Netflix is trying to turn superhero cop comic Powers into a TV show… again

After a short-lived run as the flagship TV program of Sony's PlayStation Network, the long-running comic is getting revived as an animated series.

By William Hughes | March 20, 2026 | 10:38pm

The cover to Powers: Book One, Image: Jinxworld

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Netflix is trying to turn superhero cop comic Powers into a TV show… again

You’d be forgiven for forgetting that Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Avon Oeming’s long-running “cops in a world of superheroes” comic series Powers had gotten a TV adaptation before. Sure, the show—which starred Sharlto Copley and Susan Heyward, as a pair of LAPD officers trying to keep super-crime in check—did technically run for two seasons. But the catch is that it did so on the PlayStation Network. As in, the Sony-owned video game storefront where you buy Call Of Duty games and digital currency for Fortnite skins. It was part of this whole, ambitious thing that Sony was trying where it was going to get people to start buying their TV directly through their PlayStations—and, given the fact that Powers was both the first, and as far as we know the last, show offered exclusively through this method, you can probably guess how it went.

In any case: None of this has apparently dissuaded Netflix from taking a crack at the franchise, which has been running (with a five-year gap starting in 2020) in the hands of various comics publishers since 2000. (It started at Image Comics, before moving to Marvel’s Icon brand in the days when Bendis was writing many of the publisher’s biggest Avengers throwdowns; it’s currently nestled at Dark Horse.) This time, the series is being developed as an animated series, which feels like a good fit for a comic that never shied away from showing god-like superhumans standing alongside the cops trying to manage them. (Including main character Christian Walker, who straddles the line as a former top-tier superhero who turns to police work after being depowered.) The new series is being developed by Dark Horse Entertainment, with THR noting that both creators have been brought on board to work on the pilot—Bendis writing it, and Oeming working on developing its visuals.

Powers was a pretty big deal back in its first few years, winning Eisners in 2001, 2002, and 2003. It’s since fallen out of the limelight a bit, but the basic idea of cops investigating heroes—also explored, around that same time period, in Ed Brubaker and Greg Rucka’s DC book Gotham Central—has an undeniably strong hook to it. (Also, superhero cartoons where people kill each other and swear a lot are pretty hot right now, which probably doesn’t hurt its chances.)

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