While Power Girl will often feature the punching action to it, when it focuses on the characters it manages to shine even more.
What They Say:
A trio of sexy alien marauders hits Earth for the ultimate party. Unfortunately, by their standards, that means destroying it! Of course, it’s up to Power Girl to crash their festivities
The Review:
The opening storyline for Power Girl in its first three issues did a decent job of re-establishing her in her own right as she moved to Manhattan, got her company back in gear with a few hirings and then had to deal with the Ultra Humanite causing a whole lot of problems by uprooting the city. While I had to admire his overall plan of using her body to house his intellect, the story didn’t really work all that well since it wasn’t all that well thought out by the Humanite, which showed just how unintelligent he can be at times. Power Girl herself was the main winner as she established herself well but the surprise for me was seeing the new Terra take such an interesting role as her friend here and being key to helping rescue the city. So with this issue being a girls night out story, with a good dash of action to it, it looked to serve up a lot of good secret identity fun.
And it delivers on it very well. Having Karen and Atlee out for a night on the town, which is essentially going to the movies in a very low key way, Power Girl shows off its sense of humor very well. Atlee is so disconnected from the pop culture world in some ways that she’s continually shocked and surprised by things such as movies, so she gets into it with a very child-like innocence. The movie theater sequence is doubly amusing if only for the Big Bang Theory cameo that occurs when they have one of them trying to pick up Karen. Atlee’s reactions to what’s on screen is a whole lot of fun as well. Where the book reaches even more fun (and sexy) material is when the duo find themselves having to deal with the sudden arrival of a giant monster attacking the city. Karen’s ready for action as she changes out of her clothes with her costume underneath, but Atlee isn’t used to this yet. So she just takes off her shorts and proceeds to help Karen wearing a slightly tattered top and a pair of black panties with a red ladybug on her backside. It may sound smuttier than it is, but Atlee’s personality makes it incredibly adorable and naïve. Almost to the point where it just makes it all the more obvious she’s gonna get killed easily someday.
The action component of the book focuses on Zoraida, a curiously earthy blonde elfish woman who is riding a godzilla style creature while trolls ravage the bridge. She’s spouting a whole lot of back to nature and anti-technology rhetoric The layouts work rather well and Conner again manners to really capture Power Girl’s expressions during these kinds of scenes where she’s almost incredulous that she has to deal with it. Terra has a couple of very fun panels in the middle of it as well that makes it a lot of fun. What I appreciated is that they didn’t force the fight to last the bulk of the issue and instead went back to more mundane issues that are actually interesting, with Karen trying to figure out how to make her business profitable and dealing with some of her recently hired staff. It’s these more personal moments that make me smile the most with this book and want to continue reading about her adventures.
Digital Notes:
This Comixology edition of Power Girl leads with the Amanda Conner cover and then follows up with the Adam Hughes cover. I continue to love the practice of including all available versions of the covers as it is very fan friendly and gives the digital editions just that little bit more value for appreciating the artwork.
In Summary:
While Power Girl will continue on with lots of action and fighting, if it keeps on with this particular style of humor mixed into it, it’ll flow very well. Power Girl is a whole lot of fun and her relationship with Terra adds to it. The supporting cast is what needs to be expanded on as it goes on, especially with the number of characters its slowly populating her corporation with, but right now keeping things tight on these two really works very well. I keep coming back to how much fun Terra is and she’s adding a lot of unexpected fun to the book. But it balances all very well with the action which Amanda Conner captures very well with her layouts and the facial expressions. Power Girl may not be a top tier book, but it has the balance of action, humor and character relationships that reminds me why I love a lot of comic books and DC books in particular.
Grade: B+
