POWER GIRL #9 - 12

"THIS CITY IS A ZOO" | "WAR ON TERRA"
"TERRA ALERT!" | "THE LITTLE THINGS"
Writers: Justin Gray & Jimmy Palmiotti | Artist: Amanda Conner
Colorist: Paul Mounts | Letterer: John J. Hill
Assistant Editor: Rex Ogle | Editor: Brian Cunningham

My Thoughts: Power Girl's final story arc brings things full circle and wraps up all the major Palmiotti/Gray plot points as they depart the series. First Satanna comes after Power Girl to get revenge for the Ultra Humanite's fate, but she's defeated with aid from an increasingly bloodthirsty Terra, who is eventually revealed as the Humanite himself, in a new body.

Power Girl defeats Terra-Humanite and tracks down Satanna, dismembering her with heat vision in order to get her to reveal the whereabouts of Terra's brain, which is trapped in the Humanite's badly burnt ape body. PG takes both Humanite and Terra to Terra's homeland of Strata, beneath the Earth's crust, where Terra is restored to normal and the Humanite's brain is transplanted into a clone of his original human body, now without the genetic defect which had forced him to transplant his brain into an ape all those years ago.

POWER GIRL #7 - 8

"LUST IN SPACE!" | "A GROOVY KIND OF LOVE"
Writers: Justin Gray & Jimmy Palmiotti | Artist: Amanda Conner
Colorist: Paul Mounts | Letterer: John J. Hill
Assistant Editor: Rex Ogle | Editor: Brian Cunningham

My Thoughts: The light-hearted fun continues into POWER GIRL issues 7 and 8, as our heroine becomes the object of affection for Vartox the Hyper Man, a goofy character from the Superman comics of the seventies, whose appearance is inexplicably based upon Sean Connery in the movie ZARDOZ. It seems that an "infertility bomb" was detonated on Vartox's home planet, rendering reproduction there impossible. Vartox decides that he will mate with Power Girl in order to repopulate the species, both because her Kryptonian DNA makes her compatible with him and because "...[her] physical endowments best complement his own."

The resultant comedy of errors finds Vartox attempting to woo Power Girl with a "musk rifle" and then trying to impress her by loosing a monster called an Ix Negaspike, which he intends to defeat to prove his strength. But the creature proves too much for Vartox alone, so he and Power Girl defeat it together.

TRANSFORMERS SUMMER SPECIAL #1

Note: TRANSFORMERS #4 featured a short story spotlighting Megatron as part of "Megatron Month". The TRANSFORMERS SUMMER SPECIAL continued Megatron's saga. I have opted to cover both stories together.

Note 2: Rest assured, the irony of reviewing a "Summer Special" on Christmas Day is not lost on me. This is just how the schedule happened to fall.

"RUNNIN WITH THE DEVIL"
Writer: Brad Mick* | Pencils: James Raiz | Inks: Erik Sander
Colors: Elliott Kravchik | Letters Ben Lee

The Plot: Megatron is found drifting in deep space by the eccentric Junkion, Wreck-Gar. Wreck-Gar nurses Megatron back to health and takes him to his homeworld, the Planet of Junk. There, Wreck-Gar salvages a trio of Decepticon clones to serve Megatron, then Megatron kills the Junkion.

"WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE"
Story: Brad Mick* w/Adam Patyk | Pencils: Pat Lee
Breakdowns: Joe Ng | Backgrounds: Edwin Garcia | Inks: Rob Armstrong
Colors: Alan Wang | Letters: Ben Lee

The Plot: On the planet Beest, Megatron and his clones battle Razorclaw, the former leader of the Predacons, now locked in his lion mode with no memory of his past life. After fighting Razorclaw off, Megatron pursues him into the jungle and defeats him. Later, Megatron makes changes to Razorclaw's systems and reunites him with the rest of the Predacons. At Megatron's command, the Predacons unite to form Predaking.

Continuity Notes: Readers will recall that we initially saw Wreck-Gar pick up Megatron at the very end of WAR AND PEACE, and then the two of them were together, scavenging for clones on the Planet of Junk, in GENERATION ONE #0.

"Runnin..." makes it clear that six months have passed since Starscream jettisoned Megatron into space in WAR AND PEACE #1. I'm not sure if this fits very well with the timeline Mick has presented so far, as the events of WAR AND PEACE seemed to occur over a pretty short span, and the entirety of the Sunstorm arc in GENERATION ONE took place in roughly two days. I would suggest that time could have passed between the two series, but unless Starscream's crew spent six months traveling from Cybertron to Earth, that seems unlikely as well.

POWER GIRL #4 - 6

"GIRLS' NIGHT OUT"
"SPACE GIRLS GONE WILD!" Part 1 | "SPACE GIRLS GONE WILD!" Part 2
Writers: Justin Gray & Jimmy Palmiotti | Artist: Amanda Conner
Colorist: Paul Mounts | Letterer: John J. Hill
Assistant Editor: Rex Ogle | Editor: Brian Cunningham

My Thoughts: Okay, this is more like what I was expecting from a Gray/Palmiotti/Conner POWER GIRL series. "Girls' Night Out" is a one-off adventure featuring Power Girl and Terra teaming up against an elf girl using a magical book to "purify" Earth, and then "Space Girls Gone Wild!" presents a trio of spoiled alien princesses landing in New York and causing trouble as they attempt to elude an agent of their father, sent to bring them back home.

