-Men: Children of the Atom (1994), Marvel Super Heroes (1995), X-Men vs. Street Fighter (1996), Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter (1997), Marvel vs. Capcom (1998), X-Men: Mutant Academy (2000), Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes (2000), X-Men: Mutant Academy 2 (2001), X-Men: Next Dimension (2002), Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds (2011), Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 (2011), X-Men Legends (2005), X-Men Legends 2: Rise of Apocalypse (2005), X2: Wolverine's Revenge (2003), X-Men (1993), X-Men 2: Clone Wars (1995), X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse (1994)
First Film X-Men (2000)
Character(s) Professor X, Cyclops, Iceman, Beast, Angel, Phoenix, Wolverine, Gambit, Rogue, Storm, Jubilee, Morph, Nightcrawler, Havok, Banshee, Colossus, Magneto, Psylocke, Juggernaut, Cable, X-23
Comic Release Date 213035,212968
English (US) ·