Batman/Superman #9 – Review

By: Greg Pak (story), Jae Lee (art), June Chung (colors)

The Story: Some memories are repressed for a reason.

The Review: I feel bad for writers who do the true crossover storyline, where the plot actually advances through alternating books. Not only do the writers have the challenge of crafting a cohesive story across multiple series and issues, since they have no guarantee that a reader will go out of his way to pick up all the participating titles—ahem, like me—they’ve got to make what’s happening in their individual series coherent on their own as well. Talk about patting your head and rubbing your belly at the same time.

To his credit, Pak manages to achieve this balancing act, though he reduces the plot to a trickle to do it. If it wasn’t for the fact that our paired-off heroes have switched partners since the last time you saw them, you’d be forgiven for believing there hasn’t been an intervening chapter since then at all. To sum up, our quartet is still in New Gammora, Clark and Karen are still out of control, and we still don’t really know what’s going on, even after reading through this issue.

Batman/Superman #8 – Review

By: Greg Pak (story), Jae Lee (art), June Chung (colors)

The Story: Which World’s Finest is the finest?

The Review: The Earth-2 arc that led off this series was a strong storyline whose promise was nearly ruined by the following arc that turned Batman and Superman into living avatars controlled by the collective nerd-rage of a host of gamers.  Returning to Earth-2 is thus a wise decision on Pak’s part.  It reminds discouraged fans of what made this title initially attractive, and it pairs this World’s Finest with that of another world, making for a mighty fine foursome.

I don’t know how Paul Levitz will handle the Batman, Superman, Power Girl, Huntress dynamic in coming chapters of this storyline,* but Pak gives them an endearing chemistry, surprisingly devoid of the misunderstandings that plague encounters between people of different worlds.  Even Batman discovers, to his slight horror, “In my heart, I believe every word [Huntress] says[.]”  This immediate trust lets Pak bypass obligatory conflicts to focus on the story at hand.

World’s Finest #4 – Review

By: Paul Levitz (story), George Pérez, Scott Koblish, Kevin Maguire (art), Hi-Fi & Rosemary Cheetham (colors)

The Story: Next: Japan executes a nationwide no-entrance decree for Huntress and Power Girl.

The Review: Let me tell you, whenever I finally buckle down to drop a title, I always feel a relaxing feeling of relief, like breathing through your nose after a month of congestion or setting down a backpack full of textbooks after a long walk.  That feeling lets me know that I’m making the right decision, and usually it gets preceded with a pretty substantial amount of longing for the moment I can finally unburden myself of something which gives me little pleasure.

And so it goes with this series.  I can’t deny the end comes with some disappointment.  I always want to support female-led titles, either in terms of characters or creators, so when they don’t work out, it feels like a step back for the cause, to a certain extent.  But this title has also failed to live up to its own aspirations.  World’s Finest was once the glowing byword by which one referred to DC’s two greatest icons, and to be honest, the pre-relaunch Supergirl and Batgirl naturally had more of that World’s Finest feel than Power Girl and Huntress.

Worlds’ Finest #1 – Review

By: Paul Levitz (story), George Pérez (pencils), Scott Koblish (inks), Kevin Maguire (art), Hi-Fi & Rosemary Cheetham (colors)

The Story: Introducing the Thelma and Louise of the DCU.

The Review: Longtime readers of the site know the dissatisfaction I felt reading Levitz’s work on Legion of Super-Heroes and Adventure Comics.  At the time, his writing came off pedestrian and outdated, unable to inject any of his old energy into the characters he helped make famous.  But longtime readers also know that I’m always willing to give creators a fresh look when they offer something new.

So although I have zero interest in jumping aboard the leaky ship that is Legion of Super-Heroes again, seeing what Levitz can do with Huntress and Power Girl sounds a lot more palatable. From the start, Levitz has a very clear vision of how his heroines think and how they interact.  Helena Wayne, in contrast to the hotheaded avenger she was as Helena Bertinelli, seems cooler, more sensible and down-to-earth.  Karen Starr doesn’t seem all that changed from her usual portrayal: brassy and full of life, she thinks and dreams big, in perfect proportion to her b…right and vivacious personality.  At every turn, Helena tries to rain on her friend’s parade (“You go on believing in fairy tales, princess…I’m making the best of this nightmare.”) and Karen lets it roll right off her back (“Best part of a nightmare is waking up.”).

