Review: Power Girl: Old Friends trade paperback (DC Comics)

It's happy news after the disappointing end of the Justice Society title in Monument Point that Power Girl: Old Friends, the final collection of Judd Winick's run on that series before the DC New 52, is so good.

Those who question Winick's morality and upbringing after his Catwoman: The Game will have to also take into account his Power Girl work; leaving aside the baseline objectification inherit in a superheroine with a keyhole in her costume, Winick's Power Girl stories are energetic and respectful, and end on a strong note for the character. If one might argue that Winick's Catwoman work is disrespectful, it would be hard to say that such is endemic for the writer.

Like many of the final trades leading up to the DC New 52, it's obvious that at times Winick truncates or abandons plotlines in order to bring the book to a close; also writer Matt Sturges steps in for two self-contained stories in the end. Despite the brevity, however, Winick achieves a satisfying ending, and Power Girl fans ought not be disappointed with this book.

[Review contains spoilers]

Judd Winick's previous Power Girl trade, Bomb Squad, tied in to the first volume of his Brightest Day tie-in Justice League: Generation Lost, and Old Friends ties in to the second. Old Friends's value is a little greater, if you're a sucker for tertiary event tie-ins; Power Girl describes in Generation Lost Vol. 1 enough of what happens in Bomb Squad that you could probably skip it, but Power Girl's circumstances change considerably before she appears in Generation Lost Vol. 2, and for that you need Old Friends.

This is not to say you must read Old Friends to understand the second volume of Generation Lost -- you don't have to, you're smart enough to figure out the gap in the plot on your own -- but there is a gap, and true completists will want Old Friends in order to get the absolute whole picture. (It helps, perhaps, that Winick writes both Power Girl and Generation Lost, whereas the Keith Giffen-penned Booster Gold "tie-in" to Generation Lost turned out to be separate from Winick's story altogether.)

Old Friends's first three issues deal with Generation Lost, and they are remarkably moving issues for the often slap-happy comic. Alongside a scene of weird, rampaging super-monsters, Winick spends considerable time on Power Girl Kara and villain Max Lord's former friendship. Whether such friendship actually existed in the pages of Justice League International or Winick creates it whole cloth, it's a convincing meditation on old friends and how relationships change over the years -- the reader believes Kara and Max used to be friends, even if I'm not sure they actually were.

Winick also does well throughout the trade in depicting Batmen Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson, Superman, Zatanna, and others -- often even on their own without Power Girl. In the Generation Lost sequence, there's an especially effective couple of pages where Bruce tries to job Dick's tampered memory about Max Lord by performing an autopsy of the late Blue Beetle Ted Kord, killed by Max. Though the story becomes at that point more about the Batmen than Power Girl, it's wonderfully chilling and at the same time reflects the best of the Bruce Wayne/Dick Grayson partnership.

In Winick's final four issues, he pairs Power Girl with Superman for two of them and Batman for the other two. In the Superman issues, Superman and Kara fight rampaging dinosaurs and later, a magician who's kidnapped Zatanna; it's light and funny -- maybe a little too silly, in the moments Superman and Kara begin repeating one another -- and would be almost forgettable, except Winick takes a nice turn at the end to give Kara, finally, a real secret identity.

I have decried before how the Power Girl title constantly touts Kara's brains and scientific acumen, but rarely actually demonstrates it. Winick finally addresses this (at least better than before) in giving Kara a secret identity by which she can truly lead her company Starrware as Karen Starr. Winick follows this with the two Batman issues, in which Karen and Bruce team as CEOs, not superheroes, and this offers a good general picture of Power Girl (were the DC Universe as it was at the time not ending): she's a hero with the power of Superman and the secret identity/professional life of Bruce Wayne.

The Batman issues are really the stars of the book, where Batman and Power Girl battle a Muslim metahuman erroneously jailed by the US government. The heroes make a significant gaffe at the beginning -- larger, perhaps, than many might credit to Batman -- but Winick demonstrates well both prejudice and the fear that such prejudice strikes in those being discriminated against; it is a well-told tale even if the heroes don't come off especially well.

Winick's final scene in which Kara gives thanks for Bruce Wayne's recent resurrection again seems an exercise in creative nostalgia (I'm not sure Power Girl and Batman were ever that good of friends in the Justice League International, either), but it is sweet nonetheless.

