Josiah Power was in Metropolis meeting with a Lexcorp attorney when he was caught in an explosion during one of the first wave of attacks in the Alien Invasion. With the aid of Daxamites, Earth’s super heroes fought and won against the Invasion forces. Life was returning to normal for Josiah and the rest of the world when the alien Metagene bomb exploded and affected Earth’s heroes. Josiah, like many other normal humans, was mysteriously affected. Lab tests showed normal results and Power was released from the hospital and returned to practicing law in San Francisco. A few weeks later during a court case his powers began to manifest.
Reluctantly he resigned from the law firm. Power began to let life pass by him until he replied to a mysterious email about a meeting regarding his “condition”. Upon his arrival it became apparent that the same email had been sent to other people affected by the bomb. “The Agent” and his associates announced that everyone were now prisoners to be trained and used as super villains. Josiah was kept drugged and had tests performed on him during this time in an attempt to learn how to trigger his transformation.
During this time several trial runs with other prisoners were made. Each of these met in failure and remotely triggered death. Josiah had secretly been trying to trigger his change with very limited success. A week later, the Justice League arrive to thwart a team sent to raid the Chicago branch of STAR Labs. In their escape attempt, The Agent and associates decide to blow up the building killing all the prisoners. That is until Josiah steps up and off panel single-handedly puts an end to their imprisonment. The Justice League arrives too late to do anything more than clean up. At the end of the story, Josiah is standing at the edge of skyscraper’s roof looking down and contemplating his life. Superman appears to give the proverbial pep talk.
A few years later Power has taken an idea and used his experience and assets to turn it into reality. Based in San Francisco, the Power Company is organized like a law firm with partners and associates and provides superhuman services (security, recovery, and investigation) on contract.
Josiah makes a brief appearance in Manhunter #12 to identify the body of Kirk DePaul, the previous Manhunter who was a member of the Power Company.
The exact nature of his powers remains to be determined. What we have seen is Josiah transform his body into a stone-like substance with some type of energy emanating from his body. Power made his first appearance in JLA #61 (2002). DC published a set of Power Company specials to promote the concept and followed them with a short-lived series.
Created by Kurt Busiek and Tom Grummett. Art by Grummet, Prentis Rollins, and Alex Sinclair from Power Company #3.
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