The Woman who has everything - Showcase #98

When the Symbioship Strikes

Showcase #98

Cover Dated: March 1978
Released: 15th December 1977

We start with another splash page of ugly Power Girl, one so bad she has a look of dull surprise at the attack by the reporters in the red Power Armour. It takes another few pages before we get the reveal that the armour is actually Power Girls Symbioship, something that I apparently missed any mention before this moments.

The fight goes badly before Kara realises that she, and the cops that keep getting in trouble, can't beat the armour directing and instead uses a piece of metal to weigh down the armour to get the reporter out and shut the armour down. At this moment she actually says she learned it from Wildcat and thank him for such things, which is amazing seeing how often the two have ended up fighting in the past. She then leaves the Gotham taking the ship with her, and the reporter who grabs hold of her to get the whole story. It's also strange that in Showcase it shows her leaping around, like the OG Superman, even though in the past she's just been happily flying around. I guess it's all part of the idea to compare all this to the original Goldern Ages Supes and Super Girl.

We then get a cutaway to Brainwave, finally revealed as our big bad for the final part of the story, who goes from a cop disguise, to the supervillain look that he'd took when Power Girl (and the rest of the League) first meets him, to his classic Doctor Sivana look. Apparently, he finally gets the part he needs and finishes the device, which attracts the attention of two other heroes who cameo here for their appearance in Showcase #99.

But the main body of our issue is about Power Girl as we find that her father programmed the Pod to create a virtual reality that she grew up in, twenty years over the sixty she apparently spend in transition. It's also called an Artificial Reality as VR wouldn't be a thing for a good decade or so, and described as a dreamworld. She grew up within this VR with her family growing up to her teenage years and going to her Kryptonian Space Prom. It's here where they suggest that the transition from this VR to the real world was pretty rough on Kara, explaining her slightly prickly behaviour in the League. All this is a setup for Power Girls own (Wo)Man Who has Everything moment, eight years before Superman does it, where she grabbed by the Pod and restored to the VR world.

Again in the virtual world, she has a continuation of her life, long-haired in more traditional dresses looking more like Supergirl. First, the VR tries to provide her with a perfect boyfriend, but she pulls away from the guy and we never see him again so she's obviously not into the boys (Kara and Helena for life!). It then changes tact and provides her with an education and a potential job in something, apparently, tech-related. Maybe this is the origin of Kara's future in tech-related companies and such, we shall see how this all pans out in future. And because we're dealing with a female character she of cause has to have a child, though this is the moment when she manages to break out of the pod again. Though we never see her with a space husband, so apparently that's not something she's after in her "perfect" future.

 

Breaking out she bounces away from the pod only to find she arrives at the Superman museum, the pod makes one last attempt but our reporter finally does something useful and turns on a holographic projection of Krypton. This confuses the pod enough for Power Girl to shut down the VR and apparently destroys the pod (though it gets better). Apparently, she's learned a lesson about teamwork from all this, thanks to the reporter for helping her escape the pod.

The whole issue is obviously pushing a narrative to explain why Power Girl has been so acerbic in the past, with an ending suggested that she might be softening slightly. We'll see how this last going on back in the League, though we'll see some of this in the next Showcase, this being the last issue of her solo before rejoining part of the team.