Powerless

Powerless (2009) by Matthew Cody is the first installment in the Supers of Noble’s Green trilogy, followed by Super and Villainous. The book follows an ordinary boy as he gets caught up in the battle between kids with superpowers and the dark entity stealing their powers when they turn 13. Powerless won the Rebecca Caudill Young Reader’s Book Award and the Virginia Readers’ Choice Award, and it was selected as a New Voices Pick by The Association of Booksellers for Children. Matthew Cody is the author of several books for both young and adult audiences, as well as many comics.

This guide follows the first ebook edition of Powerless.

Plot Summary

Powerless follows 12-year-old Daniel Corrigan, whose family has just moved to the fictional town of Noble’s Green to care for his ailing grandmother. While his parents finalize living arrangements, Daniel takes his little brother outside to play, where he meets Mollie, who lives nearby. Distracted, Daniel doesn’t notice his younger brother running into the street until it’s too late. Daniel runs to save him, knowing he won’t get there in time, but he is shocked to find Mollie and his brother already safely back in the yard. Daniel doesn’t know how Mollie moved so fast, but he’s determined to find out.

Mollie’s friends are similarly confusing and secretive. At his new school, Daniel makes enemies of a few bullies, one of whom is extremely strong. When one of the bullies backs Daniel off a ledge on a field trip, Mollie’s friend Eric catches Daniel in mid-air, revealing the truth: The kids in town have superpowers. The kids, or supers, don’t know how or why they have powers, but they do know they are supposed to stay away from the far side of the nearby mountain and that they will lose both their powers and any memory of them when they turn 13.

The oldest boy in the group turns 13 a few weeks later, and Daniel sleeps over at his house to see what happens since Daniel has no powers to lose. A dark figure arrives and drains the boy’s powers, knocking Daniel out a window.

While Daniel recovers from the accident, the supers give him comic books about Johnny Noble, which they believe are based on the town’s original superhero. There are a few missing issues of the comic books, so Daniel visits the author, who lives locally, to ask about them. The author, Herman Plunkett, gives Daniel some of his original sketches, and Daniel discovers a picture of the dark figure he saw, called the Shroud.

One afternoon, Mollie and Daniel venture over the mountain to the abandoned quarry. The Shroud attacks them, and they barely make it out alive. Daniel returns home to learn his grandmother has died. Daniel wants to give up helping the supers because he feels useless without powers of his own, but Eric convinces him not to and helps Daniel through his grief. Suspicious that the comic author is the Shroud, Daniel returns to Plunkett’s home, but Plunkett presents evidence suggesting that Eric is actually the Shroud.

The kids don’t want to believe Eric could betray them, but they can’t rule it out either. They sneak into Eric’s house and discover Eric is hiding the missing comics about the Shroud. Mollie confronts Eric, and Eric goes to the quarry, where the Shroud attacks him and knocks him unconscious. The kids go to his rescue, but the Shroud attacks them on the way, capturing Daniel.

At the Shroud’s lair in the quarry, Plunkett reveals himself as the Shroud. Seventy years ago, Plunkett was a boy at the local orphanage. When a meteor crashed, the orphanage burned down, and the superhero Johnny Noble rescued the kids. Everyone caught in the fire got superpowers—except Plunkett, who’d gone to use the outhouse. With the help of a stone from the meteor, he stole the powers of the original group, making himself the Shroud. Ever since, he has drained powers when kids turned 13, both to fuel his own strength and in the misguided belief that he is saving the world.

The supers arrive, and the Shroud meets them in battle. As the only kid without superpowers, Daniel battles his way through the layers of darkness surrounding the Shroud and yanks away the meteor stone. The Shroud is destroyed, and the kids return home. A few weeks later, Eric turns 13, and his powers are safe. However, Daniel wonders if it is wise to leave such strength in the hands of children.