Marguerite Sauvage

This is the first volume in a series of alternate history in which World War II's Allied Powers have a secret weapons: the Bombshells, a collection of super-powered women from the DC Universe, including Aquawoman, Batwoman, Supergirl, Wonderwoman, and so on. In this version of the DC superhero world, it doesn't appear that Batman or Superman exist ... or really any superbeings of vigilantes that aren't female, with the exception of John Constantine. (There are, however, plenty of male show more soldiers, businessmen, etc.) This first volume seemed largely concerned with introducing the large cast of characters. Even though the characters are all ones already from the DC Universe, they now have different backstories/origins, so each woman needed a short story more or less describing how she got to that point. I anticipate/hope that the next volume will get more into the meat of the story. The writing is very well done, especially the witty repartee dialogue and interactions between the main characters, and the illustrations are for the most part very good as well. show less

Access a version of the below that includes illustrations on my blog.

I'm not really in touch with DC continuity these days; I left off as a regular reader around the time of Convergence (which I never even finished), and that was over six years ago; I think the only things I've read since then have been some Tom King miniseries (are those even in continuity?) and N. K. Jemisin's Far Sector. So I didn't really have any context for this book; I think Power Girl's backstory has been rolled back show more to something approaching its pre-Flashpoint state, but I am not really sure. Mostly this doesn't matter to the story being told, but I didn't really know the status of the Super family, or why PG would feel excluded from them.

The premise of the book is pretty odd, to be honest. Some kind of event results in Power Girl obtaining psychic powers, so she and a new-to-me superhero with the not-very-heroic name of Ruin open a superhero counseling business. While Ruin talks to the heroes in the real world, Power Girl (physically?) journeys into their minds, helping clear away issues. I think probably there's a good story to be told about Power Girl adapting her often fists-first approach to something more nuanced, but this seemed to be more of a mediocre one. Like, it's not bad... but I also didn't find a lot to enjoy here. There's some neat puzzles to be solved, but Power Girl didn't totally ring true to me, and I would happily never see Johnny Sorrow in a JSA comic ever again—or, really, any kind of psychic manipulator trying to take down Power Girl.

Power Girl ditching her civilian identity of Karen Starr and replacing it with "Paige" struck me as pretty pointless. Like, why do that? Would you suddenly have Batman declare that his name is Ryder now? No, of course not; it's the kind of desperate fiddling one only does to a second-tier character... but it's the kind of fiddling that never works because it just confirms to the reader that they're reading about a second-tier character. Give it a decade or two and I'm sure she'll be Karen again. On the other hand, I did like the reckoning between her and Supergirl, which had some nice moments.

I like Maurgerite Sauvage's art style. She draws two-thirds of the book and has a distinctive, character-driven approach... but man, what is up with those thick black lines around everyone's eyes? It makes everyone look demented and ruins what would otherwise be a good effect.

Surely the real highlight of the book is the covers—and I say this as the kind of person who normally doesn't get very excited about comic book covers. I'm not very into the Stanley Lau cover for Power Girl Special #1 that was chosen for the collection cover (his stuff never looks very naturalistic to me), but the Warren Louw cover for Action Comics #1051 and the Will Jack covers for Action Comics #1053 and Power Girl Special were excellent, beautiful work. Plus, of course it's fun to get Amanda Conner back even if just on a variant (for Power Girl Special again) and I did like the David Nakayama variant for Power Girl Special, which features PG with her old Justice League International teammates Fire and Ice... though it seems a bit misleading DC used this on the back cover, given neither character appears in the actual book! My kids saw me reading this book and kept asking me about the characters, and now my five-year-old not only knows who Fire and Ice are, but can tell you that Fire used be called "the Green Flame" and Ice "Icemaiden"!

So, yeah, I do love Power Girl, but while this is a perfectly serviceable comic, it doesn't capture what I love about the character. Surely PG at her best will remain the Amanda Conner ongoing, as well as her old JLI/JLE appearances.

The Justice Society and Earth-Two: « Previous in sequence show less

I had reservations about a comic book series based on a statue line, but okay, sure, I used to read comics based on toys all the time (Rom, Micronauts, Transformers, etc.) so I guess that's not a big deal. And I enjoyed flipping through The Art of DC Comics Bombshells a couple years back.

The statues and the art book are just basically cheesecake, so I was surprised that beyond Marguerite Sauvage and cover artist Ant Lucia, the other ten artists who illustrate the stories in this book aren't show more very strong when it comes to that style of art, churning out fairly generic superhero pages. (And some of them really need to dig out some WWII photo reference once in a while, because their uniforms and equipment are shamefully shoddy.)

To offset the cheesecake, there's an attempt to give the story a feminist slant. And I like that the writer wanted to give the heroines strong, independent personalities and storylines, but too many characters are juggled in too many settings doing too many things to give any individual much chance to actually develop as a person. And of course whatever they are doing still has to generously focus on T&A.

Not well drawn, not well written, not much more than a time-wasting muddle. show less

I wasn't sure if I was going to like this series or not. It's based on statues to start with. But, on the other hand it takes place during World War II and stars a bunch of kick butt women well... kicking butt.

Overall this particular first volume was a teeny bit scattered, but that was mostly because they felt like they had to introduce, like, all the characters. From Batwoman, to Wonder Woman, to Poison Ivy and Harley, etc. etc.

By the end the stories all start come together and I really show more look forward to reading the rest of the volumes in this series for sure.

(Oh, and maybe it's just me reading too much into these things, but, they all seem to be somehow, someway on the bi/lesbian/pan/etc. spectrum. Wishful thinking? Heh). show less