By: Kelly Sue DeConnick (writer), Chrisscross (penciller), Marc Deering (inker), Blond (colorist)
The Story: And here I thought college was supposed to get you out of the sewers.
The Review: To capture the audience’s attention and to keep it, even long after the story finishes, you need characters who strike you with as much vitality as a flesh-and-blood person would. Some writers try to do this by piling on the backstory, hoping their meticulously realistic attention to detail will somehow form the character and make him/her live. But it’s so much more effective to let the character interact with the story, revealing their lives in the process.
Look at this issue’s redheaded girl, a member of Henry Flyte’s merry band. Her boast, “We don’t need a map. We’ve got a Henry,” and her assurance that “He’s just messing with us,” indicates an attachment to her leader beyond respect. No one has to point out her possible crush; in fact, mentioning it outright would make it easier for us to dismiss her, a bad choice as she also demonstrates a take-charge attitude and intellect that implies she was probably Hanks’ right-hand woman. That’s a lot of information for us to gather without any of it ever being told to us.
Just imagine what DeConnick does with her star characters. Lois Lane’s craftiness has never had better display, using a mixture of disarming small talk and aggressive questioning to get the answers she wants. After the direct approach fails (she’s caught sneaking and rummaging through the Stanhope College president’s office), she offhandedly mentions Kara’s (feigned) interest in the institution, then slyly segueways into the matter at hand by claiming concern over her “niece’s” safety, leading into the missing students case. Well-played indeed, Lois.
But Kara is the real star here, and she has never shone brighter than in this issue. Though her brittle RA bit last issue was a good look on her and got some laughs, the lengths she goes to protect her “classmates” while deflecting attention from herself gives her a tasteful sweetness (while lifting a metal lab closet: “What…? I work out.”) that recalls Clark Kent doing the same thing in the metahuman prison of Grant Morrison’s All-Star Superman.
DeConnick also has a great handle on her plotting, throwing coincidences together in a way only fiction can to produce a constantly engaging, advancing story. Stanhope’s president acts for an organization called the Foundation, which may be the “frats of some kind of skull and bones-type offshoot” Redhead mentions who possibly and originally built the college’s underground tunnels. When the Foundation demands Ivo speed up his project and he needs fresh test subjects, in walks some prime candidates, Henry’s brainy buddies who’ve come to search for him.
Chriscross makes Kara in action a thrilling sight to behold, especially the splashy panel of Kara zipping around a sewer atrium, blasting away a pack of rat-bots with lances of heat vision. He positions the POV above ground, but sends Kara running, leaping, flying up the stairs with such speed and height she partly leaves the panel, giving us only a glimpse of her outstretched legs before she comes back in sight to finish the job. Although characters’ faces lack consistency and sometimes bulge in occasionally off-putting ways, they still deliver effective expression.
Conclusion: Exciting, funny, with a convincingly credible conflict and some tense stakes, Supergirl is a fine example of what the everyday standard of adventure comics should be.
Grade: A-
– Minhquan Nguyen
Some Musings: – “It’s so funny…people hear ‘investigative reporter’ and they immediately look guilty.” What a line to pull on someone you don’t know. If anything, we need to keep Lois a major part of the DCU just so we can have someone to keep delivering gems like that.
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Conclusion