Supergirl #67 – Review

By: Kelly Sue DeConnick (writer), Chriscross (penciller), Marc Deering (inker), Blond (colorist)

The Story: Think Ghostbusters meets the Goonies, with a splash of the Breakfast Club.

The Review: In my review of Zatanna #13, I mentioned that a supporting cast can really make a title, a point worth elaborating.  No matter how strong a star, they can’t carry an entire issue on their backs all the time.  Getting a few other people into the mix breaks up the story, keeps you from stalling in one place for too long, and adds any number of possibilities to send the plot into an unexpectedly wonderful direction.

DeConnick clearly understands the value of giving everyone something important to do, even the ones who probably (well, definitely—this is the end of the line for the series, after all) will never show up again.  Even though Professor Ivo’s bank of the absolute finest genetic potential humanity has to offer doesn’t really go anywhere out of the ordinary, the story zips along and keeps you interested, in no small part due to the antics of the non-capes in this issue.

Remember, you have a crew of geeky geniuses (the two things aren’t always synonymous), and they’re in a sewer with a bunch of mechanical junk lying around.  Put them together, and you have a pump capable of funneling sewage water to drown a pack of robotic rats, and several stun guns with various vacuum cleaner attachments for their muzzles.  Now you have a Supergirl rescue squad, which means the threshold for danger gets that much higher.

The Real Thing – ft. Kelly Sue DeConnick (Part 2)

Hello again from the Real Thing, where we give you, absolutely free of charge, part two of our talk with Kelly Sue DeConnick.  Yesterday we spoke about the place of women behind comics.  Today we talk about women in comics (and some dudes as well).

——-

You’ve said that you were a fan of Wonder Woman and Lois Lane long before getting into Supergirl.  We’ll get to talking about the Girl of Steel in a bit, but what do you appreciate about those two lady characters?

I’m not sure if I was into Greek mythology and that sparked an interest in Wonder Woman or if it was the other way ’round, but I eat the Paradise Island/Greek pantheon stuff up with a spoon.  As far as the women themselves, Wonder Woman is… aspirational?  When I was a little girl, she was what I wished I could be–regal, just, compassionate, capital-g Good,  powerful… tall.  She is so awesome–literally, so awe-inspiring–it’s kind of ridiculous, but I love it.  I love her for it.

Lois, on the other hand…well, Lois is more what I am, what I get. She’s aggressive, bullheaded, dangerously willful, self-righteous and not half as smart as she thinks she is.  And I love her for that.

How did you become a fan of Supergirl?  What was her appeal to you?

I had to find my way into Supergirl, honestly.  I think I relate to her the way a mother relates to her overachiever.

The Supergirl movie was, shall we say, neither a box-office nor a critical smash.  Let’s say you had the creative reigns on it.  What would you have done differently?

I haven’t a clue. I haven’t actually seen it recently enough to say.  I’ll tell you what I wouldn’t change–the cast! Faye Dunaway, Peter O’Toole, Mia Farrow… I don’t know what went wrong with Salt either, but it wasn’t the cast.

Even though Kara is ostensibly more alien than Clark, there have been varying portrayals of her acclimation to Earth culture.  Sometimes she seems totally “with it,” pop culture and all, other times she’s distant or naïve about Earth customs.  What’s your take on her relationship to Earth?

I think it’s important to remember she didn’t grow up here.  Clark was raised on Earth from infancy.  He doesn’t really know another home.  Everything he lost is, for all practical purposes, theoretical.  Kara knows what she lost.  She’s an orphan and a refugee.

I feel it has to be a little tricky writing a title that’s had multiple previous writers.  You want to respect what they’ve laid down, but you must also have your certain ideas about directions you want to take with the series and character.  How did you balance that with Supergirl?

I think you’ll drive yourself insane if you worry too much about that. I think you have to trust your editors and your own instincts and let the rest go.

I really like how in Supergirl #65 you had Kara state to Lois, “That’s why you want me.  Because my parents are dead.”  It reminded me how tough she’s had it for a few years now: losing her planet, getting pack her parents and people, and losing them again.  This case she’s on involves a lot of family-less kids.  Is that a sore spot you’ll continue to explore in this arc?

Not explicitly, but it explains a lot about Kara and about why I wanted to give her bit of a break.

Supergirl #66 – Review

By: Kelly Sue DeConnick (writer), Chrisscross (penciller), Marc Deering (inker), Blond (colorist)

The Story: And here I thought college was supposed to get you out of the sewers.

The Review: To capture the audience’s attention and to keep it, even long after the story finishes, you need characters who strike you with as much vitality as a flesh-and-blood person would.  Some writers try to do this by piling on the backstory, hoping their meticulously realistic attention to detail will somehow form the character and make him/her live.  But it’s so much more effective to let the character interact with the story, revealing their lives in the process.

Look at this issue’s redheaded girl, a member of Henry Flyte’s merry band.  Her boast, “We don’t need a map.  We’ve got a Henry,” and her assurance that “He’s just messing with us,” indicates an attachment to her leader beyond respect.  No one has to point out her possible crush; in fact, mentioning it outright would make it easier for us to dismiss her, a bad choice as she also demonstrates a take-charge attitude and intellect that implies she was probably Hanks’ right-hand woman.  That’s a lot of information for us to gather without any of it ever being told to us.