Along the way, Palmiotti and Gray continue to develop Power Girl's personal life, giving her a new apartment in Brooklyn and revealing that she's a huge fan of horror movies. We also get more from Terra too, her naive innocence leading to some cute jokes as she attempts to adjust to life on the surface world as Power Girl's "ward" of sorts. A sub-plot materializes as well, as someone snaps photos of Karen changing into Power Girl on her apartment roof, then later sends her the pictures as blackmail material.

POWER GIRL #1 - 3

"A NEW BEGINNING" | "UNLEASHING THE BEAST" | "GORILLA WARFARE"
Writers: Justin Gray & Jimmy Palmiotti | Artist: Amanda Conner
Colorist: Paul Mounts | Letterer: John J. Hill
Assistant Editor: Rex Ogle | Editor: Brian Cunningham

My Thoughts: Palmiotti and Gray begin Power Girl's continuing adventures by setting her up in Manhattan and restoring her secret identity as Karen Starr, CEO of Starrware Labs, a company dedicated to bettering the world through technology. The opening issue introduces us to Karen's employees, Donna Anderson and Simon Peters, as well as the newest member of the Starrware team, Dexter Nichols. We also get an ominous appearance by Xander Blevin, a callous researcher with designs on reprogramming the minds of the world's citizens.

But the main threat in this opening arc is the Ultra-Humanite, a brilliant scientist whose brain resides in the body of an albino ape. Here, the Humanite's plan is to lift Manhattan into the sky with his airship and hold it hostage in order to force Power Girl to give him her body as the new receptacle for his brain. While Power Girl struggles against the Ultra-Humanite aboard his craft, her teammates from the Justice Society are busy on the streets of Manhattan, fighting against the Humanite's robots.

I'm only familiar with Ultra-Humanite, as with many DC characters, via his appearances in the JUSTICE LEAGUE TV series, where he was generally played as a comic relief villain; or at least as a foe not taken overly seriously by anyone. But this version of the Humanite is quite deadly, using his mental powers to warp the people of Manhattan into a violent frenzy, and causing the deaths of over sixty people during his plot -- which seems kind of thematically out of place given the very "Silver Age" nature of the scheme.

THE UNBOXING - DECEMBER 2015

2015 closes with a small month, which is fine with me since it's the holiday season. From Marvel, we have the WOLVERINE EPIC COLLECTION: THE DYING GAME, which collects issues 87 - 100 of the Canucklehead's ongoing series, written by Larry Hama and illustrated (mostly) by Adam Kubert. As I've said before, I really enjoy the year of X-Men comics between "Age of Apocalypse" and "Onslaught", and most of this material fits right in that window.

And IDW brings RAGNARÖK VOLUME 1: LAST GOD STANDING, Walter Simonson's return to the Norse pantheon -- albeit free from the Marvel versions of those characters. I've heard good things about this series and I'm excited to read it, so hopefully I'll have a little something to say about it in the near future.

That's a wrap on a year's worth of Unboxings, but the cycle begins anew next month and I expect to receive at least three or four trades from Marvel and DC to start the new year.

TRANSFORMERS: GENERATION ONE #6

"ATONEMENT"
Writers: James "Brad Mick" McDonough & Adam Patyk | Pencils: Don Figueroa
Inks: Elaine To | Colors: Espen Grundetjern | Letters: Ben Lee

The Plot: Deep beneath the Earth's surface, as Sunstorm sinks into a pool of glowing liquid, Starscream prepares to execute Bumblebee. Meanwhile, on Cybertron, Prowl holds a meeting of several Autobots and they debate returning to Earth. Ultimately the decision is reached to do so. And back on Earth, Warpath and Bumper, along with the still-unconscious Jazz and the rest, are driven into the desert aboard a human truck, which descends underground via a concealed elevator. Elsewhere, Omega Supreme and Cliffjumper worry over their friends.

Back underground, Sunstorm rises once more and attacks Starscream, then grabs Bumblebee and prepares to kill him. But his body has a reaction to the liquid in which he was submerged and he begins to disintegrate. Jetfire comes around and enters the fray, causing Sunstorm to retreat back to the surface and into the sky. Jetfire appeals to the friendship he once shared with Starscream, then pursues Sunstorm. Starscream picks up the unconscious Bumblebee and returns to the surface.

Meanwhile, high in the sky, Jetfire realizes Sunstorm is on the verge of self-destructing. While Starscream deposits Bumblebee on a beach somewhere and departs, Jetfire pushes Sunstorm out of the atmosphere, where both are enveloped in a massive explosion.

On Earth, Bumblebee observes Jetfire's demise, salutes, and abandons his blaster on the beach as he walks away.