Showcase #99 - The Crater That Was Keystone City

 

THE CRATER THAT WAS KEYSTONE CITY
SHOWCASE #99

Published: 17th January 1978
Cover Date: April 1978
Cover Artists: Joe Staton / Dick Giordano
Writer: Paul Levitz
Penciler: Joe Staton
Inker: Dick Giordano
Colourist: Adrienne Roy
Letterer: Shelly Leferman
Editors: Joe Orlando

Introduction
Apart from a few pages, we're well out of the formation of the rebooted Pee Gee, instead, we see how she'll work with the rest of the JSA. Now those bits are very important, but that doesn't mean the rest of the comic isn't interesting in itself.

Synopsis

We start with a full splash page of Brainwave ranting that his computer can't find Power Girl, with the computer apparently using a beauty shot of the woman herself! Meanwhile, Kara herself is finally setting up a secret identity, with the help of Andrew Vinson, she's become Karen Starr a software expert (it was the 70s you have to excuse them not knowing what a programmer was) getting a job at Ultimate Computer Corporation. The next time we see Karen's programming job, she'll be running her own business and we never see UCC again in any situation. In a missed, in my opinion, opportunity she didn't learn about computers in the bioships virtual reality but by using a memory teacher from the Amazons! This means that the Amazons of Earth-2 understand advanced computers enough to fill Kara full of that knowledge. We also learn during the interview/tour that about a week has passed since the last issue. When someone excitedly explains that Keystone City has disappeared Kara rushes off to investigate.

We get a quick change of costume and a reminder that she doesn't fly but reaches things by a series of bounds before we reach a much too-small crater for Keystone City. A giant hologram head of Brainwave makes his demands and an introduction to the National Guard before Pee Gee leaps through the hologram saying that the JSA, his target, won't ever surrender! He then unleashes a couple of tripods that have what appear to be disintegration rays, in a not-subtle nod to the Martian tripods from War of the Worlds. Pee Gee seems unconcerned that a couple of soldiers getting zapped, which suggests that (hopefully) she knows it isn't quite so deadly. She takes one down just before a couple of machine gunners also get disintegrated. It's only then that she decides to get the remaining soldier out of the range of the remaining tripod. Brainwave gloates showing he has captured both Green Lantern (Alan Scott) and The Flash (Jay Garret).

When a whole new load of tripods show up Pee Gee decides not to put anyone else in potential danger and steps up to allow herself to be disintegrated, which finally proves that it's just a fancy way to teleport people to Brainwave lair. He's gloating and paying off the goons who've been handing the tripods before we see that Pee Gee has been placed in an amber bubble. In an unfortunate choice from the artist that whilst the two male heroes, are also in similar bubbles, they stand upright whilst Pee Gee is on her all fours which (alas) I think of as the Spider Woman pose. She's also pretty unhappy about it as after being all bad-ass about things she flipps on her back and kicks her way out of the amber prison without any real difficulty.

Brainwave has obviously prepared for something like this as he unleashes a massive green monster in a full-page spread of it attacking Pee Gee. She fights it for a whole page of back and forward before she decides to defeat it by throwing a whole load of goons at the monster that seems to keep it distracted so she can finally deal with Brainwave. Freeing the two other heroes they take Brainwave into custody, and in a sudden a bugger we need to end this, they quickly figure out how to put Keystone back to its place.

Final Thoughts

After the massive lore dumps of the last two issues, this is a lot less impressive, apart from the first appearance of Karen Starr an identity that she'll keep for the next forty-five years (on and off), and despite the doomsayer will probably use again at some point in the future. Really it's probably a filler as they had plans for issue #100, the fights aren't impressive and the other two heroes don't do anything, including speak, for the entire comic!