This coming year, fans of the Bendis/Oeming comic "Powers" are in for quite a treat. Not only is there a Powers animated series in the works, but action figures will be popping you in your local toy stores before long.

This coming year, fans of the Bendis/Oeming comic "Powers" are in for quite a treat. Not only is there a Powers animated series in the works, but action figures will be popping you in your local toy stores before long.

At Custom Con 7 I had the fortune to meet the head of Airmax Studios and a... strange Hasbro rep... read on.

In an unprecedented move, Hasbro has tabbed Airmax Animated Studio to sculpt these figures. When I asked an unnamed Hasbro rep what spawned this bold move, I was met with a bizarre and brutally honest answer: "Well, frankly we suck at this whole "animated style" thing {editor’s note – he actually made the quote motion with his fingers}. I mean, we had our hay day on this animated style in the early days, but come on! You’ve seen the swill we’ve been throwing into these new four packs haven’t you? It’s laughable... anyway, we wanted to really make sure we hit this one out of the park. That of course required finding new sculptors... obviously the office coffee boy, who by the way sculpted the Talia figure, wasn’t going to cut it. That’s where Airmax Studios came in."

Together these two groups hope to be producing Powers figures for many, many years. "We’d like to have a really nice sustained run like we had on the Batman stuff... only with better sculpting... you saw that Lois Lane figure right? Hhehee, I had my milk man sculpt that on a lark. Hheheheee... uh... hmmm... maybe you should leave that part out."

The first of the Powers figures should be showing up by late spring / early summer of 2003. Series one includes Olympia, Retro Girl, Trip Hammer, Zora, The Pulp and Wazz (pictured here only in prototype stage). You may notice from reading that line up that certain pivotal characters are missing from the line up. The main characters from the title, Detectives Walker and Pilgrim, are no where to be seen!

When I brought this to Captain finger quote’s attention, "Well, you know, kids just won’t buy figures of "normal people" {editor’s note – again with the finger gesturing}. Kids want flashy bright colored neon and cr@p like that... uh... leave out that cr@p part if you would."

When I explained that the series revolved around these two "normal people" he seemed rather dumb founded. "Really? Wow... well... uh, I don’t actually look at that stuff you know? We have "think tanks" {editor’s note – you guessed it, finger motion} that figure all that stuff out. That’s... that’s interesting. The main characters..." he trailed off and walked away from me and seemed rather preoccupied. I was relived as I found him rather annoying, and I believe he may very well have been drunk.

After a brief search we found the Head of Airmax Studios him self, Pierre Kalenzaga. I asked him what he thought of his studio’s work so far on the line, "Well, I’m happy to be working on such a great property. I’ve been a huge fan of the comic since it started."

I started asking him what he thought about the fact that Walker and Pilgrim are inexplicably missing from the line up, but before I could finish the inebriated Hasbro rep came stumbling through and vomited all over us and the Powers display.

He managed these last words "Oh man... there’s our variant color scheme..." before passing out.

The Pulp	Trip Hammer

Olympia	Wazz

Retro Girl	Zora