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Mild Mannered Reviews - Supergirl Comics

Supergirl #4

Supergirl #4

Scheduled to arrive in stores: December 21, 2011

Cover date: February 2012

"Escape"

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

Reviewed by: Jeffrey Bridges

Click to enlarge



On his space station, Simon Tycho makes repairs from Kara's attack and tests her costume, which he discovers is a sort of indestructible armor. Kara is being held in stasis near the Kryptonite.

A man named Jacobs, who was in one of the armored suits that attacked Kara when she landed on Earth, sets her free, claiming he didn't know Tycho was going to torture innocent people. He tries to get Kara to an escape pod, but Tycho and his men stop them and Jacobs is killed.

Kara, recovered from the Kryptonite, takes out all the guards and gets her costume back. She confronts Tycho, but he's got a sunstone from her ship and wants her to show him how to use it, threatening to destroy it if she doesn't.

Tycho says he's recovered coordinates from the sunstone, which he thinks lead to where Kara's from, and Kara meanwhile can understand none of what he's saying. He offers to give her the sunstone in exchange for some of her blood. Kara heat visions through the floor and damages the central core of the station, causing several explosions. She uses the distraction to grab the sunstone and takes off.

Most of the crew escapes, but then the entire station explodes and Tycho is apparently killed in the blast.

Kara laments that she can't control her powers very well and could have hurt someone, and then notes that the sunstone is cracked.

In some undersea control center, Tycho's assistant has saved his life, though only his head and part of his torso remains, and have been grafted on to "the brain". Tycho then notices there's a drop of what is believed to be Kara's blood on a guard's uniform, and he thinks he's won.

4Story - 4: I was wondering about the blood on the guard's uniform for a while, wondering if that was a red herring (someone else's blood) or if it was a plot hole, because I didn't remember Kara ever bleeding in the fight.

I went back and looked, and she didn't bleed during the fight. She bled BEFORE the fight when a guard hit her in the head with his rifle right after Jacobs was killed and before she started beating the crap out of everyone. There's no mention of it in dialogue, no extra attention paid to it, but it's right there in the bottom panel on page 6. It's subtle, the way it should be, and that pleases me greatly.

My only complaint is Kara's narration, which is written as though she's talking to someone but is also supposed to be her internal monologue. Is she thinking to herself, or is she narrating? She seems to do both, and it switches between the two. And not only can't it decide which it is, none of it is really needed. I don't normally like "thought bubbles", if you will, be they actual bubbles or narration boxes.

Sometimes they can be used to good effect, but largely I find them as unnecessary as most voiceovers in movies. They're not really needed, here, and I think they took away from the story more than they helped. This is especially the case at the beginning, where Kara is "thinking at" some other person in her head and telling them how Kryptonite hurts her. I'd much rather be shown than be told.

Still, it's a minor complaint, as the broad strokes were all well done.

5Art - 5: I'm still digging it tremendously. Especially the shot of Kara on the bottom of page 13, I am digging that hardcore.

But I still hate her costume's bottom half.

3Cover Art - 3: Symbolically this works well, but yet another "angry Kryptonian with red eyes!" image that I've seen all too many of in the past few years.

Also "the brain" gets some coveted cover space, and that I just can't abide.


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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