You're Not Alone Girl, Now Live
I knew it. As soon as I saw the solicited version of the cover, I knew it. The original solicited version, which I thought was GORGEOUS, was an unfinished picture. The finished version is painfully too bright and colorful and makes the whole thing feel too standard. The unfinished version seemed intentional, an off shade of extremely dulled colors to suit the atmosphere. But nope, now its SUPER BRIGHT ORANGE GUISE! Sigh.
The interior art has MUCH better colors, not like the unfinished cover, but DEFINITELY a bit more muted than the cover. All around there's some stellar work done with the colors, usually when they've done it more like this in this series it hasn't worked, but this issue has the exact right setting.
It's interesting how Green and Johnson have managed to fully utilize every aspect of this arc. It began with Supergirl making her first friend on Earth, encountering magic for the first time, making a sacrifice, fighting her first Earth supervillain... and now we get to use what that lead us into as a pretext to explore Supergirl's memories. Sure things are a bit fractured, but the slightly surreal nature makes for some excellent storytelling. Even 'magic' as an explanation for everyone being able to understand each other in Black Banshee's 'soul world doesn't feel forced. Plus we get an explanation of some of the plot hiccups that bothered me last issue.
The pencils are exactly as nice as I've come to expect from Asrar, from the scenic memory locations on Krypton to the badass dragon soulform of Black Banshee to Supergirl's 'Kryptonial Knight' armor and crazy sci-fi swords... it's awesome. We don't get quite as much action as I would've liked, I guess it balances out from the action abundance last issue, but this issue's action seemed more interesting and held more potential.
In Conclusion: 4/5
Fixing the little holes from the previous issue, and giving us some really nice new stuff; plus it managed to tie in some nice character backstory exploration without feeling forced. The only problem I have is one more with the series itself, in that Supergirl STILL doesn't know any freaking English, and I'm just not that thrilled about seeing her stay in this 'misunderstanding-created public enemy' kind of status quo. It's been done to death, but really is just doesn't work here. She needs to get used to Earth life, making her public enemy when she's now settling in with friends YET still doesn't speak their language AND she's considered a threat? AND can't Superman vouch for her at this point? Whatever, this issue itself was perfectly great.