Mister Terrific #2 – Review

By: Eric Wallace (writer), Gianluca Gugliotta (penciller), Wayne Faucher (inker), Mike Atiyeh (colorist)

The Story: I’m a comic book reviewer, not a quantum physicist!

The Review: In real life, a super-genius of the first degree would have no problems finding admirers and adulation anywhere he or she chooses to practice his or her intellect.  In comics, a hyper-advanced intelligence is appreciable in theory, but by itself doesn’t always translate to the most entertaining stories.  After all, the characters can only be as smart as their writers, and let’s face facts: fiction writers are hardly paragons of scholarship.

So what you ultimately end up having is a lot of nifty-sounding but improbable science, which this issue has in plenty.  Don’t get me wrong; as a fan of Air Gear, I enjoy the frequent physics lessons mangaka, “Oh! Great” illustrates.  But while he goes through the trouble of actually explaining the principles behind his fictional science, Wallace just has them blurted out, with little context, forcing you to do some frantic online research to grasp what he’s talking about.

Either that, or he simply expects everyone to have a working knowledge of “Bose-Einstein condensates” or “density inversion”.  But it hardly matters.  You can’t really feel suspense if you don’t know what the stakes are, and you can’t know what the stakes are if you don’t understand the physical limitations of the conflict.  By making up science as he goes along to solve problems of made-up science in the first place, the writer fails to establish tension, which is the case here.

You have other fundamental problems with the script.  The biggie is the number of clichés at work.  Anyone with a smidgeon of sense knew, from the moment Michael went all Shining on a senator, that he would have to face the fallout from his fellow company men afterward.  And of course you have some dirty dealing behind the scenes, involving rivals from Michael’s past and present.  So far, none of these plotlines go beyond your usual corporate drama tropes.

Mr. Terrific #1 – Review

By: Eric Wallace (writer), Gianluca Gugliotta (penciller), Wayne Faucher (inker), Mike Atiyeh (colorist)

The Story: If you’re such a hot-shot, how come you don’t have your own reality show?

The Review: By a show of hands, who else has ever wondered at the premise behind the modern Mr. Terrific?  You can instantly grasp the appeal of being the smartest man in the world.  But to be third smartest—one step below second banana—well, it’s just an odd premise.

This issue incontrovertibly shows that even a rank three genius is capable of some heady accomplishments: dimensional portals, something called infinite fractal mechanics (allowing him to bridge folds in space), an impressive machine that uses electromagnetism to deflect the effects of earthquakes.  Yet fancy as these all sound, they all ultimately boil down to your usual pseudo-science, conceived as easily as the writer’s imagination can idly wander.

When you really examine Mr. T’s (yup—I went for it) “genius,” there’s actually little in the way of advanced intelligence.  In his opening battle with a Brit in a battle suit, he dismisses his foe using one of the oldest gags in the book: essentially, a giant magnet.  Compare that to the clever applications of physics Static (about twenty years Mr. T’s junior) uses in his opener, and you can see Wallace doesn’t really go as far as he must to convince us of the first-rate mind at work here, though he puts in a good try.

In fact, Wallace tries a little too hard to highlight Michael’s most appealing features: an Olympic athlete with money out the wazoo and brains to die for—and he’s black!  Wallace spends far too much time mentioning them than putting them in action: “You’re not the only one who took a first in physics.”  “I had…more degrees than half the faculties of Harvard and Yale combined…”  “These are differential equations.  The kind that would give Stephen Hawking a headache.”

Power Girl #27 – Review

By: Matthew Sturges (writer), Hendry Prasetya (artist), Jessica Kholinne (colorist)

The Story: You’ll have to excuse Power Girl; she doesn’t usually make waves.

The Review: If you’ve ever taken a philosophy or ethics class, you’ve no doubt experienced the fictional, but strangely fraught and disturbing perils of the hypothetical question.  You were likely asked to choose between two equally awful actions, and the moral acrobatics you take to do so will probably make your soul curl into a fetal position.  As the titular character from Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next says, “The only way to win the game is not to play.”

Power Girl takes that advice to heart in her last issue, which works on the ol’ ticking-clock gambit, the meatier sibling of the hypothetical question: some villain sets into motion a series of conflicts for the hero to handle in a limited time frame, both to ensure failure at some point and to test the hero’s priorities.  Karen, being no dummy and stranger to this kind of ploy, rises to the challenge by changing the rules of the game.

