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Mild Mannered Reviews - Supergirl Comics

Supergirl #3

Supergirl #3

Scheduled to arrive in stores: November 16, 2011

Cover date: January 2012

"Memento"

Writer: Michael Green and Mike Johnson
Penciller: Mahmud Asrar
Inker: Bill Reinhold

Reviewed by: Jeffrey Bridges

Click to enlarge



Kal tells Kara about the fate of Krypton, but she doesn't want to believe him and flies off.

Kara returns to where her ship crashed, but it's gone. A hologram of Simon Tycho greets her, projected from a flying sphere. Kara chases the sphere to a space station, boards it and is attacked by tiny, robotic, laser-shooting butterflies.

The lasers are at 1000 degrees Celsius, which somehow causes Kara to heat herself up to even hotter than they are, and she says she felt like she was going to explode. Then a door opens and "the brain", a translucent person with seemingly nothing but a brain and nerve endings inside, and stretching powers, attacks her.

As they battle, Tycho gets a call from the President of the United States, who seemingly wants Kara's ship, but Tycho tells him that since they canceled their space program and left it open to private enterprise, and then hired Tycho to take care of things for them, he can keep it.

Kara defeats the "brain" and finds her ship, but it's got Kryptonite in it and she's incapacitated. Tycho says he'll take good care of her.

4Story - 4: Easily the best issue of the series so far, it finally feels like we're getting somewhere beyond mindless punching. It doesn't really make sense when Kara thinks, "But there's something in his voice. Like he can only ever tell the truth," that's just... hokey.

How can you hear something in someone's voice that makes you think they can only ever tell the truth? That doesn't even make sense. Maybe something in his voice makes her think he's telling the truth, or something about him makes her believe he's an honest person... something like that, sure. But something in his voice that tells you he can't lie? That's just goofy.

Beyond that, I had no real problems with the writing at all... although we just got past the M.O.N.Q.U.I.S. and I could have done without another bunch of robotic animals attacking for another five years or so. It could have just as easily been laser guns shooting at Kara from the wall, so why did they have to be flying butterflies with lasers?

Not that "the brain" was that great of an idea either, but they're both just surface details I'm nitpicking over an otherwise good issue.

5Art - 5: This was absolutely wonderful to look at, and what really made it so spectacular was the coloring by Paul Mounts. Absolutely gorgeous to look at.

I will, however, point out that right on page one there's no better illustration of the ridiculousness of the bottom-half of Kara's costume. Look at her standing right in front of Kal who, even if you're not a fan of the costume redesign, still looks regal and classy.

And it looks like he's standing in front of a stripper.

And if Kal likes strippers, hey, that's fine. But Kara shouldn't be dressed like one. If anything, since they're going for a Kryptonian origin on their costumes, hers should be nearly identical to his. That would at least make that idea fly a little better.

That's not the fault of this issue's artist, however, which is why I didn't dock any points. Keep beating the drum saying DC needs to respect their female characters (and readers) just as much as they do their male counterparts, and hope one day they listen.

3Cover Art - 3: Executed well enough, but it just makes me sigh. How many more times must we go through the death of Krypton?


Mild Mannered Reviews

2012

Note: Month dates are from the issue covers, not the actual date when the comic went on sale.

January 2012

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