Just imagine what DeConnick does with her star characters.  Lois Lane’s craftiness has never had better display, using a mixture of disarming small talk and aggressive questioning to get the answers she wants.  After the direct approach fails (she’s caught sneaking and rummaging through the Stanhope College president’s office), she offhandedly mentions Kara’s (feigned) interest in the institution, then slyly segueways into the matter at hand by claiming concern over her “niece’s” safety, leading into the missing students case.  Well-played indeed, Lois.

Superman #713 – Review

By: J. Michael Straczynski & Chris Roberson (writers), Diogenes Neves, Oclair Albert, Eddy Barrows, JP Mayer, Jamal Igle, Jon Sibal (artists), Marcelo Maiolo (colorist)

The Story: This is a job for Superman!  What?  He’s not there?  Leave a voicemail, I guess….

The Review: No matter how much you get into a superhero comic, at some point you’ll notice the faint tingle of suspended belief tingling at your amygdala (or whatever part of your brain matters of faith are located in—obviously I should never be anyone’s doctor or shrink).  But keep it at bay you must, otherwise all sorts of uncomfortable questions about the logic and realism of what you’re reading will cow your simple pleasure into submission.

But when the writer himself chooses to address those questions, there’s really nothing you can do about it, is there?  Fortunately, Roberson brings up several valid, thought-provoking issues that neatly ponder the implications of having a super-powered alien in our midst:  the fear of his overwhelming might; whether he can be trusted to use his powers appropriately; the possible resentment from the mere mortals.

The subject matter works; the format which Roberson chooses to address these things does not.  Characters telling stories within stories can be tricky to begin with, but in a comic, a bunch of brief, exemplary anecdotes just produces facts and details with little to no movement or substance whatsoever.  Having Clark and his “guide” asking random passerby their opinions on Superman certainly adds no dramatic depth, and it just seems inherently forced.

Action Comics #901 – Review

By: Paul Cornell (writer), Kenneth Rocafort & Jesus Merino (artists), Brad Anderson (colorist)

The Story: To kill five Super-people, of course you need five Doomsdays, right?

The Review: In my review of Superboy #6, I described Doomsday as a shallow character who no one cared (or at least, I didn’t) much to see again, a statement worth elaborating on given how this issue plays out.  Doomsday, for all the hype surrounding him, simply exists as a means to endanger Superman, that’s all.  D-day has little thought or depth to his character, and almost no potential to be anything more than a convenient way to threaten Superman.

Small wonder then Cornell’s previously excellent writing on this series has devolved along with the class of villain featured in this storyline.  Mind-boggling as it is to believe, the script comes off generic—at best!—and confusing, a big step down from the thoughtful, elaborate, and witty material we’ve been used to getting when Lex Luthor ran this title.  Cornell even descends to moments of melodrama: “Lois, I will find my way back to you!”

It’s hard to tell whether the confusion of this issue comes more from the almost absolute lack of direction (the Super-family literally don’t know how to get out of the starship) or from the puzzling motivations of the characters, like Superman choosing to drag Doomsday along with them because he’s “worried the other Doomsdays might harm it.”  Why exactly would they harm essentially the source of their creation?  And how can the original Doomsday get harmed by his lesser-powered clones anyway?

There’s a lot of chattiness in this issue, yet without much purpose to the chatter except to kill time before we can claw our way to getting this storyline over with.  It really shows how the characters have no idea what to do with themselves.  Eradicator: “—this looks like a language…  If we could start to translate it…”  Superman: “Yes, that should be part of our long-term plans.”  The implication they could be staying here for much longer is enough to make you wince.

Supergirl #64 – Review

By: James Peaty (writer), Bernard Chang (artist), Blond (colorist)

The Story: No way is Supergirl going to play these mind games with a horny freak!

The Review: In comics, like in most other fiction, corniness and clichés aren’t crimes as long as they’re done sparingly, or with some kind of irony or self-awareness.  In fact, they can inject some good humor or lightness to a comic that takes itself too seriously.  But that’s only when you have a writer who knows how to use them in a crafty sort of way; in the hands of the non-honed, they turn any story into a cringing mess.

Peaty seems like he thinks he can actually get away with lines like, “M-my powers…wh-why aren’t they working?!?”  (The use of “?!?” really brings that one over the top.)  The stammering villain backed helplessly into the corner is not only older than probably most of us, but it’s also the least flattering gimmick there is for a character.  Any respect you may have had for “Alex” pretty much goes out the window once you see him babbling like a kid caught in the cookie jar.

But then, Alex lost credibility as a villain long ago, once his actions became less meticulous and more erratic and senselessly vengeful.  You can’t even tell where his thirst for revenge comes from, nor where it’s directed.  Once Peaty revealed him as a Dubbilex-clone, the gates opened for all sorts of senseless developments: Alex’s loss of Kryptonian genes (no sign of which gets seen in this story arc at all), his Oedipus complex for poor Catherine Devereux, etc.

The only vague indication of Alex’s goals is when he offhandedly mentions “breaking…the Man of Steel’s heart.”  Putting aside for a moment the random leap to targeting Superman, this change in goal ultimately hijacks the focus of the story away from Supergirl.  Considering Peaty himself has been trying to make this arc about elevating Kara’s heroism to her cousin’s level, suddenly turning her into more of a means to hurt Superman seems like a humiliating demotion for her.

And anyway, from the start Alex never intended even Supergirl to be his sole, or even his primary target.  By now you may have forgotten about the Flyover app—a great idea that never got a chance to take off—but its original aim was to help Alex kill off all DC’s young heroes.  But along with the stakes of this story arc, Alex apparently scaled down his mission hardcore, now content to use Blue Beetle and Robin as a “bio-base for my next generation of drones.”