DC's New 52: Reviews and Discussion (Spoilers welcolme and likely)

I always thought DC, at least post-Crisis, spent waaay too much time trying to "explain" where she came from when it would have been much, much, easier just to say that Zor El had two daughters.

 

I've always found Power Girl to be much more interesting than Supergirl. From the beginning she had a distinct personality and point of view that informed her interactions with other characters. Supergirl was always rather vanilla, with no personality to speak of. Given a choice I'd pick PG over SG in a heartbeat.

 

Maybe we will see PG actually get her powers at some point.This would hopefully seperate her from the whole Superman family and have her be distinct unto herself. I agree with Santa Kang that PG has usually been much more interesting than SG.

 

Well, it's Byrne's fault her story is a mess. At the end of COIE, she just assumed the same role on New Earth as she had on Earth II. She was supposed to have been Clark's cousin.

And despite what might have been said previously, I don't think it is going to be too long before she gets a new origin and becomes Power Girl again.

 

That wouldn't have worked, at least initially. The Byrne reboot went out of its way to establish Superman as the only surviving Kryptonian. No Supergirl, Superdog or anything else. The Crisis had already removed Supergirl from the roster of heroes, so it didn't mess anything up to say that she never existed. Power Girl, for whatever reason, was still on the active list, so they had to scramble for some explanation for her that didn't involve Krypton.

 

How is it's Byrne's fault? At the end of COIE she is still the E-2 Superman's cousin who somehow didn't get erased from existence. Wolfman could have killed her off in COIE. Thomas could have banished her to Ragnarok in Last Days of the JSA. They didn't have to use her post COIE. We didn't need a Atlantean origin or see her in JLAEIOU. Byrne was asked to clear the decks. He was prepared to do his "reboot" within the confines of the old continuity, but they said no. So he cleared the decks and then they realized they had to deal with things like Superboy and the LSH and Power Girl.

 

Actually, Byrne insisted on clearing the decks. Making Kal el the sole survivor of Krypton was something he demanded as a condition of taking over the book. It wasn't something DC asked him to do.

 

For those interested in annotations and commentary for the first four issues of Grant Morrison's Action Comics, this site has some along with those for "Batman, Inc" and "Final Crisis".


https://sites.google.com/site/deeps...cs/dc-annotations/action-comics-1-annotations

 

It has been a couple of decades since I looked at those pages, but I thought the implication was that she was now Kal-El's cousin at the end of COIE.

 

Karen was re-established as Kal-L's (the Golden Age Superman) cousin and the Supergirl who "died" in Crisis in Infinite Earths, in Infinite Crisis.

 

Other way around. Byrne offered to come on and do his book in current continuity (much like on FF when he focused on the thing that made them cool and just stopped referring to the not s great stuff.). DC wanted a ground zero relaunch. So JB went away, thought about it and came back with a list of "unreasonable demands" regarding the direction of the character--expecting DC to shoot down most of them. Surprsingly DC agreed to all but one--pregnant Lara arriving on Earth in the rocket and dieing of Kryptonite poisoning after giving birth.

 

Yeah, I'm agnostic on what Byrne desired in his heart of hearts, but it'd be pretty weird that he wanted to destroy all Kryptonians (and thus many Superman ancillary characters) for all time, only to turn around and within the first couple of years do a story about the Time-Trapper that ultimately introduced the Matrix Supergirl.

 

My earlier post only referred to all the events associated with the post-Crisis reboot; I didn't mean to imply it was John Byrne's fault. I was just pointing out to the G-man that Power Girl couldn't another surviving Kryptonian daughter if there were no other survivors.

 

Demon Knights #4 - another good read, a holdover from last week for me. The origin of the Shining Knight was good, especially for me, as I know nothing of the character. I guess he's somehow immortal if I followed it correctly. High praise for the artwork.

 

Okay, I don't really care if it was DC or Byrne who messed up Power Girl's origins. I was just pointing out, that as far as I can recall, COIE ended with Power Girl and Superman walking toward his fortress of solitude and the implication was that Power Girl now replaced Supergirl as his Kryptonian cousin. Her origin was then messed up later.

 

Yes, I liked it as well - great series. I'm having fun trying to reconcile this Shining Knight with the one in Morrison's Seven Soldiers of Victory. It seems clear to me that there's a connection, and that it has something to do with the various "worlds" coming together in Flashpoint.

Then again, I study the Arthurian legend for a living, and DC's version (both 6th century and pre-historic and kinda Buddhist) has always fascinated me.

Good issue for Exoristos, too. And, as seems to be the norm for the series, at least one great Vandal Savage line.

 

Not sure if anyone is reading Batman, Inc or not but those annotations that I posted earlier have a very interesting theory as to who Levithian is. We find out on Wed. I have to say that the theory suggested in the annotations is not something that I would have come up with on my own but kind of makes sense since Morrison sometimes likes to reference his own past work.

 

There is scene of Superman and Power Girl comforting each other. The caption reads "Across the breadth of the world time was spent remembering those now gone." Which refers to PG's loss of Kal-L and her Universe and Superman's loss of Supergirl.

Remember Wolfman, who wrote COIE, was also the writer of the Adventures of Superman post Crisis. He was part of the team the rebooted Superman.

 

The funny thing about COIE is that (as far as I know), the last actual pre-crisis story (at the time rather than than 'untold tale) is a really odd tale in the final issue of DC Comics Presents where Argos City blows up over metropolis and dead kryptonians fall from the sky. A story that most people have never read.

 

This is going to be awesome.

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=preview&id=10844