Web of Fear - Power Girl #4

Destiny

Power Girl #4

Cover Date: September 1988

Released: 7th June 1988

⋅ Writers: Paul Kupperberg ⋅ Pencilers: Rick Hoberg ⋅ 

⋅ Inkers: Arne Starr ⋅ Colourists: Julianna Ferriter ⋅

⋅ Letterers: Bob Pinaha ⋅ Editors: Robert Greenberger ⋅ 

Continued from Power Girl #3.

This issue is the weird astral space trip that you'd find in a classic Doctor Strange issue, indeed we get some very Dikto-like panels. We get a few pages getting everyone up to speed and then we face the first challenge in this magical realm, a giant wall!

After trying brute force and speed to get through the wall, she's helped by a small fluffy imp called Ghy, who seems to be on Kara's side despite looking all evil. They explain that the wall works on least resistance; all she needs to do is walk through the wall and she's all fine.

We then go through a forest where she faces all her fears from the real world. As a reminder, we get a page from the real world where the board members of her company are waiting around for Karen Starr, who's at least an hour late to the meeting to save her company.

Kara is however busy fighting not!Ted Grant, playing on those introduced insecurities. He then proceeds to beat her down before she's swamped by all her friends that declare her a failure throwing her out of a window. We then get deeper with her parents, both Kryptonian and Atlantian tell her how little they want her around and hows she's a disappointment to them.

Finally, she meets the mastermind behind all this, The Weaver, an old Lord of Chaos who's been trapped in a shrinking Darkworld, his power diminished by the progress of technology over magic. We then cut to her friends in the real world, who are worried that Karen's not been seen for hours, despite the company trying to contact her about the upcoming disaster.

Kara meanwhile gets to fight Khater her very barbarian "brother" from Ancient Atlantis. Again the fight goes badly with the blasts from his sword causing her to go all bendy in some weird frames of her being tortured by lots of teeny tiny demons. Apparently defeated she has her head on a literal chopping block, her barbarian brother about to give the killing blow, but the blow does nothing because it's all illusions.

Finally figuring that everything here is all mind tricks she begins to turn things around, as is tradition around this point in these kinds of stories, centering herself and letting go of all her fears. Now on the offensive she first defeats her brother easily, showing that he's actually some kind of snake demon type thing that gets thrown down from the floating rocks that make up this part of Darkworld.

We're getting to the end of the issue now so whilst she doesn't get to fight Weaver directly she's apparently defeated him by conquering her fears so he just sends her back to behind the wall and after that gets to go back to the real world. Quick scene from the Phantom Stranger saying that she should help others against the fight against the Lord of Chaos and we find that with the Weavers influence gone everything has been reversed and Kara's business and friends are all back on top. Oh and these friends we never see them ever again, apart weirdly for the lawyer that will get one more appearance in a couple of years!

I could imagine this as one of those weird episodes of a television show where the main character faces their fears to discover the strength within to defeat the bad guy, probably with excessive use of the fog machine. The problem here is that unlike a show that gets 6 to 10 (or twenty-odd in the old days) we've not had enough time to get to know all the other characters for this to work. Even Kara's fall into apparent despair, which is why she's on the back foot through this issue, hasn't really been played out properly going from normal to bad in just a few pages. I figure two more issues just setting up the company and people better and this story would probably work much better.

I might be down on some parts of the issues, but as a whole, I enjoyed these issues. And despite this being the last of this solo series for Power Girl we still have a few more issues in a similar vein!