Who is Power Girl? Part 1 - JSA Classified #1
Power Trip, Part I
⋅ Writers: Geoff Johns ⋅ Pencilers: Amanda Conner ⋅
Remember last issue when I said that when a character gets a focus issue it was normally there last? Well, Power Girl not only buck that trend, but she also gets four issues all of her very own!
The reason for that is that despite it not being mentioned anywhere, this four-part series is a lead into Infinite Crisis and fixes the thorny issue of Kara's origins. Though it's probably worth mentioning that whilst thanks to blog time it's only been a month or so, in real-time it's been nineteen years since her Atlantean origin was established. This means almost a generation of readers knew this as her origins, well sort of it seems like it's very rarely mentioned after the big push at the start.
We start with the retelling of Power Girl's origin, the Kryptonian origin, including a take on the classic Supergirl / Superman first meeting. Apparently, only Batman doubted she was Superman's cousin, because of cause he does! This is all being told by Kara whilst she's being tested by Dr Mid-nite, the original one, whilst she's describing herself as a cheap knock off. Here we find out that for some reason Power Girl has none of the classic Kryptonian weaknesses and has also somehow perfectly normal, ie not laser eye emitting ones. As Dr Mid-nite is explaining this while Kara is changing back into her costume, with a cute visual callback as the screens show all her old costumes. Skipping around as we are, we missed where Pee Gee discovered that her apparent Atlantean origin was also bogus, and she's sick a tired of being messed with.
Though this isn't completely true as we have her travel back to her apartment, having to break the lock (a common occurrence) as her costume isn't exactly somewhere where you can keep your keys. Apparently, the world was introduced to her as Supers cousin and has kept away since learning she wasn't, including a conversation with Martha about how gutted Clark is not to know either way. We also get a quick cameo by her orange cat, a rather fluffier one than we'll meet in the 80s though I still think of him as the same old Stinky!
She doesn't have time to feel sorry for herself as her distance vision kicks in and she's able to see someone in trouble from fifty blocks away, and without thinking she flies off to rescue the man who's fallen from a window cleaning rig. All the time we get the inner monologue about her ruining her secret identity, the punch line of which is the not looking at her face only her boobs. For some reason, it's a surprisingly common joke at the time, which has probably cemented the idea for many that Power Girl is just giant breasts and nothing more. It's frustrating as this very story takes a lot of effort to show she has more going on, though to be fair to the comic it's also trying to show that she's pretty body positive.
That's the least of Kara's problems as we have her being attacked by Garn Daanuth, the evil sorcerer and brother of Arion, the reason that Atlantean origin Power Girl was sent to the modern-day. She gets beaten around for a bit before getting the glowing red eyes of anger, remember at the start she didn't have that power and begins to beat down Garn. Or appears to as when the JSA turn up it seems she was fighting nothing. Despondent Kara flies away feeling despondent and unhappy with herself.
We end with a mysterious figure in a run-down theatre revealing what appears to be three of the Legion of Super-heroes!
Cards on the table this is more or less where I came into Power Girl, this is the version of Kara that has the most resonance with me. It helps that it's a pretty solid story, with a mystery at its heart that explores the convoluted mess that was at the time that was Power Girl's origins. When I was thinking of this blog that and the '09 series was the go-to as to why I wanted to do this, and I've come back to this one a couple of times both before and during this run through comics with Power Girl in them.
So yeah I kinda like this one!
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