NOTE

Monday, December 14, 2015

JSA CLASSIFIED #1 - 4

"POWER TRIP"
Writer: Geoff Johns | Penciler: Amanda Conner | Inker: Jimmy Palmiotti
Colorist: Paul Mounts | Letterer: Rob Leigh
Assistant Editor: Harvey Richards | Editor: Stephen Wacker

My Thoughts: The first four issues of 2005's JSA CLASSIFIED ongoing series are dedicated to cleaning up the history of Power Girl. This is an admirable goal, considering that I knew the bare minimum about the character coming into this series, but even then I was aware that her backstory was considered a royal mess.

To put it as simply as I can, Power Girl was a denizen of Earth-2, a parallel world from DC's Silver and Bronze Age past. But Earth 2 was destroyed, completely wiped from both existence and history in 1986's CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS limited series. And since the Power Girl of Earth 2 was Superman's cousin, but it was established post-CRISIS that Superman would be the one and only surviving Kryptonian in the newly re-formed universe, a new origin was required for Power Girl. Thus she became Atlantean rather than Kryptonian.

I don't know what happened from that point, but the gist I get from JSA CLASSIFIED is that Power Girl's powers varied in the intervening years, and perhaps even her origin was played inconsistently. Whatever the reason, writer Geoff Johns decided to fix the mess by simply declaring that Power Girl is from Earth 2 after all, having crossed over to Earth 1 (or Earth Prime or whatever DC calls it) sometime before the CRISIS ended.

The vehicle for this explanation is a story in which Power Girl's power levels and her very powers themselves have been fluctuating, leading to her Justice Society teammates running tests on her. Subsequently she begins to see people who aren't there, some taunting and attacking her, leading to a couple of public misunderstandings. Eventually everything is revealed to be the work of the villainous Psycho Pirate, also a survivor of Earth 2, trying to restore Power Girl's memories since he believes they're two of a kind.

From there the story ends on a cliffhanger which was resolved in 2006's INFINITE CRISIS limited series, obviously not collected as part of the POWER TRIP paperback. But I assume all turned out well for Power Girl, since there are a dozen more issues following JSA CLASSIFIED #4, published subsequently to INFINITE CRISIS, to read here.

I've read very little by Geoff Johns over the years. In fact, I'm pretty certain the only work I've read from him was his year-plus stint on AVENGERS over at Marvel in 2002 or so. But I know his reputation and he seems to be mostly considered a good writer with a strong sense of continuity. And while that may be the case, while his knowledge of the past is excellent and he sets Power Girl's story straight by simply outright stating that every version of her origin since CRISIS has been untrue, I can't say I'm much impressed with Johns here.

My issue is merely that this story doesn't seem to have much reason to exist. It's four issues of Power Girl hallucinating and then fighting Psycho Pirate, while bringing readers up to speed on her confusing backstory -- but in the end, it's just a four-issue prologue to INFINITE CRISIS.

Plus, beyond this, Johns commits what, to me, is a cardinal sin of comic book writing: he assumes that the reader is familiar with his subject. Like, really familiar. Power Girl's recent memory issues and power fluctuations are presented well enough, but Johns constantly introduces characters without naming them or explaining who they are. This is most glaring when Power Girl's Justice Society teammate show up to confront her after one of her public incidents, and none of them are called by name, either in dialogue or narration. Later, Psycho Pirate uses illusions of the Legion of Superheroes against Power Girl and this time only two of them are named on panel.

And then, further along in the story, Power Girl has a heart-to-heart conversation with someone named "Ma Hunkel" at JSA HQ. Who the heck is Ma Hunkel?? I'm glad I got her name, but I have absolutely no idea who she is or what her relationship is to Power Girl. Is she the JSA's housekeeper? An octogenarian superheroine? Don't ask me! The information simply isn't here.

This is a terrible way to write the opening arc of a new series. Even if you assume the majority of the readers are pre-existing fans, there are bound to be people, like me, who know nothing about the JSA but are checking the series out to learn about Power Girl or to enjoy Amanda Conner's artwork.

