I finished Absolute Power underwhelmed. The Dawn of DC lead-in was largely better than the four-issue miniseries denouement, though I held out the possibility that the real punch of Absolute Power was in its seven-issue companion series, Absolute Power: Task Force VII.

It is not. Absolute Power: Task Force VII is exceptionally rough. If Absolute Power proper felt truncated overall, it was at least well written by Mark Waid and well drawn by Dan Mora. Task Force VII, in contrast, brings together creative teams largely without a lot of mainstream work with DC, and the stories often seem hastily put together if not also pointless. Task Force VII fills in gaps in Absolute Power only minimally and otherwise does more harm to Absolute Power than it does help it.

[Review contains spoilers]

Ostensibly Task Force VII is being told from the perspective of Amanda Waller’s Justice League-esque Amazo robots, though this effort is half-hearted among the creators. Generally what this means is that we have 17 pages of DC heroes fighting the robots before a hero is captured, the robot has a super power-influenced change of heart, or the issue simply ends in the middle of things; three pages, usually in the middle or end, are dedicated to a Steve Trevor-focused throughway.

I can see where Absolute Power and Task Force VII echo: Waller gets reports in Power of the robots “going good” due to the influence of the heroes in Task Force, and the “backups” with Steve reveal the machine Waller plans to use to conjure a multiversal army. But that machine gets its own reveal in Power and Steve is mentioned but not seen, such that Task Force never quite connects to Power, only approaches it. It is perhaps the perennial plight of the crossover event tie-in sub-miniseries, that it can support the party but not actually attend. Task Force has a big bit about Earth 3’s Ultrawoman joining up with Waller that Power ignores entirely.

This results in chapters like John Layman’s Absolute Power: Task Force VII #2, where Layman throws Aqua-family characters at an Amazo for a dozen pages until Aquaman has to retreat, purportedly into Absolute Power #2 except Aquaman doesn’t have overmuch to do there. Similarly Alex Paknadel has Barry Allen chasing an Amazo around Central City for a while until the issue just stops, basically filling pages without stepping on Barry’s role in the main series. There’s some similarity here to the Dark Knights: Metal: Dark Knights Rising specials, the heroes fighting a themed doppelgänger, but specifically, then-Flash team Joshua Williamson and Carmine Di Giandomenico’s Batman: The Red Death felt more germane and satisfying, even if equally as tertiary, than Paknadel and Pete Woods' tale.

Further, many issues seem sloppy. Leah Williams and Caitlin Yarsky’s Marvel Family issue ends mid-action with a robot choking Billy Batson, Mary Marvel kicking a row of bookshelves dominoes-style on to the robot, and that’s it; a dialogue box appended to one corner of the panel lets us know the Marvels were apparently apprehended from there.

I have generally enjoyed Stephanie Williams writing the Nubia miniseries, but Williams' issue here is copiously overwritten and includes a character unironically spouting, “You shall not pass,” which any good editor ought have cut. Indeed, Williams' issue has the robot stealing the souls of deceased metahumans from the Amazons' Well of Souls, including Global Guardian Celia “Jet” Windward, but then the very next issue by Dan Watters portrays Jet as very much alive and active with the Guardians. It’s an understandable gaffe among two separate writers but that it would then be an editor’s job to catch.

I ought not fuss about comic book science, but variably within this book the Amazos are able to steal the heroes' powers but even sometimes their memories, which maybe we can hand-wave as attributable to magic but really just seemed writers' fiat. Among powers that the Amazos steal are Aquaman’s ability to breathe underwater and Miss Martian’s ability to shape-change, neither of which are “powers” per se so much as biological elements. It begs the question whether the Amazos have a “human bias” — what they steal is essentially anything that differentiates a human from a non-human — or if Amazos can steal any ill-defined “power” but simply wouldn’t want the ability to write 1,000-word comic reviews, or what really goes into an Amazo’s abilities besides, again, whatever the writer needs.

I did like the aforementioned use of the Well of Souls in Williams' piece, a concept I found quite interesting in Williams' Nubia: Queen of the Amazons. I can’t begin to explain why Watters creates whole cloth a schism between various “global” superhero groups, overcomplicating a story only 17 pages long, but I appreciated the ambition and the cameos. There are a lot of unexpected appearances and team-ups, what I think was one of the tenets of Absolute Power, including Voodoo Priscilla Kitaen; Monkey Prince, Spirit World’s Xanthe Zhou, and Red Devil; poor Elongated Man; Stitch from Titans Academy; plus the JSA driving Carol Ferris around in a vintage van. Dig also Stephen Platt and Dave McCaig’s “mugshot” variant covers with the date of the hero’s first appearance hidden within.

Sina Grace and Nicole Maines' Absolute Power: Super Son is probably the best of these, though the heavy use of dream sequences suggests it didn’t need double the page count of all the rest of the books. I have felt resistant to the rumors of a Jon Kent/Dreamer love triangle, as relationship troubles seem a bad look for DC’s first queer Superman, but the “will they/won’t they seem” was surprisingly affecting, particularly when paired with the heel turn for Jon’s boyfriend Jay that also feels legitimate.

Absolute Power: Task Force VII is not only tagging along with Absolute Power, there’s also a bit of coming and going with the Wonder Woman and Green Lantern regular-title tie-ins. I had suspected that if the real emotion of Absolute Power was not in its own title, maybe it was in Task Force VII or the individual title tie-ins; it is not in Task Force VII, which mostly limps along, so now it’s only the individual titles that might save this event.

[Includes original and variant covers]