I also have to say that I appreciate the restraint of the Supergirl writers in not injecting some made-up Kryptonian "hip teen" slang into Kara's first-person - writers so often try to be clever that way, and it always fails.
If they manage to not fall into the trap of writing Supergirl as a human adolescent, I'll be pleasantly surprised. Of course, the fact that it's untrue to the character's circumstance is only half the problem; the other is that adults trying to write kids usually comes off as the phoniest thing in the world.
Well, she'll have to be human in her emotional reactions in order for people to identify. But yeah, it's hard enough for writers to get kids right without trying to fabricate a parallel "teen culture". Now watch them introduce some analogue to texting and Facebook when they flash back to Kara's life on Krypton - I mean, that's what kids
do, right?
Kara'll have a hard time cutting herself. Maybe she can get a kryptonite razor.
But yeah, I meant speech patterns particularly, especially the use of specific Americanisms, notably the use of the speech disfluency "like" as a semantic vehicle. Socially constructed body language like in this cover isn't really well-thought out either:
You know, on top of it being sort of misogynistic and making her look kind of retarded. (I'll say right now that they seem to be avoiding this very well. But what do they want, a medal?)
Of course, behavior patterns which don't make much sense in context, like trying to go to high school or hanging out in bars with soft breakable apes, should probably be eschewed as well but that's all more arguable.
BTW, look at the inset panel on page 12 - what's with Kara's hands? She didn't hurt herself by punching the mecha guy into the next province...am I wrong in interpreting those red streaks on her hands as the guy's blood?
It's because she has crystals inside her to fight Phantom Zone zombies.
Not really (God I hope). At first I thought it was her own blood--that is, her powers were still ramping up and she wasn't fully invulnerable so she busted her knuckles on metal (which would make sense in the context of Action Comics 1, since we do still have a shared continuity). But I guess it being the other guy's makes some sense.
Now that I look at it again I don't think it's supposed to be blood exactly, at all, but rather her
arteries. They don't look like radial arteries and tributaries to me, but, hey, alien! so that's okay. They seem to be mirrored on each hand.
So, I think what the scene's supposed to be conveying is that her x-ray vision is kicking in. I'd like to point out that there are better ways to portray this (i.e, showing an inset panel of her skeletal structure). But I honestly think this is what they're going for, since her super-hearing starts operating a couple of pages later, and it doesn't look like blood spatter from someone else, and Asrar didn't draw any injury on her.
Paul Levitz might be hailed as one of the best Legion writers but his style and writing logic can be frustrating at times, no doubt about it.