The success of these kinds of plots usually land fifty-fifty.  Some turn out truly tense stories which place the characters into some shady gray areas (see Secret Six #19), and others produce a functional story, no more.  This one easily lands in the latter category.  Suspense is impossible if the character in question feels no danger, and at no point, really, does P.G. even entertain the notion that she might fail—and neither do we.

Power Girl #26 – Review

By: Matthew Sturges (writer), Hendry Prasetya (artist), Jessica Kholinne (colorist)

The Story: Showing up somewhere in the same outfit as 5,000 other people sure is awkward, ain’t it?

The Review: I’ve said my piece about women and comics this week, but considering the story we get in this issue, let me put in a couple more cents.  Even though it’s a no-brainer that women should have equal standing to men, there should be a few conditions on that point.  The most important is we shouldn’t merely promote women for the sake of promoting women, an act as false as choosing a man over a woman simply because he is a man.

On that note, Power Girl’s fourth wall-breaking speech works on a lot of levels.  In context of the story, where she attends a convention dedicated to her, it’s a very appropriate speech for the attendees.  But her words have a lot of value to us readers as well, particularly those of you who are women.  Her advice is right on the money: “…be vigilant, be true to yourself, and have the courage to speak out and to confront evil…”

Left as is, Karen’s discourse would seem to encourage the self-righteous stridence that marks most feminists, but as the rest of the issue shows, this story is less about women as heroes, and more about what makes a hero.  Once the action gets going, gender becomes irrelevant.  Whether you or the characters are male or female, anyone can appreciate “ a hero doesn’t hurt people…to get what she wants,” and “I could do more than just wear the costume…I want to deserve to.”

All very well and good, and accompanied by a rather fun premise.  I’m always curious to know how our heroes would deal with the otaku culture that would undoubtedly spring up in their wake, and really, it all works out much as you’d expect.  P.G. acts the reluctant celebrity, coming as a guest only for charity, and deals with her adoring and at times awkward (love Marnie’s paralyzing shyness just as she gets the much awaited chance to talk to Karen) cosplaying fans.

Power Girl #25 – Review

By: Judd Winick (writer), Hendry Prasetya (artist), Jessica Kholinne (colorist)

The Story: If he can make it rain, can we say it’s literally raining men?

The Review: Just because someone’s the star of the show doesn’t mean other people can’t take a turn in the spotlight now and then.  At a certain point along the road, you’ll find the lead just can’t sustain a consistent story output anymore.  But spotlighting a guest character requires some extra work; they really have to wind up making some lasting change to the story at large to make their temporary presence worthwhile.

So does Winick make the most out of Rayhan?  Well, his love of the character is obvious, as our Quraci friend gets quite a lot of solid scenes in the issue.  It seems the more down-to-earth the story, the better Winick gets at writing it, especially when it involves characters embracing their emotions.  Rayhan’s interactions with his father, both as a newly immigrated family and on his father’s deathbed, predictably pile on the sappiness, but you can’t deny the heart in them.

Actually, Rayhan’s unassailable virtues end up a kind of pitfall for the issue even as they esteem his strength of character.  He takes such extra pains to purposely not hurt anyone that the action never reaches the adrenaline-levels you’d expect from a brawl between a metahuman of his level (basically the male Storm) and a team-up of Batman and Power Girl.  The Dark Knight and the Mistress of Might do little more than chase after him in a distracted fashion the whole time.

As a result, our two established heroes become accessories to Rayhan’s story, which would be fine if you felt a real sense of resolution from his end.  But aside from some gratifying words from the duo that basically tried to keep him from seeing his dying father, you don’t get to see Rayhan get the justice he is due.  No one expects a Hollywood ending with Rayhan stepping down a courthouse in triumph into the sunset, but considering what his jailors put him through, a few vague promises of restitution fails to satisfy.

By the same token, we should’ve also seen P.G. introduce Rayhan to the Justice Society as she offers.  That scene would have both made Rayhan’s trials worthwhile and sell Kara and Bruce’s heartfelt moment at the issue’s end.  Instead, their talk comes off rather self-congratulatory (“Kara…you’re among the best, too.”  “Yeah…I am one of the best.”), which is just a tad laughable in the face of their enormous blunder.

Power Girl #24 – Review

By: Judd Winick (writer), Hendry Prasetya (artist), Jessica Kholinne (colorist)

The Story: Don’t try to be a hero, man.  Seriously—you could go to jail for it.

