Justin Gray

God exists, and He hates me. How do I know this? He permitted the existence of a second volume of Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters. (Actually, he permitted the existence of still more, but in His mercy He left those ones uncollected.) Only the sheer deep-rootedness of my completist instincts can explain why I read this: given that I'd read the previous volume and that it takes place during Countdown to Final Crisis, I felt compelled to read it, but now that I've typed that it out, it seems show more a wholly inadequate explanation for why I inflicted this on myself. Perhaps I, like God, hate me.

This is like the first volume, but worse if you can imagine it. Nothing that any character does in here mean anything; I want to give Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti the benefit of the doubt, but this reads like sheer hackwork, comics vomited out to fulfill some kind of contractual obligation. (Is DC required to publish stories featuring the characters/concepts they inherited from Quality Comics? Surely nothing else could explain their insistence of releasing terrible comic after terrible comic featuring them.) One imagines they wrote each issue in mere minutes, never edited a word, and then laughed as they cashed their paychecks. (2007-08 was a good time for them and shit writing, given they were also partly responsible for Countdown to Final Crisis.) As a fan of what I've read of Christopher Priest's run on The Ray, I'm glad he's not alive so he didn't have to witness their utter ineptitude in handling the characters he poured so much brilliance into.

The only person more guilty than the writers of this comic is its artist. Seriously, Renato Arlem's art is irredeemably bad and completely terrible. A heavy user of Photoshop, characters usually don't move from panel to panel, and images are reused in different contexts despite inappropriate poses and facial expressions, and what the dialogue and narration indicate ought to be happening is often wholly undepicted in the artwork. That anyone has ever hired him to "draw" anything boggles my mind. I can only assume that since 50% of his drawings are reused, he costs 50% of other artists. (Caleb Mozzocco has said much the same at me, but at length, and with pictures.)

Don't be like me. Don't make my mistake. Don't turn on God. Don't read this book!

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

When I reread the "Power Trip" arc of JSA Classified, I was reminded of how awful Geoff Johns's writing was... but also what a brilliant artist Amanda Conner was, and what a good fit she was for the buoyant, expressive Power Girl. So I decided to pick up this collection, which contains all twelve issues of her run on Power Girl vol. 2. (Unfortunately, it also includes that terrible JSA Classified story, but I skipped it show more rather than suffer through it a third time. Note that Geoff Johns gets first billing on the cover for writing just four of the seventeen issues included here, whereas Amanda Conner—the only person to work on all seventeen and the volume's clear star—is down in fourth. Must be nice to be the former president of DC!)

The twelve issues of Power Girl collected here run concurrently with Justice Society of America vol. 3 #29-40 and JSA All-Stars vol. 2 #1-6, taking place during the time when Power Girl is leading the JSA. (When the volume opens, the team seems to be unified still; by the time of the closing arc, it has split up, and Magog has left.) But the story's focus is on the fact that despite what's happening with the Justice Society, Power Girl is no longer frustrated at her lack of a clear origin, and just trying to be herself—whoever that may be. So for the first time in a long while, she's reactivated her civilian identity of Karen Starr, and is using it to build a technology company while she moves out of the JSA brownstone into an apartment of her own. She develops friendships, and builds up her own supporting cast. There's even her cat from her JLI days.

It's one of those runs that you can't point to a single issue and say "this is an amazing comic book" but where you can point to the whole and say "this is what a superhero comic book should be." It's funny, it's charming, it's goofy, it has a unique personality all its own. Sometimes Power Girl is battling the Ultra-Humanite and his former lover Santana, but sometimes she's stopping alien girls gone wild and a virile alien warlord who wants to repopulate his sterilized planet, sometimes she's helping out a teenage boy by going comic book shopping with him. Writers Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti have admittedly produced some real shit in their time at DC, but this plays to their strengths—or at least to Conner's, who is surely in the Top Ten of superhero comics artists, and consistently elevates any material she is given.

In Conner's hands, comedy, action, and emotion all get good play, letting the whole story come alive. Sometimes the main conflict of one of these stories will end halfway through an issue, and the rest will just be about Power Girl chilling with her sidekick/new friend Terra—and it is always a delight. Conner hits the perfect note with PG's physical appearance, giving us a woman who is attractive but not objectified. I mean, Gray and Palmiotti definitely write in gratuitous moments, but they feel natural and part of the story. (Which is not always the case with Power Girl; shortly before writing this review, I read JSA All-Stars #1, where PG's costume gets strategically torn in such a way as to reveal her entire midriff, and where her boobs are always hanging in "attractive" unnatural positions... bleh.)

Like many great runs, the worst thing about it is that it wasn't longer; I gladly would have read another twelve issues from this team. I felt that the supporting cast at Karen's new company barely got started in what they could do, and I want more Kara and Atlee bonding in New York City. But even though this comic lasted another fifteen issues, Judd Winick took over as writer and it became (to my understanding, anyway) a Brightest Day tie-in; neither the writer nor the change of focus appeals. That said, it did make me interested in picking up PG's newest series...

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Technically, I didn't finish this. I picked it up because it featured all sorts of awesome female superheroes and villains, but the art, you guys. I don't always love lady superhero costumes, but I'm also fairly used to them by now. And I usually like the story enough that the costumes aren't a deal-breaker. BUT. When Wonder Woman's special fancy ambassador outfit she wore to speak to the UN (or whatever the comic equivalent is) was a glorified thong and bandeau top, I rolled my eyes so hard show more they almost popped out of my head. It's not like her normal costume, as featured on the cover, is drearily demure and modest.

So I flipped forward to see what the other segments featured and discovered some characters with individual breasts larger than their heads and a PMS joke. And then I was like, screw you guys, it's obvious I'm not your audience here.

There may be an interesting story in these pages, but I can tolerate only so much sexist body representation before I decide my time and money is better spent elsewhere. show less

As anyone who read Harley Quinn #2 will remember, Harley and her amnesiac Kryptonian friend Power Girl were sent through a transporter ring held by the Sportsmaster and the Clock King twice. Readers were treated to their first adventure in space in volume 2. If they wanted to know what happened in the second adventure, which ended with the girls returning with Power Girl in a wedding dress, they had to wait for this.

It seems that Power Girl once helped Lord Vartox of Valeron repopulate his show more planet after he visited Earth in 1974. How is not made clear. He became obsessed with both her and the counter culture. He turned his world into the grooviest place in the universe and filled it with statues and androids that looked like PG. Alas, the girls find him in distress, for his utopia has been invaded and his person captured by a tyrant determined to wipe out hedonism in the universe, the square Oreth Odeox. PG has no memory of Vartox and despises him when she meets him, but he has a teleportation ring that can return her and Harley home, so they must placate the womanizer by liberating his world.

I liked the art, usually. Artist Roux has largely overcome her early difficulty with putting emotion into Harley’s doll face. I didn’t react to the humor with enthusiasm. I didn’t hate it, but I expect to laugh at loud when I’m reading a humorous comic, and I only did that once, during a re-reading. And, honestly, I didn’t like hippies when I was young and I now feel about them the same way Power Girl does. show less