Oh, and lastly -- my final objection to Johns's script is his need to explain the "window" on Power Girl's costume. She says she'd always intended to put a symbol there, but never came up with one. Really? Then why is it a hole rather than white frabric like the rest of her outfit? But more than that, why does this even require an "explanation" in the first place? Can't it just be a simple fashion choice? It bothers me that Johns feels a need to explain this because the choice implies that he thinks the look needs defending, which it doesn't. "Peek-a-boo"/"keyhole" tops have existed forever. Women wear them all the time. And since it's not like the nigh-invulnerable Power Girl wears her costume for protection, it can and should be a stylistic choice; nothing more. That's all there should be to it.

Anyway -- overall, it seems an odd choice to include this story arc in the POWER GIRL trade paperback. These issues were published years before the remaining chapters in the book, and they lead into a massive crossover event which is never mentioned again in the subsequent ongoing series. I suppose the idea was to make this a showcase of Amanda Conner's Power Girl stories, but I would've much rather seen the book include the four-part TERRA mini-series, from the same creative team as the ongoing POWER GIRL (including Conner), which includes a Power Girl guest-spot and does in fact tie in with her series, as we'll see next time.

11 comments:

  1. I am barely familiar with Powergirl other then her ridiculously convoluted back story. ( Just don't begin with Donna Troy or Countdown or 52 , your head might explode. )
    And the most I read with her, was with the new Harley Quin series. ( Don't look at me like that. )
    And I am not much of a DC fan, mostly because Dc is so opaque you need a almanac to keep track of everything.
    It also doesn't help that DC is reboot happy and seems to be deadset on rebooting everything, every 3 to 5 years.
    Making your emotional investment in the characters worthless.
    Why care if everything will be rebooted a few years later ?
    Marvel has had house cleaning exercises but their first major reboot only happened recently, with Secret Wars.

    And that DC haa spend 30 years to undo Crisis On Infinite Earths for some vague reason.
    The only DC title I tend to read sporadically is Batman and the first 18 issues of the Action Comics reboot, to see what Morrison would do with Superman.
    I dropped out of the batman reboot around issue 34 ,because it just went on and on and on and on and on. With little resolution and then DC expected us to pick up a weekly Batman comic for a year argh !
    I didn't care much for Snyder's Batman either to be honest.
    The court of owls was overlong, wore out it's welcome, diluted the threats of the talons by making them easier to defeat and then went with the most obvious conclusion/
    Death of the family, build up the tension in an amazing manner and then fumbled the ball at the end.
    And I barely remember the other two arcs before I dropped out, but I thought zero year was overlong and boring.
    I mostly stuck around to see where all this was going, nowhere as it turned out.

    I am somewhat familiar with Johns, but that's mostly because of Infinite Crisis and Superboy Prime.
    And a little scene that still bothers me a decade later.
    IE that Superboy Prime beat golden age Superman to death !!
    Let that sink in for a moment.
    The original golden age Superman, the action comics 1 Superman, the 1938 Superman was beaten to death and died in a pool of his own blood.
    I'm not a fan of Superman but a character like that, the original Superman deserves a far, far better fate then that.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Is... that a see-through costume she's wearing on the cover of #1?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, I think the color makes it look semi-transparent due to it being pearly-white, but I'm pretty sure it's just her normal outfit.

      That's one of my favorite Adam Hughes pictures, incidentally.

      Delete
    2. What I am trying to say is that we have heard the occasional accusations that superheroines sometimes have their costumes like painted on a nude female body, and, carefully examining that cover, do you guys not come to the conclusion that indeed the body in question is definitely nude and definitely female?

      Or, in the undying words of Tweety Bird: "...

      Delete
    3. Hence skin tight ;p
      Because that's nothing new.
      Just look at Jim Lee's Psylocke or Rogue.

      Delete
    4. Teemu, are you implying you see a little "camel toe" up there?

      Delete
    5. "Camel toe" doesn't half do justice to what I am seeing. I don't know if I got color settings that really emphasize it up, but that costume is there only as a colorist's afterthought.

