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Mild Mannered Reviews - Supergirl Comics

Supergirl #5

Supergirl #5

Scheduled to arrive in stores: January 18, 2012

Cover date: March 2012

"Homecoming"

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

Reviewed by: Jeffrey Bridges

Click to enlarge



Kara flies through space with the sunstone, and someone is watching her. She worries she's making a mistake and that she'll never get anywhere, and the sunstone opens some kind of portal and she flies through. It leads her to Argo City, sitting inside a bubble in space, in ruins.

She looks for her parents, finds that the city has been deserted for some time, and hopes they might still be alive somewhere. Kara tries to access the information on the sunstone, but there's no power in the city. So she "heats up" like she did back on the space station, and this somehow activates the console that can read the crystal.

An image of Zor-El appears, and tells Kara of Krypton's destruction and how he tried to save Argo City. Then someone entered the room where he was recording the message and apparently killed him, and Kara watches him die. Then the sunstone with all the information on it crumbles.

Angry, Kara smashes some things up and that's when the person who was watching her, "Reign", introduces herself and offers Kara a new life. Kara attacks her, but Reign soon gets the upper hand as Kara seems to be weakening due to being away from the yellow sun. Reign asks Kara about the "worldkillers", which Kara says were weapons that were outlawed for being too dangerous to exist. Reign implies Zor-El might know something about that.

Kara attacks her again, Reign beats her up, Kara breaks her sword, Reign beats her up some more, and then monologues about how worldkillers are real, but are living things, and they came back to Argo City to learn about their creation and found it in the same state Kara did. And Reign knows this because she IS a worldkiller.

Reign found Argo City's force field broken and the population suffocating to death, and found Kara and Kal on Earth and believes there is information there she must have. She says she wanted Kara to join her in conquering Earth (because why not?) and then leaves her here, pinned to a wall, as she tells her Argo's orbit is decaying and it will soon burn up, but Kara should try to follow her.

3Story - 3: This was a step backward for me. Firstly, it opens with SEVEN AND A HALF PAGES (page six is half actual dialogue) of Kara narrating her thoughts and actions. Not only do I generally find it unnecessary, but here it is absolutely wholly unnecessary. We can see exactly what's happening in the art just fine, there's no reason for Kara to be describing it all in her thoughts. It's redundant and frustrating.

I feel like sometimes comics forget that they are a visual medium. Don't have Kara tell imaginary people in her head that she's worried, SHOW us she's worried by the expression on her face, how she feels tiny and insignificant, lost in an empty sea of stars. All of those first seven and a half pages could have been condensed to three pages with all the narrating stripped out, and they would have had far more impact that way. As it is now it just feels far too long, padded and... well, as I said, redundant. But now I'M being redundant, so let's move on.

Kara once again gets into a fight, and another fight, and another fight, all with the same person right in a row. Okay, you want to establish she's going to hit first and ask questions later (or concurrently), and that's fine, but there's no reason it had to just keep going on and on. And the villain's was absolutely monologuing, in the exact way that "The Incredibles" parodied so very well.

If a villain defeats someone, why would they give a history lesson and reveal all their motivations as the loser of the fight hangs there limply? It just doesn't make any dramatic sense to me.

"Reign" is just another "Join me, and together we'll rule the galaxy as father and son" Darth Vader line given legs and superpowers. For that matter, can someone explain how a person created to be a warrior and a living, breathing weapon... wears high heels, has a bare midriff and cleavage enough to block out the sun?

Shouldn't she be... heavily armored? Or covered with a scary-looking exoskeleton? Or, if she's so very deadly she needs none of that and is just a living weapon... why not just be entirely naked? Not for gratuitous reasons, mind you, but naked in the way the female Parasite was a few years back. She had no reason to wear clothes, so she didn't, and it wasn't titillating and made perfect character sense.

Reign's character design seems to serve no other purpose BUT to titillate. Did anyone honestly look at her design and think, "Wow, I am SCARED. She looks impressive, like a death-dealing killing machine!"?

Of course not. But that's exactly how she SHOULD look. I rest my case.

Again, it makes no dramatic sense. Sadly a lot of this issue falls into that category.

4Art - 4: I don't know if it was by choice, but the colors seemed really muted and it felt like it dragged the art down a bit. Plus Reign's character design just really, really got to me. So absolutely pointless.

3Cover Art - 3: It's right out of an interior scene, but... it's just kind of dull. Where's the excitement? Supergirl fights a generic villain isn't terribly compelling, alas.


Mild Mannered Reviews

2012

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

January 2012

February 2012 March 2012 April 2012 May 2012 June 2012 July 2012 August 2012 September 2012 October 2012 November 2012 December 2012

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