The Power Cut is a fanzine about The Power Fantasy, the ongoing Image Comics series from Kieron Gillen and Caspar Wijngaard. As described on The Power Cut Tumblr:
The Power Cut #3 is a collection of essays, illustrations, charts, flash fiction and other metatextual responses to The Power Fantasy, a comic by Kieron Gillen and Caspar Wijngaard. It contains mature content and spoilers for all of The Power Fantasy #1-16. The Power Cut is a transformative work, made by fans for fans, abiding by fair use principles, and is distributed for free.
Download the zine here on itch.io
I’ve previously written two fairly lengthy ethics pieces about this outstanding series – The Power Fantasy Introduction, and TPF – The End of History – check those out to learn more about TPF comics. But I was happy to be invited to contribute an essay to The Power Cut, issue #3 (August 31, 2026), which has some cool content and thought-provoking pieces around the third arc especially (The End of History).
I’m particularly proud of the piece I contributed: How to lose friends and influence people – Etienne’s plan to make humanity better (pages 55-64)
With apologies to Dale Carnegie, this relatively short essay looks at what Etienne’s plan to edit humanity (from TPF issue #13) could actually look like. It’s a fun mix of the latest neuroscience on moral decision-making and modern normative ethics. And it comes to a fairly shocking conclusion (well, it was shocking to me once I thought through it all).
It turns out that Etienne’s superhuman abilities – as detailed in the series to date – would allow him to affect a fairly minor change to human moral intuition that would produce a profound shift in human society (and without us even being aware of it!). This tiny change would be so profound that it would literally bring about the “utopia” that one famous Enlightenment philosopher dreamed of. And it would still protect us from the risks of extreme group-think (like the one shown in the popular Vince Gilligan TV series, Pluribus).
Intrigued? Check out The Power Cut #3 on Tumblr or at thepowercut.itch.io to learn how it could be done.
My thanks to the editors and other contributors on this issue for their support and discussion. With particular thanks to Rei Barker (Dr Eldritch) for editorial assistance and Ed Joy (Non-Bearnary) for graphic design. I think the piece came out reading very nicely and looking quite spiffy!
Download the zine here on itch.io
My essay is on pages 55-64. I also have a follow-up point about how such a system could be perpetuated in the group discussion, on page 76.
As always, if you would like to know more about any of the terms I’m using, please check out my Ethics 101 page, or my Glossary post for a list of the key philosophical concepts and related links on this site. I have also summarized the modern neuroscience research on moral decision-making on my Moral Thinking, Fast and Slow post.
Further Reading
For more TPF ethics: The Power Fantasy Introduction
For more TPF ethics: TPF – The End of History
For more about the brain: Moral Thinking, Fast and Slow