Review: Power Girl trade paperback (DC Comics)

I'm often struck, having been introduced to the DC Universe largely through the Super Powers cartoon, and then through post-Crisis on Infinite Earths comic books, when reading a trade like Power Girl, at the deceptively long history of this character. As of last year, Power Girl's been around for thirty years.

Given the somewhat historically nebulous status of her origin, as this trade shows — the fact that it took three years before they revealed who she was, a wait time unheard of in this day and age, leads me to believe the original creaters weren't quite sure what to do with her, either — and her generally modern-seeming costume and personality, it's hard to believe Power Girl predates even the Reagan era, but she does.

It's kind of like reading the Superman vs. The Flash trade, and seeing Barry Allen fight Professor Zoom back in the sixties and seventies — nowhere more than the in longevity of these characters, and the fact that we're essentially just telling the same stories over and over again with the same characters, is it more brought home to me that these characters truly are our society's modern mythology. So take that in favor of Grant Morrison's living, breathing, DC Universe.

The Power Girl trade features a fun, rollicking story by Geoff Johns with plenty of cameos and guest starts, and fantastic, also fun art by Amanda Conner; I hadn't been exposed to Conner's art before, but it's great, and I'm glad she's doing the upcoming Terra miniseries — with her rendition of the Justice Society, I'd be happy to see her on a team book sometime soon.