By: Sterling Gates (writer), Jamal Igle (penciller), Jon Sibal and Robin Riggs (inkers), Blond (colorist)
The Story: Nothing like spending the night fighting crime and searching for the one person in the world you hate the most, which is what Supergirl finds herself doing on Christmas Eve—it sure is a wonderful life!
The Review: One of the very fine comic book bloggers out in the webosphere is Rokk Krinn, founder of the Comic Book Revolution. Being an otherwise open-minded reviewer of comics, he had a massive pet peeve for derivative characters, those spun off from already established ones. He felt they lacked originality and crutched on their originator’s cast and image. This meant his distaste fell on quite a number of DC’s galaxy of stars, most of them sidekicks to the big leagues—Batgirl, Superboy, Kid Flash, Miss Martian, and yes—Supergirl.
There’s credit to Rokk’s prejudice, but if writers give derivative characters distinct personalities and motivations, then originality isn’t so much an issue. People love imitations—tune into any pop radio station and you’ll sense that immediately—but no one loves a copy. The best imitators use the original as an outline, then spin it into something new. Sterling Gates has been working to do this since he took over Supergirl, and he’s gotten some good things out of it.
The previous Bizarro-girl storyline was exactly the sort of material Rokk would have hated: pitting an imitation of a hero versus an imitation (a rather weak one, too) of a villain. This issue features a similar matchup with the Dollmaker, essentially a younger Toyman who specializes in the creepiest of all children’s playthings. The Dollmaker has a fairly cliché connection to the classic Superman foe, and the full package of misguided angst. By every definition, the Dollmaker is totally unoriginal.
On the other hand, the Dollmaker is a terrific foil for Cat Grant. When Geoff Johns wrote her return to the Daily Planet, she came off as a campy homage to the Lois & Clark TV series, but did little to flesh out (obvious pun totally intended—take that, America) her character or add to the Superman mythos. As part of Supergirl’s supporting cast, however, she’s gained a lot more purpose. Johns hinted at Cat’s hidden turmoil from losing her son, but never took that story thread anywhere.
Here, Gates pushes Cat into a corner by literally surrounding her with symbols of children in pain, all coming to a head on Christmas Eve, the ultimate children’s holiday if there ever was one. She doesn’t buckle, but strikes back so fiercely that it gives credit to her grief, resilience, and vindictiveness all at the same time. Her dialogue throughout hits the right pitches, but her lashing out at the Dollmaker should go in the books as one of her defining moments, and this one is a gem: “I wouldn’t love you if you were the last child in Metropolis, you little freak.” She’s definitely the star of this issue, but Supergirl comes off spirited as usual, and Lois Lane’s confrontation with Superwoman demonstrates the mixture of straight-talk and sensitivity that makes Lois so attractive to the biggest hero in the DCU. Gates just gets how to write strong women without making them mean or strident.
Gates sacrifices page-time during Supergirl’s fight with the Dollmaker (reducing it to a total of three panels) in favor of a Christmas dinner at the Kent farm that warms the heart and ties up Supergirl’s clash with Cat nicely. Scenes like this really sell DC’s All-American, conservative ideals. Overall, the Dollmaker makes for a pretty bad rogue, but Gates can be forgiven for using him since the result was a step forward in character development for everyone.
Jamal Igle does great facial expressions (he’s particularly good at capturing the fine details of one character’s disgust over another character), and larger panels gives his drawings room to breathe and show off some detail. Once the panels start shrinking, his lines grow muddy and distorted. Some more thought to the battle choreography would be helpful as well.
Conclusion: Great character work overcomes the completely unoriginal villain, but just barely. It’s about time Supergirl gets some original villains of her own instead of yet another watered-down version of her cousin’s gallery of foes. Still, this issue ends Kara Zor-El’s year on a high note, and sets her up for better things to come.
Grade: B
-Minhquan Nguyen
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