Supergirl #7 – Review

By: Michael Green & Mike Johnson (writers), Mahmud Asrar (artist), Dave McCaig (colorist)

The Story: Supergirl’s first trip to the Big Apple, and it’s under crisis.  Perfect timing, right?

The Review: Look, I love big, drawn-out action scenes as much as the next guy.  That opening chase sequence in the newest Casino Royale is a sequence of beauty that I still haven’t gotten tired of.  But there’s a big difference between watching and relishing each punch, kick, flip, dash, jump, shot, blast, and explosion in, say, a ten-minute piece of big-screen cinema, and seeing a truncated, stationary version of the same thing across however many pages of comics.

Admittedly, it also makes reviewing a little harder.  I mean, how much can you really say about an issue that’s just one big punchfest, as this one is?  You can comment on the creative uses of superpowers, I suppose.  Supergirl does employ a few neat tricks in her battle against four Worldkillers, like releasing her internal energy through her skin in an outward blast.  That’s another skill set we’ve never seen her cousin employ, so we should see how that evolves later.

Sometimes it’s not just the raw power that makes for entertaining reading, but the special tactics employed on the fly.  When Reign conveniently mentions that “Only a Worldkiller can defeat another Worldkiller,” Supergirl makes the quick, sensible inference from that statement and forces one of them to strike down the other.  More significantly, she does so in rather brutal fashion; had Reign been less concerned for her comrades, one of them would certainly have died from Supergirl’s attack.  This unhesitating use of extreme violence will be something else we can look to cause drama later, especially once Superman gets involved with her life.

Supergirl #6 – Review

By: Michael Green & Mike Johnson (writers), Mahmud Asrar (artist), Dave McCaig (colorist)

The Story: Kara, here’s your first lesson from Earth: you can’t really ever go home again.

The Review: If there’s one thing the new 52 has done for the Superman mythos, it’s been to bring the culture of Krypton front and center and make it an integral part of the Super-family’s lives.  Grant Morrison and Gene Ha gave us a fairly epic glimpse of the lost world back in Action Comics, but much of what we saw had more to do with the technology and aesthetics of Krypton than anything else.  Its culture, society, and values are a little more hidden from us.

Since Kara lived and breathed on the planet firsthand, she can reveal more of these intangible points, though only bits at a time.  This issue touches on the Kryptonian trials which all that race’s youths must pass before graduating.  Interestingly, martial artistry remains part of the trials, though it’s no wonder such an advanced species would dismiss it, much like Kara’s father does.  The scene features a throwaway detail that has more significance than first appears: Kara’s mother insisting on her daughter placing more focus on her physical education.

That detail seems to tie into a later scene, when Kara receives an encouraging vision of her parents as she’s about to hurtle to her death by blue star.  It’s a very cheesy sequence, but you can’t deny its heartfelt sentiment, and there’s that always fun mystery of how much of Kara’s visions is spiritual and how much is psychological.  What’s important, however, is we get to meet her mother for the first time, which seems a tad odd, when you think about it.