Matt Sturges finishes off Old Friends with two funny Power Girl stories, one of Kara at a Comic Con-type event and one told in sixty seconds. These evoke the tone of the early Jimmy Palmiotti/Justin Gray stories on this title, and they're amusing if not necessarily, in the grand scheme of the title, "important."

In all, then, Power Girl: Old Friends is a book that won't disappoint fans of this series; it has no real bearing if you're ready to jump straight to the DC New 52, but neither do I actively recommend skipping it like Justice Society: Monument Point. It bears mentioning though that Warren Louw's Power Girl image for this collection's cover is ridiculously disproportioned -- cheesecake, but of the laughable variety; in the DC New 52, I will miss Power Girl as we knew her, but I won't miss that keyhole costume.

[Contains original covers]

Thanks for joining me on Last Days of the Justice Society week. Next week, we follow Power Girl and the Justice Society into the DC New 52, of sorts, with the Collected Editions review of the first new Mr. Terrific trade. See you then!

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Review: Power Girl: Bomb Squad trade paperback (DC Comics)

Knowing that DC Comic's grand relaunch arrives in just a few scant weeks, it's hard not to see certain titles as just marking time for their rebirths or cancellations. Judd Winick's Power Girl: Bomb Squad is ostensibly a tie-in to Winick's Justice League: Generation Lost; the ties here are better than in that series' other companion, Booster Gold: Past Imperfect, but still I'm skeptical how much Power Girl adds. Bomb Squad's approach is more to my liking than Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray's previous take on Power Girl, but the plot's both thin and decompressed, hence the sense that this is mostly filler until the end.

[Contains spoilers]

Palmiotti, Gray, and artist Amanda Connor's much-acclaimed Power Girl stories can best be described as "fun loving"; there was superhero action, but also a bunch of Power Girl Kara Zor-L hanging out with friend Terra and helping a high school loner make some friends -- not silly, necessarily, but with a humorous bent. Winick's Power Girl is still sarcastic, and her banter makes up much of the humor of the book, but Winick approaches things much more straightforward -- her villains are certainly tougher, with no sense Kara will sweetly turn enemies into allies as she did at the end of Palmiotti and Gray's stories.

Also, with no slight intended to Connor's boisterous, cartoony, and uniquely original take on the DC Universe, apparent newcomer Sami Basri absolutely knocks the art out of the park in this book. His work is still loose enough to depict Power Girl's funny moments, but he also draws rather photo-realistic faces that, especially with Kara herself, display marked seriousness at key moments (see, for instance, the funeral scene). Basri is next to work on the DC Relaunch's Voodoo after Power Girl, and that makes my interest in said book that much greater.

Yet, while I might appreciate Winick's more serious approach to Power Girl, precious little actually takes place in this book. The first issue mostly follows alongside the beginning of Generation Lost; the second and third are an over-long fight with Power Girl's new enemy C.R.A.S.H.; the fourth sets up Power Girl with a new status quo and headquarters; and the fifth and sixth are another elongated fight scene. Within these pages there's drama and story growth -- Kara loses her company, mourns the death of a friend, and gains a sidekick, with guest appearances by Mr. Terrific, Booster Gold, and Batman Dick Grayson -- but it's shoe-horned in two of six issues with too much space given over to rudimentary punching and kicking.

Power Girl's main foe in these pages is Generation Lost's Maxwell Lord, and Winick makes a slick transition from Palmiotti and Gray's run to his own by having Max essentially dissolve Kara's research company; Winick ties off one hanging thread from the previous books by having Max kill the employee who's ex-husband might've become Power Girl's enemy. I felt, however, that Winick's wiping the slate in this way did the Power Girl character a continued disservice. I mentioned in my review of Power Girl: A New Beginning that, despite Kara owning a scientific research firm, she seemed to known nearly nothing about said research, contrasted with Mr. Terrific in James Robinson's Justice League: Dark Things touting Power Girl's extensive scientific knowledge.

Now Winick -- with no harm intended, I'm sure -- not only removes Kara from the company, but also saddles her with a techno-geek sidekick, as if to further suggest this character can't be both brawny and brainy. I know the upcoming DC Relaunch Batgirl remains controversial, but hopefully one thing it will achieve is to combine the above elements. Superheroic women tend to be brawny, with someone else doing the thinking (Power Girl, here, and my much-beloved Manhunter Kate Spencer, I have to say, for another) or "geeky" and in-the-shadows (Oracle and the Question Renee Montoya) -- maybe the "new" Batgirl can epitomize both Power Girl's flamboyant brazenness and her partner Nicholas Cho's technical know-how all in one.

