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.
I'm puzzled why DC left out the last 2 pages of JSA Classified 4 when they released this trade?
ReplyDeleteFrom what I could tell, all the pages of JSA Classified were there, but then they also added two pages from the JSA Power Girl profile issue, #39. If you have the original issues, what specifically was missing?
ReplyDeleteHere is a rundown of the 2 missing pages of JSA Classified 4 from the Power Girl trade:
ReplyDeletePage 21 - a conversation between Psycho Pirate & Alex Luthor on Power Girl's role.
Page 22 - Clayface shows up at Power Girl's apartment disguised as Wildcat then surprises her by changing back with a footnote saying "To be continued in Infinite Crisis 2".
I can understand the position of DC in not wanting to end the book on a cliffhanger to a different story. My preference would be for the two pages to be included as an addendum explaining how these pages then lead into Infinite Crisis - I hate pages being omitted.
ReplyDeleteIf you want to see more Amanda Conner art, she just finished a run on the Power Girl series, and she just picked up a gig as cover artist for some new Black Cat thing at Marvel.
ReplyDeleteYou're right; her art IS fun.