Symbol Pending - A Power Girl Blog

When Fall the Mighty All-Star Comics #62 Cover Dated:  September / October 1976 Released:  24th June 1976 Bickering, oh so much bickering! This is one of those middle stories with all the various plots being juggled and the ball all still being in the air. Doctor Fate is lying dying, whilst Zanadu has awoken from amber and is holding Shiera whilst draining all of Tokyo of life. Oh and an 11th-hour appearance, possibly, of an Injustice Society Wildcat. Power Girl spends most of the issue bickering with people, either Wildcat or Superman, oh yeah Superman is in this one, basically the same old tune about being underappreciated. Look I'm obviously a big Kara fan but even I at this point have to admit it's getting a bit too much. With all this is a general malaise among the older heroes, Hourman turning up just for reason, about how it's just not the same being a superhero as it was back in the (Goldern) old days. And with the general soupiness of the whole thing ...

So with the Arrowverse Crisis between episodes it seems to be a good time to talk about one of the weirdest fact about Power Girl and Crisis, she might be the one character that’s survived from them all to the almost present day. Let me explain. Power Girl original started on Earth-2 but around 1985 DC decided that they wanted to simplify a multiverse and so we’ve got Crisis on Infinite Earths., as I’m sure everyone reading is aware. The upshot was that we were Kara short and Power Girl was part of the New Earth. Everyone was rebooted, except Batman because he’s Batman, and because as for some reason you couldn’t have both a Last Son and Daughter of Krypton Kara became an Atlantean. And as stupid as that was that would have been that, but DC wasn’t done having Crisises. Infinite Crisis not only sensibly gave her back her Earth-2 origin it also killed off the last remaining pre-Crisis heroes meaning that she was the last hero from the original universe. And before anyon...

Hellfire and Holocaust All-Star Comics #61 Cover Dated : July / August 1976 Released : 15th April 1976 The issue starts with Christopher Pike as the villain Vulcan, yes really, fighting Green Lantern and Doctor Fate. Doctor fate is injured and Vulcan gets away. But we don't have time for that as we set up not one but two sub plots, the most important for us is Power Girl end up fighting a rather squat alien. Weirdly at this point the comic feels the need to point out that Kara talks about her calling Earth home, as a rather klunky mention that she's a Kryptonian. Along with pointing out that she's not quite as tough as Earth-1's Supergirl. During the battle there's a series of lovely Kirby like panels as she gains knowledge connecting this to the main story. Beep-beep Seems the alien made Vulcan with on fatal flaw, a vulnerability to sunlight, despite the whole thing happening as NASA astronaught was orbiting the Sun, you know that source of sunlig...

Vulcan: Son of Fire All-Star Comics #60 Cover Dated : May / June 1976 Released : 17th Februrary1976 The issues starts with Power Girl and Flash have a race, with Kara pointing out that the Flash is the Fastest Man Alive in a rather cringy scene, even if Power Girl is winning right now. Apparently she's been going stir crazy, has have them all, and wants to be treated as a adult. Seems being kept as a secret by Superman has given her some issues.Wishing for some action has the normal effect as Vulcan, Son of Fire, turns up to fight the group. Meanwhile Green Lantern is having a moment of being part of his secret identity, before Doctor Fate turns up to drag him back to the action. Vulcan meanwhile fights the rest of the group, whilst doing that thing of calling Power Girl a "female", whilst she's kicking his ass for a little balance. He set the place on fire before bailing, though it's unsure why he turned up to just to fight them before bailing. Meanwhi...

Brainwave Blows Up All-Star Comics #59 Cover Dated : March / April 1976 Released : 16th December 1975 Previously: Whilst dealing with standard end of the world shenanigans the JSA come across three heroes who are helping out. Including, importantly to this blog, the new character of Power Girl. The plot whittled three groups down to two and then one as all the heroes new and old join up in space to defeat Brainwaves plan to help an old friend regain his former powers... and oh blow up the Earth. Really half the book is the heroes trying and failing to fight Brainwave, until Power Girl follows that Kryptonian tradition of throwing thing into the sun. Or at least pretending to. As any armchair expert will tell you, and I guess that includes me now, balancing a super team so everyone is difficult. So this issue they don't try and instead focus on the new character, Robin gets to do some detectering, Star Spangled Kid is again pretty dull, but the main focus is, thankfully f...

Beginnings are always a difficult thing, where do you start? Maybe you start with the place in history or its location in the fictional world. So I might say that All-Star Comics #58 was released in October 1975, but cover-dated Jan/Feb 1976 (and obviously thank Mikes Amazing World of Comics). Or mention that the comic isn't set in DC main universe, it's Earth-1 if you will, but Earth-2 where its Golden Age heroes still fought in the Silver Age. I may even make a joke about how the editors thought that this is too confusing, even though it's clearly explained on the splash page. Then mention how this leads to one of the greatest even of the '80s, maybe a faint hint of event fatigue, and how I'll get to it eventually... Or maybe the character herself, the thing is she's not in two-thirds of the comics. First, we have an older Robin, which proves that an adult really shouldn't wear the Robin Costume. And he's very Dick Grayson in nature. Actually, he...

I like Power Girl, and not for the two most obvious reasons! I was lucky enough to originally read the '09 version of the character and fell in love with Kara, I've tried to keep up with her through the years both good and not quite so good. With her Earth-1 counterpart getting much more success nowadays I wanted to celebrate her counterpart from the very beginning. I can't promise any deep inciteful insights into the character but I want to celebrate everything that's great, and not so great, about this version of the Girl of Steel!