There's nine more issues of Power Girl to go before the end of this series and the DC Comics relaunch. Likely I'll be there for it, both as a general fan of Judd Winick's other work and for whatever ties to Generation Lost may be down the road, though admittedly I don't expect much. Max Lord appears on screen here more than he does in Booster Gold: Past Imperfect, but we don't learn more about Lord's overall plan than what's recapitulated by Power Girl in Generation Lost, and indeed those events are something that could just as easily have happened off-screen as to be shunted to Power Girl: Bomb Squad. With the end in sight, I'm skeptical Winick can really bring anything more to the series; rather I expect more of the same -- which is, not to downplay this, at least a serious and generally respectful take on the character -- before the conclusion.

[Includes original covers]

Next week, we're returning to the Bat-verse with Red Robin and Bruce Wayne's return home. Be there!

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Review: Power Girl: Aliens and Apes trade paperback (DC Comics)

Justin Gray, Jimmy Palmoitti, and Amanda Conner's take on Power Girl remains an achievement; they've taken what's been at times a one-note character and demonstrated that not only can she lead a team, but helm her own viable series as well. But while I liked Power Girl: Aliens and Apes better than the first volume, possibly this is just not the series for me; I appreciate the cheery superheroics, but find the book lacks the depth to make those heroics matter. I, for one, am glad to see this book continuing into the next volume with a new creative team.

[Contains spoilers]

The previous volume, Power Girl: A New Beginning, felt light to me perhaps in part because it was mostly set up for what was to come in this book. Here, we learn the identity of Power Girl's stalker, and all the heroes and villains from the past twelve issues converge -- Terra, Satanna, the Ultra-Humanite, the trio of alien women, and more. This puts Aliens and Apes ahead of its predecessor -- at least the stories don't feel as much like disconnected one-off issues -- though I still didn't feel the stakes were very high for our hero.

Perhaps the highlight of the entire Power Girl series so far is the first two issues, where Power Girl has to fend off both the advances of the alien Vartox and fight the monster Vartox inadvertently lets loose. Power Girl's combination of humor and action works perfectly here; Vartox is a clown, but the reader feels the romantic connection between the characters. What's at stake is not whether Power Girl can defeat the monster -- we know she can -- but whether she'll agree to help "fertilize" Vartox's planet (and what that means ...). The story is funny, but it has importance as well.

This is contrasted, however, with the revelation of Fisher, Power Girl's stalked, just a kid that wants to blackmail Power Girl to help make him more popular. This is cute -- if perhaps playing too much to the same comic book fan stereotypes that a book like Power Girl otherwise helps to break down -- but it's also anti-climactic. This is hardly a Power Girl-level threat, and I know Power Girl's going to be able to handle the kid, so there's not really suspense to keep me interested in the story. Bryan Miller's Batgirl is funny, but that humor comes from the characters' interactions and not the situations, as is also the case in Power Girl's Vartox issues; when Power Girl deals with Fisher, or fights Satanna's Rhino Men, however, things get a bit absurd.

Also, the fact that Gray and Palmiotti have to end their run at twelve issues, seemingly a little unexpectedly, doesn't do the book any favors. They wrap up the Ultra-Humanite storyline nicely, but the subplot regarding Starrware employee Donna and her megalomaniac ex-husband falls by the wayside; neither does Power Girl ever really make anything of the Starrware company. Most unfortunate is the fate of Satanna, who appears here after her role in Gray and Palmiotti's Hawkman series: as Satanna takes her revenge for Power Girl's treatment of the Ultra-Humanite, Power Girl blasts off her arm; later Satannta sleeps with Dr. Sivana supposedly in exchange for more power, but he has her thrown out a window. When given some thought, Gray and Palmiotti probably don't mean the dismemberment and prostitution of a villain as startling as it comes off, and likely with a few more issues Satanna would have had her comeuppance instead of being tossed to the ground.

I recognize that the intention is for the Power Girl series to be sweet, and in that the authors succeed. As in the last book, Power Girl routinely redeems, rather than incarcerates, her enemies; Ultra-Humanite seemingly gets a second chance at life, and Power Girl of course befriends Fisher (it's only poor Satanna who gets a raw deal in the end). The last issue deals as much with Power Girl and her friend Terra just hanging out as it does with the villains or Vartox's one last hurrah; undoubtedly the friendships is what Power Girl is meant to be about (special mention of Dr. Mid-Nite's appearance, drawn as only Amanda Conner draws him; am I the only one who saw him as a romantic interest for Power Girl?).

