#it was a millstone around the neck of the N52 worlds' finest book

[cantsayidont]

November 2023. I've long since accepted that solo Power Girl stories are probably always going to be dreadful, and the dreary first issue of the new POWER GIRL book by Leah Williams (following on her equally dreary POWER GIRL SPECIAL, which at least had Marguerite Sauvage) suggests that that's not going to change any time soon. Some creative highlights of this bold new direction for Power Girl:

A stupid name-change. Rather than calling Power Girl "Kara," which is of course her actual name, or "Karen Starr," the name she's been using since 1977, she's now called "Paige," an arbitrary suggestion from the "Super-Family" so they won't confuse her with their real cousin, the one they care about. Come on.

Still more insufferable gay-baiting. The New 52 WORLDS' FINEST series with Power Girl and the Huntress was relentless in this regard, and of course anything involving Harley Quinn is always on beyond zebra. This time, Power Girl is gal-palling it up with former Teen Titan Lilith Clay (now calling herself Omen). If you just flipped through these books without reading closely, you would assume Kara and Lilith were girlfriends — they live together and walk around holding hands, and they share some kind of astral-psychic bond — but rather than finally committing to Power Girl actually being gay, there are various wink-wink-nudge-nudge ass-covering asides to assure us that "Paige" and Lilith are totes no-homo besties. Come on.

More screwing around with her powers. DC has been through this repeatedly with Power Girl: de-powering her, changing her powers, trying to give her weird magical abilities that aren't part of the standard Kryptonian power set, rinse, repeat. This time, Power Girl has been made over as "a rookie psychic" with a reality-shattering "astral-punching" ability obviously stolen, quite shamelessly, from Marvel heroine America Chávez — who, if you aren't familiar, is a reality-punching, super-strong lesbian from a utopian all-lesbian parallel dimension. So … Power Girl is now a totes no-homo DC knockoff of America? Come on!

Then, there's the cumbersome yellow explanatory caption box:

Does this mean EVERY version of Kara must now have been sent to Earth "to look after her younger cousin"? That was not part of Supergirl's pre-Crisis history, and it certainly wasn't part of Power Girl's! At the risk of being a joyless feminist buzzkill, defining DC's most powerful superheroines in terms of their erstwhile caregiving role for a younger male relative (in the face of the near-extinction of their world and people, yet) is a really bad look. I hate it!

How much of this should be blamed on Williams and how much is editorially imposed is hard to say — DC has always struggled to find anything to do with Power Girl, or even ways to portray her that don't just come down to "What if Supergirl were kind of mean and really stacked, with a more confusing origin?" — but it certainly isn't good.

#comics #power girl #leah williams #eduardo pansica #júlio ferreira #kara zor l #lilith clay #i'm also not convinced that the “refugee from a lost timeline/dimension/parallel world” plot is sustainable for an ongoing series #it was a millstone around the neck of the N52 worlds' finest book #and the tomasi/gleason superman rebirth series finally had to just drop it arbitrarily #because it was confusing and didn't have any real direction #i am also not keen on earth-0 being renamed earth prime #that used to mean something very different! #prime earth is not the same as earth prime #which was supposed to be OUR real world