      Delete
  3. I am barely familiar with Powergirl other then her ridiculously convoluted back story. ( Just don't begin with Donna Troy or Countdown or 52 , your head might explode. )
    And the most I read with her, was with the new Harley Quin series. ( Don't look at me like that. )
    And I am not much of a DC fan, mostly because Dc is so opaque you need a almanac to keep track of everything.
    It also doesn't help that DC is reboot happy and seems to be deadset on rebooting everything, every 3 to 5 years.
    Making your emotional investment in the characters worthless.
    Why care if everything will be rebooted a few years later ?
    Marvel has had house cleaning exercises but their first major reboot only happened recently, with Secret Wars.

    And that DC has spend 30 years to undo Crisis On Infinite Earths for some vague reason.
    The only DC title I tend to read sporadically is Batman and the first 18 issues of the Action Comics reboot, to see what Morrison would do with Superman.
    I dropped out of the batman reboot around issue 34 ,because it just went on and on and on and on and on. With little resolution and then DC expected us to pick up a weekly Batman comic for a year argh !
    I didn't care much for Snyder's Batman either to be honest.
    The court of owls was overlong, wore out it's welcome, diluted the threats of the talons by making them easier to defeat and then went with the most obvious conclusion/
    Death of the family, build up the tension in an amazing manner and then fumbled the ball at the end.
    And I barely remember the other two arcs before I dropped out, but I thought zero year was overlong and boring.
    I mostly stuck around to see where all this was going, nowhere as it turned out.

    I am somewhat familiar with Johns, but that's mostly because of Infinite Crisis and Superboy Prime.
    And a little scene that still bothers me a decade later.
    IE that Superboy Prime beat golden age Superman to death !!
    Let that sink in for a moment.
    The original golden age Superman, the action comics 1 Superman, the 1938 Superman was beaten to death and died in a pool of his own blood.
    I'm not a fan of Superman but a character like that, the original Superman deserves a far, far better fate then that.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. On one hand, DC rebooting every few years doesn't necessarily bother me if it's planned out in advance. Like, come up with a concrete five- or ten-year plan with a beginning and an end, and then carry that plan through. But their reboots usually just seem very haphazard and unnecessary, so I don't like it.

      But then, like you, I'm not much of a DC guy. I like some of their Bronze Age material plus a little stuff from beyond that era, but that's mostly it.

      I am familiar with Superboy-Prime killing the original Superman, and I agree it's a disgrace. People seem to respect Johns as a writer, as I noted above, but he definitely has his detractors too, and he has a weird interest in really gruesomely killing off characters.

      Delete
    2. Most of DC's reboots tend to go like:
      Oh, hai its been x amount of years, let's has a reboot !!!!
      It probably doesn't go like that but that's how it feels like.
      It makes caring about DC comics very difficult and make following things even harder, because it's difficult to keep track of things.

      I mostly read Batman from DC but that's about it.

      The original crisis dealt perfectly with golden age Superman, retire him to paradise. Nothing more was necessary.
      And if he had to die and it seems he must die, have him die in a spectacular display of heroism. In a blaze of glory, to let it be understood in no uncertain terms that THIS was the original Superman and that this was his finest hour.
      But No, let's beat him to death and then, because that wasn't enough. let's disinter his corpse and bring him back as a zombie in Darkest Night.

      ....I need a table flip emoticon.
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSpcXtFe1Jo
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Not3v09zmc


      ....okay I feel better now.
      Thanks Beppo !

      Okay, ahem anyway !
      I got more reviews up on Focused Totality. ( 3 today, with more coming during the weekend. )
      And I'm starting to catch up on my hiatus.
      The thing I tend to find the most difficult to write, is not the review, I seem always having something to say.
      But the summary.
      I have to convey the story in a concise manner, with out giving it short shrift.
      Sometimes I succeed. ( I hate fairyland 1 and 2, Savage Dragon 2, Infiltration 3. ) Sometimes I fail. ( Gold Digger 3, Savage Dragon 1. )
      It's hard to find that balance, especially since I always skip summaries myself.

      Delete