Ultimately I think this kind of "sitcom" comic book just isn't for me; I much prefer darker fare like Manhunter, where Kate Spencer's son nearly blows himself up with her untended weapon, than I do Power Girl and Terra lying around on an underground beach. To each their own, though -- Gray and Palmiotti's Power Girl is a respectful take that this character has long deserved, and I'll be sticking around to see what one of my favorite writers, Judd Winick, will do on the series next.

[Contains original covers]

A whole bunch of Batman-y goodness coming up next week, and maybe some words about recent DC Comics news ... see you then!

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Review: Power Girl: A New Beginning trade paperback (DC Comics)

There's no doubt Jimmy Palmiotti, Justin Gray, and Amanda Conner's Power Girl: A New Beginning is a beautifully rendered and fun comic book. If that's all you're looking for, you won't be disappointed. But aside from being a rather ingenious send-up of the comic book cheesecake genre, Power Girl is a lot of flash and not a whole lot of substance. Plotlines abound that might give the next volume more weight, but all the parts of this one didn't coalesce for me.

As I mentioned in my review of the Power Girl lead-in Terra, a lot of the joy of Power Girl is in the background. The writers, with a lot of credit to artist Conner, pepper the background with details, whether the hilarious face of Power Girl Kara Zor-El's cat getting an unwitting bath, or the prevalence of bystanders with cell phone cameras building up Power Girl's New York as its own character. It's in her interactions outside the fisticuffs that this book shines -- when Kara shops with Terra, for instance, or when she shares credit for saving the city with the police and firefighters.

Conner's art overemphasizes Power Girl's already-overemphasized bust line, and the book spares no other opportunity for modest nudity, as when Terra fights crime in her underwear or half-naked aliens emerge from a hot tub. The brilliance of Power Girl is that the book acknowledges Kara's bust from the first pages; whereas other heroines have impossible figures as a matter of course, Power Girl's figure is an in-story fact -- the creative team isn't asking the reader to suspend disbelief. Power Girl seems entirely comfortable with her body, and as such what could be portrayed as awkward or sexualized emerges merely as cute, as when a well-meaning firefighter ends up eye-level with her breasts while trying to support her.

Over-sexualized images in comics, especially when presented as a matter of course and without relation to the specific story, only continue to obstruct the comics medium's quest to reach out to new audiences. What Power Girl does is take some of that over-sexualization and just rolls its eyes at it, makes it not that big of a deal. Part of what I think perpetuates silly sexual poses, inordinate graphic violence, and such in comics is the shock value of it all; what I like about Power Girl is how it addresses that shock value head on, deflates it, and then gets on with telling its story.

Unfortunately, I never felt that the story itself was all that strong, nor that Power Girl really fit into the story being told. The first three issues alone mostly involve Power Girl fighting with the Ultra-Humanite, with more pages given to the Humanite's origin than Power Girl's. The fourth issue is mostly scene-setting, with Power Girl and Terra fighting a minor one-off villain; the final two issues, too, involve a misunderstanding between aliens, with no real threat. There's a large part of this book where nothing feels at stake for Power Girl; maybe that goes to the lighter tone of the book, but I found it hard to feel invested in the book beyond enjoying the scenery.

Palmiotti and Gray seem to want to do for Power Girl what Greg Rucka did for Wonder Woman -- to give her a job, a supporting cast, and a meaning beyond just her superheroics. But while Wonder Woman's work as a diplomat directly affected her costumed life and vice versa, Power Girl's Starr Laboratories bears not at all on the problems nor the solutions in this volume (though the story suggests there might be more of that next time). Despite writer James Robinson's great scene in Justice League: Dark Things where Dr. Mid-Nite draws on Kara's scientific knowledge, the writers here state a number of times that Kara has no understanding of what her scientists are doing. It would seem as though Kara has no place in a lab that really doesn't need her to run; Kara is the "hole in things" in this story, a piece that doesn't fit and emerges basically interchangeable from any other superhero that could be substituted into this story instead.

