Power Girl TPB (2006)

I don’t know if superhero origin stories get less perplexing the more you get into comics; it seems to me the more you learn, the more you just want to forget the backstory and enjoy the characters and plot as they are. Of course, not every hero’s story exudes confusion – Batman wasn’t always a shell-shocked orphan, but he was always a vigilante determined to fight criminals. Superman’s family may have grown a cousin and a clone and a dog, but he’s always been a kindly alien. Wonder Woman, any fan will tell you, has had some of the most inconsistent portrayals of any of DC’s big heroes, and yet she is always a woman, and a warrior, from a land of women warriors.

No such luck for Power Girl. Her origins were, at first, simple – well, for comics, anyway. She didn’t exist in “our” universe, but on a parallel Earth where Batman had married Catwoman and together they’d had a daughter. Power Girl was Kryptonian, like Superman, a younger, angrier, sassier – and more female – version of him. From the beginning she was a fan favourite, and so when DC got rid of their parallel Earths, they kept Power Girl - only with her universe gone, she needed a new origin – and so the confusion began...

The Power Girl tpb follows the rather murky development of Power Girl over thirty years, taking stories from the Justice Society of America and Infinite Crisis, explaining Power Girl’s background, first as a proud Kryptonian, then as a reincarnated sorceress, and finally as a misplaced and lonely woman, alien in every sense of the word. The book includes explanations of each “stage” of her character, extremely helpful for the uninformed reader.

As a relative newbie to Power Girl, I was absolutely delighted to see her early character designs. Peej is as blonde and buxom was as I’m used to, and yet in the art of Joe Staton her musculature is given equal attention; she’s also frequently drawn in positions that suggest strength, not cheesecake. This makes a strong contrast to the art of her 1987 reboot; here, Mary Wilshire gives her a body that is much more traditionally “feminine” – slender, with a smaller chest, too. This, coupled with her new emotional backstory makes Power Girl seem a lot more vulnerable than she originally was.

The final story, written by Geoff Johns and with art by the extremely fangirlable Amanda Conner, manages to show Power Girl’s vulnerability, confusion, and loneliness, without detracting at all from her strength. This is the tale that seeks to re-establish Peej’s original origins, but in true comic book style it doesn’t do so without throwing any number of red herrings in the way. Still, it clearly took things in the right direction – after all, Power Girl has her very own series now, and she seems to have more fans than ever.

Power Girl has come full circle. At her introduction, she was a woman who preferred to punch first and ask questions later, a mostly private and solitary person with a reputation for a bad temper – in part due to her wish to keep people away, but also simply because she liked her independence, and resented anyone who threatened to take it away from her. In her recent title, first under Palmiotti’s writing and now Winick’s, she’s once more developed these characteristics. Similarly, her costume has really changed very little over the years, aside from the much-ragged “boob window”. This just goes to show, perhaps, that while the editors and visionaries at DC might expound the need to reimagine and recreate for their audiences, sometimes it really ain't broke and it really don't need fixing.

• DC Universe
• 176pg.
• Color
• Softcover
• $14.99 US
• ISBN 1401209688