By: Paul Levitz (story), George Pérez (pencils), Scott Koblish (inks), Kevin Maguire (art), Hi-Fi & Rosemary Cheetham (colors)
The Story: BFFS don’t just picnic and shop together—they fight mutant criminals together!
The Review: Without a doubt, the criticism I hold against Levitz the most is his hammy dialogue, but what do I mean by that, exactly? It’s one thing to say a line sounds over the top or melodramatic, but can you really identify the features that make it that way? Or are you more like Justice Potter Stewart of the U.S. Supreme Court, who very infamously declared that “hard-core pornography” is hard to define, but “I know it when I see it”?
I tend to break things down this way: if it’s something you’d feel sweaty and lame saying out loud, then it probably isn’t very natural or convincing. In any form of media, dialogue like that tends to be the kind better kept silent and formless in a person’s heart than expressed in words. Take, for example, when Huntress glares at Hakkou as he beats down on Kara and muses, “…no one—no one—hurts my best friend like that. No one.” What I find silly about this kind of narration is it just states the obvious; it’s the equivalent of watching a cinema kiss and having a voiceover saying, “Nothing—nothing—feels better than Frenching this person I love. Nothing.”
Another of Levitz’s weaknesses, one which drove me bonkers many times on the previous volume of Legion of Super-Heroes and Adventure Comics, is his habit of rehashing the same issues over and over, rather than giving them the time to play out and develop. If there’s one thing he made perfectly clear in the debut issue, it’s Helena’s determination to move on with her life and adapt to her new home, and Kara’s absolute refusal to do the same. And while making that point again here is fine, I have a wary feeling he’ll be doing so every issue from now on.
If he does, he’ll only do Kara a disservice, because her obsession with getting home, despite having no clue how to do it, only makes her seem childish. Her utterly pessimistic view of this Earth verges on the melodramatic, undermining her credibility: “I think this world might turn out to be our hell…so different…” You can sympathize with her natural anxiety, but to say this world is “so different” strikes you as a stunning oversight of the fact that the two worlds share the same locales, languages, and even some of the same (arguably) people.
What you really want is more of the mischievous, sassy Kara everyone loves, and to his credit, Levitz does give you some of that. Seeing her take a deep-sea dive to fetch more rare earth materials for her company’s uses, and calling it a workout, is the kind of amusement this series should have. We don’t need yet another title of characters spouting frivolous clichés and fighting even more clichéd villains (“When they entomb the remains of this power plant, they can bury your corpse with it.”).
Pérez’s work still remains a miss for me, personally. It doesn’t look horrible or anything, but there’s a clumsy, overwrought quality to everything he draws that makes it hard for me to take the story seriously. In that regard, his work is the visual manifestation of Levitz’s writing. Maybe I’m talking crazy, but I happen to prefer Maguire’s clean, playful style. The expressions he gives to the characters communicate so much without the need for words and just, on their face (to use a punny phrase), look more convincing. Compare Maguire’s depiction of Kara using her X-ray vision, with its furrowed, tight look of concentration, to Pérez’s, with her popping eyes and open mouth.
Conclusion: Spotty entertainment with only a vague sense of direction, hampered by uneven art and even more uneven writing. Marked for Dropping.
Grade: C+
– Minhquan Nguyen
Some Musings: – I don’t like to think of myself as someone who hates change, but Power Girl’s new costume does nothing for me. The lack of boob-window affords her more dignity, but the top-to-bottom, seamless spandex makes her look like an eighties exercise instructor.
– If Huntress’ hacked transactions were so well-concealed, how come all it takes is an ordinary stock broker looking at a simple bar graph to see the three glaring withdrawals amidst a sea of diminutive spending? Come on, Pérez, at least try to make it seem more difficult.