The Review: Fiction has always been and will always be a product of its period; no surprise then that the stories you indulge in will have echoes in the current events of the year.  Lately Muslim-American relations are very much on the forefront of our consciousness, so small wonder we get treated to more fiction on that subject than we’ve been used to.  But considering the topic’s volatile nature, it’s that much more important for writers to tread carefully in their storytelling.

Winick falls into the trap of telling his story of a newly exposed metahuman Muslim-American the way we want to hear it, or at least, the way we expect to hear it.  This means the use of a lot of stereotypes—interestingly enough, less with regards to Quraci Rayhan Mazin, weather wizard, and more with his US federal captors.  Suspicion against the government has never been greater, so it’s quite the rage to portray any gov official as ruthless, controlling, corrupt, or all the above.

Just look at the unfair detainment and treatment of Rayhan (no lawyer, no outside access, etc.).  To his credit, Winick does set up a fairly sticky situation which would sensibly result in some woeful misunderstanding, especially on the crest of such primal emotions.  And he does allow Rayhan’s interrogator just a smidgeon of humanity, but his apparent total lack of sympathy or open-mindedness still leans on the military caricature side.

But in pursuing his agenda of demonizing the military and (figuratively) martyring Rayhan, Winick creates and ignores a significant point: Power Girl and Batman’s presence at the scene of the “crime.”  It stands to reason they would never simply let a brand-new metahuman villain of such power be taken into government custody, no questions asked, without confronting or researching him themselves (Bruce especially wouldn’t let that pass).  Most likely, Winick will play this out to wrap up this arc with a suitably just ending, but it’s still a major plot hole.

Power Girl #23 – Review

By: Judd Winick (writer), Sami Basri (artist), Jessica Kholinne (colorist)

The Story: This guy has to learn he can’t just punk people’s magic whenever he wants.

The Review: In my last review of Power Girl I got a little tough on Winick, mostly because I felt cheated out of a completed storyline.  Just know, however, it had nothing to do with the merits of the issue itself.  In fact, the new tone the title had set up felt like a much stronger direction for the series, and much more suited to P.G.’s character and Winick’s strengths.

This issue really confirms that feeling.  No longer saddled with his “Brightest Day” storyline, Winick doesn’t have to spend so much effort writing an action-drama, which he never quite pulled off.  Ever since this title launched, Power Girl’s been written as brassy and sassy, which doesn’t exactly mesh with the conspiracy/thriller mission she’s been forced into for the last few months, nor with the legal wrangling over her company ownership.

Winick has a clear comfort zone: lighter, less complicated plots which act as vehicles for his semi-juvenile sense of humor.  A Superman-Power Girl team-up to take down a magical moocher hits all the right marks: straightforward, silly, and upbeat.  Not only is it heartwarming to see the two Kryptonians get some bonding time—good to know they’re still close despite Clark’s real cousin in his life—they get a suitable challenge for their easygoing natures.

Even though Winick’s style of banter is still hit-and-miss and given to irritating repetitiveness (okay, okay, you’re dealing with magic, it’s tough for you guys, we get it, stop calling attention to it), he hits more often now than before.  His narration also feels tighter—the transitions from Power Girl’s voice to an omniscient narrator to Manuel’s dialogue to Zatanna’s conscious flows smoothly without missing a beat.  Winick’s writing probably won’t reach a level of subtlety on par with, say, Nick Spencer or Gail Simone, but this is as enjoyable as it gets with him.

Power Girl #22 – Review

By: Judd Winick (writer), Sami Basri (artist), Jessica Kholinne (colorist)

The Story: Since when do two Kryptonians find it so hard to beat a herd of dinosaurs?

The Review: Power Girl is sort of special in the world of comics, as even though she is based off of and has similar origins to Supergirl, they’re incredibly different characters.  Her brash, gutsy attitude has earned her plenty of fans, but the fact remains: she’s a spin-off, and wherever her more feminine counterpart goes, Power Girl finds herself hard-pressed to forge an identity that can compete for attention.

Winick attempts to delve into that problem this issue, though he’s certainly not the first.  Plenty of writers have tried to give Karen some flesh beyond her buxom body, but nothing seems to stick for very long.  Even the start of this title reestablished her science R&D company with some fun ideas that soon got lost in her much wackier heroic misadventures.