There's a tone to Power Girl: A New Beginning that I like a lot, not in the least the "new beginning" that Power Girl gives to two of the book's "villains," offering redemption instead of jail; this is a book that does things differently. Yet Power Girl's choices never quite add up to an intention or some kind of mission statement -- nor does the writers' frequent mention of September 11 come together as more than a reinforcement that New York Cityappreciates heroes, factual if not original -- so beyond the attractive trappings, the Power Girl series emerges unremarkable. As it seems more of the challenges Power Girl faces become personal in the second volume, rather than just external, I'm hoping I enjoy the next book a little more.

[Contains original and variant covers]

A new "Uncollected Editions" column, and our review of Power Girl: Aliens and Apes, coming up next.

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Review: Terra trade paperback (DC Comics)

There's an inescapable charm to just about anything that has the names Jimmy Palmiotti, Justin Gray, and Amanda Conner attached to it. The Terra miniseries collected here is not too dramatic and doesn't require much from the reader, but the characters are snappy, the continuity notes aplenty, and the art downright adorable. Terra is basically just a prequel to the ongoing Power Girl series, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.

[Contains spoilers]

One of the promises made by the Terra miniseries is that it would reveal how this new Terra, Atlee, relates to the DC Universe's previous two Terras, including the infamous New Teen Titans traitor. The answer to "how she relates" is "as well as can be expected" or "almost not at all," depending on your point of view. This new Terra comes from race of aliens who seek to preserve their underground home by sending a champion above-ground to Earth (not, I guess, much unlike Wonder Woman or Aquaman). Apparently the second Terra was also of Atlee's species, made to look like the first Terra and having forgotten her true origins due to the machinations of the Time Trapper in Zero Hour, among other factors.

I'm absolutely delighted that Palmiotti and Gray choose to base Atlee on the second Terra rather than on the obvious choice, the first. I've always had a soft spot for that second Terra, who tried to atone for the sins of the first Terra that she didn't commit. That second Terra's intended origins are confusing and contradictory enough as is (at times a clone, or a number of different time travel anomalies), and it's a credit to the ambitiousness of the writers that they chose to add another element to the mix. As Atlee appears in Power Girl, I hope we'll learn more about the secret life of that second Terra before she came to the surface world.

The scene in which Atlee and the Justice Society's Dr. Mid-Nite discuss Atlee's origins, by the way, is just one example of the joy of Amanda Conner's artwork. Conner, here and in elsewhere, seems to insist on drawing Dr. Mid-Nite not in full costume, but in this this more medical stripped-down costume (though with large shoulder pads); why Mid-Nite differs under Conner's pen I'm not sure, but this and other little touches give the effect of a "Conner-verse" that presents a stylized, attractive take on the DC Universe. Conner begins the scene from the perspective of a caged mouse in Mid-Nite's laboratory, as Mid-Nite's owl looms naughtily closer; this is just one of a number of visual gags Conner and the writers pepper throughout the book, giving the art extra life even besides the story.

As well, Power Girl's face is priceless, presenting both the reader's confusion over clones and Time Trappers, and at the same time embarrassed as Atlee travels over two pages naked, her modesty preserved only by well-placed limbs and lab equipment. This is hardly lasciviousness; rather the coincidentally-placed objects evoke an Austin Powers-type humor. There's a good amount of implied nudity in Terra, not the least when the villain's girlfriend strips and showers, but ultimately I think even this isn't gratuitous; the girlfriend's beauty early on heightens the tragedy later when the woman is reduced to blank, faceless stone.

Ultimately Terra only approaches the origins of the Terras, without delving deeply into the details; most of the enemies Terra faces are one-off caricatures, and even the book's main villain is pretty well vanquished by the end. Power Girl returns in a number of pages at the end where we learn more about her personality and her wish for more non-superheroic elements in her life. Basically, the end of this book is a prologue to the creative team's new Power Girl series, not an epilogue to Terra's story. I didn't mind this so much -- I knew Atlee would be a supporting character in Power Girl, so this was in service to that -- but the reader might want to be forewarned that to an extent, this book is just an advertisement for another series elsewhere.

Given that, however, Terra is a lot of fun, and it suggests to me the Power Girl series will be a lot of fun, too. For as much as this book doesn't accomplish, it tries to do a lot, and makes its attempts with glee, which I think should account for something.

[Contains full covers]

In our general overall following right now of Brightest Day and its related series, we continue later this week with Power Girl: A New Beginning, catching up with the beginnings of the Power Girl series (as above) before that title crosses-over with Brightest Day/Justice League: Generation Lost. See you next time!

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