Not killing doesn’t mean not fighting.
Creative Staff:
Story: Sterling Gates
Art: Emma Vieceli
Colors: Sandra Molina
Letters: Saida Temofonte
What They Say:
Who is Supergirl? Kara Danvers has learned a lot about her super abilities, her strength as a friend and as a sister, her love of being human and alien at the same time. And now she’ll need to pull it all together to defeat her most dangerous foe to date!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The Adventures of Supergirl series comes to a close here and that leaves me with hope that we’ll see a second run once the new season kicks off on TV this fall since there’s certainly potential here. While I don’t think this series quite captured it – I would have preferred more time focusing on the characters outside of the action and on smaller moments that the series can’t dig into – but it did get to have fun with some big action pieces and aliens that likely wouldn’t be used within the show itself, at least not just yet. Sterling Gates certainly caught the voice of Kara well here and that was a big plus and the last few issues with Emma Vieceli on the artwork helped to cement my interest in it more as there were some uneven issues before that. I like that these kinds of books try and do things a little different than the regular books but Supergirl needed more consistency.
With this installment it’s no surprise that everything is brought to a close with the facet arc and that it doesn’t make much of an impact on the actual series storytelling itself. At its core, the focus is on Kara herself and who she is and who she wants to be. Facet has quietly spent time behind the scenes watching Kara over the last several years and once she began her more public approach began to work a way of molding her toward being the judge, jury, and executioner that she believes this world needs. That Facet wants Kara to surpass Alura is no surprise but she simply didn’t understand who Kara is even though she watched her for all this time. She watched but didn’t listen and didn’t realize that he manipulations would mostly fall short, especially taken in tandem with events of the show itself as Kara defines herself by hope, help, and compassion for all.
A decent chunk of the installment is naturally given over to the action and Vieceli brings it to life well, especially when Kara takes Facet up into low earth orbit in order to try and weaken her by letting her drop. The impact size makes me question things just a bit, but when dealing with a character like Facet, it’s definitely an interesting approach. There are the usual round of tricks and the like to accomplish the end goal of capturing her, because as Kara says, she doesn’t kill but she will fight, and it works well to tie together a lot of smaller pieces along the way. It all serves to reinforce who Kara is at this point and it connects well when blended with who she’s become in the show itself, making for a solidly fun romp overall.
In Summary:
Adventures of Supergirl was a pretty fun book to read and my first TV tie-in as part of what’s airing currently. I haven’t dipped into the Flash and Arrow series simply because they didn’t appeal to me in seeing expanded works. Supergirl, on the other hand, felt like it needed the support and I wanted to be a paying voice toward seeing more of Kara’s adventures in some form with this continuity that’s been created. I like what Sterling Gates did overall though I’d like to see it go in different and smaller directions the next time around. There are limitations when working with a tie-in, however, so I know it doesn’t follow the traditional path. With some fun artwork overall and a very solid closing run with Emma Vieceli on board, it ended strong and definitely has me curious to see if we’ll get more as I know I’ll be back for it.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 12+
Released By: DC Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: July 10th, 2016
MSRP: $0.99
