The Power Company #1
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeThe Power Company #1 formally launched DC's most rigorously conceived corporate superhero team, presenting heroes-for-hire organized along the explicit structure of a law firm — with partners, associates, billable hours, and pro bono work — a concept that had no true precedent in DC's publishing history. It introduced several new characters into the DC Universe at once, most notably Skyrocket (Celia Forrestal), Josiah Power, Witchfire, Sapphire, and Striker Z, while folding them seamlessly into existing continuity through callbacks to the 1988 Invasion! crossover's metagene bomb. The issue also reintroduced Doctor Cyber as a series antagonist and delivered the cameo first appearances of the Dragoneer and his dragon Fireheart, who would drive the opening arc. The team's frank mercenary premise — members motivated by money, fame, or steady employment rather than altruism — gave the book a distinctly adult tension that stood apart from conventional DC ensemble titles of the early 2000s.
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We Buy Collections ▸History
Kurt Busiek first conceived the Power Company concept in 1983, initially imagining the team as something closer to private detectives with superpowers before gradually refining the law-firm organizational structure that defines the published series. The book had been a long-gestating personal project — Busiek described it on DC's official message boards in January 2002 as 'a dream book of mine since I first came up with the concept in 1983' — and the characters and roster were substantially reworked over those nearly two decades before arriving at a DC-universe-specific version. DC launched the series with an unusually ambitious promotional campaign called 'Power Surge': seven character-spotlight one-shots, all written by Busiek, each pairing a new Power Company member with an established DC hero and collectively providing origins that tied the new characters into decades of DC continuity. Busiek later reflected that front-loading so many one-shots before the ongoing began was a misstep that may have fragmented the audience, and the series was cancelled after eighteen issues.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Written by Kurt Busiek; pencilled by Tom Grummett — the same creative team held for the entire 18-issue run of the ongoing series.
- Cover date: April 2002; on-sale date: February 13, 2002. The series ran from April 2002 to September 2003.
- First appearances (in-issue, per GCD): Starshrike (villain, member of the Cadre), the Dragoneer (cameo), and Fireheart the dragon (cameo) all debut in this issue.
- The issue formally introduces the Power Company team in its own title: Josiah Power, Manhunter (Kirk DePaul), Skyrocket (Celia Forrestal), Witchfire (Rebecca Carstairs), Bork, Sapphire (Candy Gennaro), and Striker Z (Danny Tsang).
- Doctor Cyber (Cylvia Cyber) appears as the primary antagonist, pursuing an ancient artifact called the Godstone; her associate Ariadne also appears.
- The story title is 'Executive Search' — a deliberate double entendre playing on the team's corporate identity and their mission to stop the museum heist.
- The Power Company team is depicted as based in San Francisco and structured precisely like a law firm, with managing partners, associates, and both paid-client and pro bono casework.
- The series had a notable revival starting in 2025: Josiah Power was reintroduced in Black Lightning vol. 3, followed by DC Power: Rise of the Power Company and The Power Company: Recharged, written by Brandon Thomas and Bryan Edward Hill respectively.
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