A new arc and some new nods towards great material.
Creative Staff:
Story: Sterling Gates
Art: Jonboy Meyers
Colors: John Rauch
What They Say:
National City PD’s SWAT team raids the CatCo building-and they’ve come for Winn! Kara’s convinced her friend is no digital terrorist, but the evidence seems ironclad.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
With the first arc of the series completed that involved Rampage, Adventures of Supergirl moves onto its next with writer Sterling Gates now working with artist Jonboy Meyers. While his style is different from Bengal’s style, the two certainly blend well together overall so there isn’t a whiplash effect going from one arc to the next. Meyers captures the look of things pretty well here with what he does as there’s some great layouts and a solid sense of motion and dynamism with the way Kara flies and pushes back against various opponents here. Combine that with some solid coloring from Rauch to bring it all together and the visual punch of the book is solid in how it brings Gates’ script to life.
The premise here is one that works well as we get some additional Winn material that I believe comes before his parentage is talked about in the show. Here, we see how he’s being setup for something as the National City SWAT team has stormed CatCo in order to grab him on some terrorism charges that have been leaked out online. With someone out on the net now doxxing him big time, everything about Winn is starting to be revealed, which we know won’t go too far considering its placement in the TV timeline here. But it is fun to see Kara and James realizing what’s going on, realizing they’re a little out of their depth here, and having to go back to basics – such as busting him out of the SWAT transport before the cops there really brutalize him after he’s framed for an act of terrorism in Virginia a year prior.
What makes this book fun are two very different things. The first is Kara thinking about how one of her greatest fears is her opponents figuring out who she really is and taking the trouble to CatCo, which is what she thinks is happening here at first. The other is that as she and James work on Winn’s computer they discover that he supposedly has a digital assistant that he created on there called V.R.I.L. Having been a longtime LEGION/Invasion fan, anything that brings this character into the world is great by me so seeing it take this form and then get expanded on is great. Some elements of the story are simplistic as it moves forward with the whole doxxing and so forth, but place into the simplicity of the TV storytelling and it all works pretty well to achieve the goals that it wants. While we don’t know exactly what’s being sought after with Winn, the stakes raise quickly here in a fun way – for the reader.
In Summary:
Adventures of Supergirl sets us up on a fun new arc here that ties into characters that I enjoy and like to see how they can be re-interpreted. I’d certainly like to see how they could work this into the actual TV storyline as well since VRIL is a character that I just adore. Gates continues to find the right balance here in going for familiar comic concepts while sticking to the style and tone of the show as well as some of the name dropping and the like. Meyers’ design in this issue is solid as well and it fits with what’s being sought here, something fun and upbeat with an excitement and dynamic feeling about it that also just has the right color tones, with Rauch nails perfectly. It’s an easily accessible book in the classic sense but delivers for longtime character fans as well.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 12+
Released By: DC Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: March 7th, 2016
MSRP: $0.99
