Originally posted: HERE

I had actually planned to review Johns' Flash series first, but I think I will do Power Girl, since I recently talked about her as one of the problems with the JSA series.

You see, before Infinite Crisis(which I'm also going to review) there was a lot of buildup. Such as JSA Classified issue 1-4 about Power Girl. Through the most of JSA, she was the bruiser, the one who didn't take crab from anyone, and she was so self-secure that she could be considered arrogant.... Or was that all an act?

In JSA Classified 1-4, she see Power Girl when she is NOT kicking butt for the JSA. And it's a sad sight. Her apartment is a mess, and she haven't changed out of her superhero costume for weeks, since all she does is flying around and punching bad guys. And not only that, she is extremely frustrated over not knowing her background and where she is from, and her tough-gal attitude is a way to hide the fact that she is very vulnerable....

I have... mixed feelings about this.

On one hand, I guess that gives her more character than "badass chick, who's gonna kick your ass," and it also makes her jerk-ish attitude more understandable, I suppose.But it also peeves me of a bit as a feminist. It just feels like the comic is trying to telling us, that if a woman is confrontational, strong and possibly workaholic, it's not because she chose carrer over other things. No, it's because the woman behind the strong, independent wall that won't let anybody in, is(imagine me with a high girly voice at this part) a sad little, fluffy bunny, that will eventually let down her defenses and reveal a tragic back-story!

And just to make my case:

... Yeah, you all know this one.

PeeGee's costume has always been... controversial... and has been the sours for many jokes. And Johns' attempt to make it about the lack of identity is one of the most ridiculed moments in comic-book history.

I mean... SERIOUSLY? You want us to buy that, Johns? The reason to why PeeGee has a gigantic boob-window on her costume is, that she cant fill it out? I mean, call me crazy, but I would make a costume, and THEN sew the emblem on. Making a hole, and then sew an emblem fill up the space just makes it easy for the costume to fall apart.

But I wont go on beating an long-dead horse. My point is, that this series that was suppose to make PeeGee seem more human just made her look like a stereotype. And for those who liked the Power Girl with Ally McBeal philosophy(GOD, I loathe that show!!!), it must have been a huge betrayal to learn that the only reason to why she broke up with the norms for women were, that it helped her hide her insecurity. But maybe I'm putting too much into it...

But the series is drawn by Amanda Conner, so that's something. If you are going to get this one, buy the TPB called "Power Girl". It also has Showcase issue 97-99, which tells us the very first(and very awesome!) Power Girl story! But it also has the two pages from JSA 39, where she makes her dumb speech about her two-bit feminism, which is only made worse by this story telling us that it's all an act. It's like the TPB wants us to believe that Power Girl is full of crab!

That's all for now. I'm Waezi2, and thanks for wasting time with me.

Well, at least we had Conner's amazing art. Ain't nobody who draws the character quite like her.

awwwwwww poor Powergirl!

@ostyo said:

I'll drink on that!

But then again, EVERYTHING she draws is awesome.

@waezi2: Cheers to dat!

You actually read that?

@dimitridkatsis: Sure, PeeGee is my favorite superhero.

You win. You just do.

What do I win? :O

@waezi2:

And a cookie. One of those awesome half-baked, goey chocolate chunk kind that's the size of your face.

@waezi2: Power Girl was originally created to be arrogant, and for good reason, she was the smartest person in the room; at least in her initial adventure. Johns famously didn't like her and didn't understand her, and said so, back in the old DCUMB, before he finally gave in to fan demand and included her in the JSA. But he wrote her unevenly at best, and totally wrong at worst. Whining and crying is not the Power Girl personality. Punching her problems in the face is. Even if it's a little too headstrong and unwise. But later, as other writers took over, she grew up and out of the charge in and hit something with no plan phase. But it seems that whenever Johns got her, he wrote her as the damsel in distress, crying and needing to be rescued, where at the same time SG would not have.

BTW, for a look at the old time Palmiotti/Connor PG goodness, try the current arc of Harley Quinn. Especially the first issue, though the second issue has a shout out to their run on the Power Girl solo.

@achilles100:

To be fair, Power Girl did kick a fair amount of ass in JSA. And Johns made her the leader of the JSA in his second JSA series.

But it did feel like he wasn't completely conferrable with writing her.

Johns gets props from me for being the first person to do something with PG for whatever reason since...well, I guess you could count CC in S7, but more to the point Giffen and company over in JLE/JLI, and perhaps Peter David in Aquaman, who at least used her.

And yeah, even for making her the leader of the JSA. But he loses points for not understanding her, when he had plenty of people right there explaining her appeal to him.

I have this arc in a trade that also includes the Justin Gray/Jimmy Palmiotti run.

I liked their take on the character better.

@xwraith: It was an interesting take, but it had problems. The first was that it wasn't shared by enough people to really force TPTB at DC to take her seriously---almost all the loss in readers in readers the title suffered occurred during their run.

The second, and probably the reason for the first, was that it was too one-note and inconsequential. Funny PG and her adventures with her sudden and for no apparent reason BFF Atlee that really never mattered outside of the title itself, or in fact outside of the individual issue they appeared in. A better approach IMO would have been to intersperse the "funny" PG with a more serious version, and to add elements and antagonists who mattered to the wider DCU.

That was attempted...sort of, in a lackluster way, in the Winick issues, but he was hamstrung by tying it in, very loosely, in a way that made her presence ultimately irrelevant, to his JLI maxi-series. In that series, she appears in a few issues, and even kicks the JSI's collective butts for a while until Winick pulls a deus ex machina out of thin air, but ultimately, she could just as easily not been there, since she made no difference to the outcome of the story, or even its dramatic impact.

Another problem was that no one ever found her a unique niche in the wider DCU. She was another Supergirl, the one who didn't get the Superman Family crossovers. And SG had by that point been altered from her original admittedly bland personality to one that was somewhat closer to that of classic PG herself, (though by no means the same). PG had no mission besides being a hero. She had and has no real rogue's gallery of any merit. She has no unique DCU city, merely the New York that Palmiotti, Gray, and Connor gave her because evidently that's their place, without much other reason. A city BTW that should have already been more than sufficiently defended, but then that's also a Marvel argument, and by no means the biggest strike against her.

And for an alien with the powers of a god, she had remarkably little interaction with DC's outerspace universe. No crossovers with any of the GL titles for example, (again, in the nu52 it's SG who gets that, as well as her preboot LOSH stuff, and other assorted cosmic forays). Yet she's fundementally a sci-fi hero, based on her origin.

It should be easy to make a PG solo title that sells well, but for some reason, DC hasn't figured it out yet.