Showcase #97 - Power Girl

POWER GIRL*
SHOWCASE #97
*The issue's story is unnamed.

Published: 15th November 1977
Cover Date: February 1978
Cover Artists: Joe Staton / Joe Orlando
Writer: Paul Levitz
Penciler: Joe Staton
Inker: Joe Orlando
Colourist: Jerry Serpe

Letterer: Ben Oda
Editors: Joe Orlando

Introduction

So this is a little bit of a soft reboot, a DC tradition in itself, I wanted a chance to cover some of the original comics (my original content being terrible) as well as look at a wider range of comics. It's a chance to catch some of those comics in a blank spot I have in the mid-90s.

But where to start? I've covered her original appearance in All-Star Comic #58 several times already, so we're best than the comics that told Power Girls' origins, only two years after she was first introduced. And as is appropriate to my soft reboot Showcase is also a soft reboot of Power Girl, making her if not softer at least a more rounded character.

It's also more relevant than ever, in my opinion, as the run of comics coming out now (in mid-2023) for better or worse is heavily inspired by this three-issue run in Showcase. But that's more for #98 let's cover the basics first...

Synopsis

We start with an action scene with a full-page splash of Pee Gee crashing through the roof into the Central Electronics building. She sasses a few armoured mooks before wrapping them up in a conveyor belt, another shoots her but the bullet has no effect on her Kryptonian physiology though it bounces off towards one of the hostages. She lets the mook escape to catch the bullet before it can harm the man. In two pages we get a fair good feeling for Power Girl as a sassy but caring hero. 

The mook has however escaped in a fairly snazzy tracked vehicle and Pee Gee chases it into the Gotham Rail Yard. It's a little fuzzy here but Pee Gee doesn't fly but like her cousin (Superman obs) originally did she leaps buildings in a single bound. He tries to lose her by cutting in front of a train, but she stops the train, apologizing to the driver before she goes back after the mook that has used his vehicle to climb a nearby skyscraper. She surprises him by leaping up to grab him, managing to rip off a suicide vest before it can hurt either of them, dumping it to explode in the Gotham harbour.

In case you've not been keeping track she's shown to be faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound...

After this introduction the press close in to get a quote from Pee Gee, where we see her more prickly side when we see the mostly male reporters. The one who gets the full err of his displeasure was Andrew Vinson, Daily Globe, who she leaves on the roof of a building after warning him away. In her defence, he was being pushy insisting she owed the public details of her background. He still doesn't get the hint a follers her as she leaps out of the city into the countryside.

After a hard day busting villains for some reason, Power Girl decides to take a nap in the forest. As she settles down we get her feeling that she's all alone on Earth, and we get her actual origin for the first time. On Earth-2 Kandor doesn't get shrunk by Brianac and she and her parents lived there. Knowing that Krypton was doomed Zor-L, thanks to his brother Jor-L, he decides to build a ship to save his toddler daughter. A renowned psychologist (the science of the mind) he makes a few tweaks to the rocketship, not able to make one big enough for all three (his wife is unnamed throughout this part, Allura In-Z for the curious) he makes a little one to save Kara, a name only used for her a few months before (All-Star Comics #69, 23rd August 1977). So far apart from being on Kandor rather than Argo all fairly standard for the other Kara, Supergirl, but this rocketship is a little different than her Earth-1 equivalent...

But for now, we don't learn the difference about her little red rocketship, instead, she wakes from her knap to leap away, just at the same time Andrew manages to catch up with her. We don't have time to deal with this as she faces a couple of tripods, piloted but the same kind of goons as at the start of the story. She quickly figures out that the goons are after something from a warehouse at the Gotham Department of Public Safety, and stops them from stealing the device. Again a bunch of reporters are sent flying when they try to ask her questions before the issue ends with Andrew Vinson flying in trapped in a fancy red suit of power armour!

Final Thoughts

For an origin issue, they really don't make them like this anymore! Her actual origin story is told halfway through the issue, and important details are (for reasons that will be important) left out. We do get a good sense of who Pee Gee is as a character though, and even though her prickly side is still showing, as she's been throughout her appearances in All-Stars we start to get more of a softer side, with the hint that as a Kryptonian she feels lonely and doesn't really fit in with the inhabitants of Earth. 

The one thing that doesn't work for me is Andrew, he feels forced in this issue and as the relationship between Pee Gee and Andrew is antagonistic, and not in a Lois Lane kind of way, we don't really get a chance to warm to him as a character.