Review: Wolrds' Finest #19
Putting It Together
I'm not sure what to expect from this issue. I've found Worlds' Finest to be horrible in general, but...I actually liked the last issue. Power Girl's actions were stupid, but she realized her stupidity and corrected it which made it a kind of fun, brief story about the misuse of power. For Helena's part, her breakdown over the death of Damian was so sudden and complete that it actually landed emotionally with me despite the shipshod construction of Helena and Damian's friendship a couple of issues prior.
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Does this issue convince me that Worlds' Finest actually has potential under the current writer, or is this just a case of a broken clock telling the correct time twice a day?
In this issue, Huntress breaks back into the Holt Mansion to uncover his secrets.
Bat Droppings
Seeing as how I am getting this review done nearly a week late, I'm going to do this Bat Droppings style.
1. Kudos to Barry Kitson (writer and artist for L.E.G.I.O.N., artist for Azrael, and penciler for Titans and current artist for Worlds' Finest and Vertigo's Fairest) for a cool cover design which worked especially well with the gatefold design.
2. Ken Lashley (former artist of Excalibur and current cover artist for The Ravagers, Team 7, Stormwatch, Suicide Squad and Superboy and artist for Worlds' Finest) does the Huntress part of this story, and his style fits quite nicely with Helena. Something about the rough edges really works well for her personality in my opinion.
3. As per usual, Huntress and Power Girl do not operate together. This is one of many factors which have served to make this “team” book nearly laughable.
4. When Huntress grabs the bad guy at the top of page three, she is not wearing a glove even though she is shown to be wearing a glove before and after this scene. This is a pretty huge oversight by the colorist and editors.
5. Huntress finds a weapons dealer, ties him up, and leaves him half naked on the bed. Doesn't she have something more useful to do with her time? She does not find any incriminating evidence on him or even beat him up. Is she trying to embarrass him out of crime?
6. In addition to the cover, Kitson also does some art in this issue, and his style blends with Lashley's about as well as peanut butter blends with motor oil. His style is fine. Again, his cover looks really good, but I hate how this series is determined to keep switching things up with multiple artists on the same book. It's jarring. If you cannot find one single person to handle the book, then at least find people who blend.
7. Power Girl says, “I love to play 'You show me yours...'” I think I would prefer if she stopped saying stuff like this and just went back to losing her clothes every issue. Power Girl likes sex. We get it. It's not even clever at this point; it's just inappropriate. I mean, Kara doesn't just say these sorts of things to Helena as would make sense. She says them to her employees, people she just met, and even herself. This girl must think about sex constantly.
8. I know last issue, Huntress was interrupted in raiding Holt's files because of the news that Damian died, but couldn't she have finished the job before she left. If she was so broken up she could not, how did she get out of Holt's building?
9. Once again, the issue rips us out of the present to show us the past of the Worlds' Finest, and in this past section, nothing important happens. It is literally five pages that could be cut from the issue with no significant information being lost.
10. Also, this section has yet another artist who does an okay job but blends poorly with the other two.
11. Helena mentions that Power Girl hides in plain sight. No, she doesn't hide at all, actually. Is there some explanation of how she is not exposed as a superhero? She makes Clark look like he is cleverly disguised. Kara doesn't even change her demeanor in her civilian identity.
12. Huntress treats a guy very poorly who made the mistake of flirting with her.
13. Michael Holt is revealed to be none other than Desaad which makes no sense on several levels. The first and most obvious being, “When did Desaad become a skull faced person?” He was always just a human looking guy, more or less. It is yet another needless change of the reboot, I suppose.
14. Another reason it does not make sense is that it seems to gain Desaad nothing. He had control over a powerful industry with many scientific technologies, so that might be useful to Darkseid, but he just blew his cover to a whole room full of people, so that does not track. We could say this is meant as an attack on Kara and Helena, but Desaad could just have come up to them and attacked at anytime since he can apparently change appearance. Also, how did he even know who Kara and Helena were, and for that matter, why would he care? Some of these things might be explained in the early issues I missed, or they might be explained in future issues, but considering the writing quality of the series thus far, I doubt it.
15. Desaad should be fairly powerful, so perhaps in the next issue, we will finally see Power Girl actually get into a decent fight.
Conclusion 5/10
I actually thought this issue was okay right after I first read it, but after stewing on it for a little while, I've decided it's still fairly bad. There are not as many moments in the story that are clearly stupid as there were in previous issues, but still, there is a lot of stuff that doesn't make sense and basically boils down to nothing more than sloppy writing. I thought I might be able to recommend it to those really needing a Huntress or Power Girl fix, but no, I can't even do that.
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