The first arc of Winick’s run put Starrware back in focus, but its shutdown never felt very threatening, since you didn’t know exactly what it did and Kara never spent time there anyway.  Her sudden re-acquisition of the company similarly feels flat and less than triumphant, despite the celebratory mood she encourages.  Part of that scene’s lifelessness comes from knowing virtually no one involved in Starrware enough to care.

The other part comes from the totally abrupt jump from last issue’s loose ends to this issue’s new beginnings.  Apparently, Winick chose to conclude his last arc over in the other series he’s helming, Justice League: Generation Lost. It’s an upsetting choice on a lot of levels, not the least of which is if you don’t read that title (which I don’t), you just lost your chance to see the wrap-up of a storyline that’s been Power Girl’s main event for the last half-dozen or so issues.

Power Girl #21 – Review

By: Judd Winick (writer), Sami Basri (artist), Jessica Kholinne (colorist)

The Story: She remembers every moment like it was yesterday…if only Batman will, too!

The Review: If you’re a writer, you’ll for sure have a moment where you realize all or part of your piece just doesn’t work.  When that happens, ultimately you have to face the option of cutting it.  Sometimes the choice is out of your hands.  One of the downsides of comics writing is once the idea is out there, you’re committed to it, even if it drags the story issue after issue.

In this issue, the sale of Starrware stands out as a plot thread that clearly should have been dropped a while ago.  By now, though, Winick has little choice other than to try to rework it and make it worth its page-time.  He brings in a new(?) antagonist in Ophelia Day, acquirer of Starrware, presumably to set up some motivation for Karen to take back what’s hers before it inevitably gets twisted in Day’s strident hands.

Still, it’s very difficult to summon up any interest in these developments.  You don’t really know much about what Starrware does, for one thing (tech R&D, yes—but to what end?), and besides Nico and Simon Peters, you’re not really in touch with anybody who works there.  Even Nico and Simon serve little more than as expository ciphers, when Winick needs to catch you up to speed on everything that’s not happening directly to PG at that moment.

Speaking as someone who works with legal cap now and again, I find the legalese in this issue slightly more credible than the bunk you usually get in comics.  Whether it pays off is more questionable.  After all, business/law drama seems like a niche interest even on television, where you get forty minutes to build the tension.  Comics just can’t offer that same kind of suspense, so basically the entire scene feels like filler.

In fact, most of the issue retreads old ground: the opening recaps the crossover events in Justice League: Generation Lost (a gimmick I always find distracting from getting to the present story’s goods); three pages of flashback to Power Girl’s last moments with Ted Kord; and some weird, vaguely amusing back-and-forth with Bruce-Batman convincing Dick-Batman of Max Lord’s existence.  This is all old material, so Winick really brings nothing new to the table here.

Power Girl #20 – Review

By: Judd Winick (writer), Sami Basri (artist), Sunny Gho & Jessica Kholinne (colorists)

The Story: These monstrous cloned freaks are trippin’!  And Max Lord has a job for Power Girl to do—wait, what?

The Review: The decompressed style of comic book writing has its pros and cons.  Pro: richer exploitation of a storyline.  When you can spread out the events of a plot across a few issues, it allows for great character moments and interludes that would be hard to squeeze into a done-in-one-or-two.  Con: pointless dragging out of a storyline.  Sometimes, the premise just isn’t strong enough to support a story for that long.  That seems to be the case we’re running into on the current arc of Power Girl.

A key to making a decompressed storyline work are the incidental scenes, the ones that don’t really advance the story, but offer opportunities for the characters to interact and develop.  Judd Winick doesn’t sell these so well.  Most of the issue involves Power Girl shouting at people, whether it’s ordering her assistant Nicco to offer impossible technical support or bantering with her foes about villainous clichés (“sick maternal love for your scientific abominations” is a good one, I’ll grant you).  There’s some humor to it, but besides that, you’re not really getting to know any of the characters better.  They just seem to be blustering until the next storyline starts and they have more to do.

That’s another key to selling a decomp’ed story: action—specifically, action with some kind of point.  Despite all the flying around and monster-pummeling P.G. does, none of it gets her anywhere.  Once she gets inside Cadmus and discovers its secrets, there’s little reason to prolong her stay by having her take down two dozen assorted genetically modified freakazoids, other than to kill time.  In fact, that’s exactly what all these opponents so far have been about—distracting Power Girl.  Hence, the reason why you learn so little about anything each issue.