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Mild Mannered Reviews - Supergirl Comics

Supergirl #48

Scheduled to arrive in stores: December 16, 2009

Cover date: February 2010

"Song of the Silver Banshee"

Writer: Sterling Gates
Penciller: Fernando Dagnino
Inker: Raul Fernandez

Reviewed by: Jeffrey Bridges

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Inspector Henderson and some cops break into an apartment, but it explodes. And then they find a corpse covered in runes.

Kara confronts Lana, who says she's sick and no one knows what it is or how to cure it.

Kara meets with Inspector Henderson, who's following a case his old mentor was never able to close, and thinks it has to do with items Silver Banshee needs to lift her curse. His mentor had the item, a coin, but killed himself. Inspector Henderson took the coin and it embedded itself in his hand, and allowed Banshee to track him.

Banshee shows up and fights Supergirl.

Supergirl opens a mysterious package Henderson had acquired and turns into a Supergirl/Banshee hybrid.

Story - 2: If there's one word to describe this issue, I'd probably go with "sloppy". Or "rushed". I don't really know the root cause, but the end result is an issue that is almost entirely exposition that's talked about. Here's what Henderson did in the past after his coma, here's what his mentor did, here's the story of this kid who died, etc. It's a COMIC, so why we didn't SEE that happen, as opposed to seeing a couple of heads just talking about it, I don't know.

Also, how long has Lana been having nosebleeds? I can't even remember the first issue that appeared in, but it feels like it must have been nearly a year ago. Quite a long time, at least.

And it keeps happening over and over and it leads to the big reveal... no idea what it is or what it does or if it's lethal... but I'll be fine, I'm a Lang! Seriously?

That's no kind of payoff for a build-up like that.

I'm also not entirely sure why, if Kara is temporarily deaf after the Banshee's scream, her own VOICE bubbles are empty. She can still talk, can't she?

From her POV, the empty voice bubbles of Henderson and Banshee was actually a nice touch.

But when we're looking at Kara it's obviously not her own POV, and she can still talk, so it really made no sense there. It was just goofy and looked like a mistake.

I'm also not quite sure I understand the penchant for continuing to put Kara into different "bad" outfits. The Silver Banshee looks like an 80s hair band reject as it is, so seeing Kara in similar clothing wasn't exactly the amazingly cool moment I think they were going for.

I like Banshee's history (and knew it before Captain Exposition Kara related it all in this issue), but her appearance has just never made a lick of sense when combined with her origin. I also think her origin may have been modified slightly as I think it used to be just ONE book and not a series of artifacts, but that's neither here nor there.

I also have no idea why artifacts would just imbed themselves in people, but for Kara, well, they turn her into a Banshee clone? Oh right, right... we just needed to see that new costume.

I'm also not at all buying the "Banshee has suddenly figured out some way to track the artifacts!"

After a thousand years? Really? And what way is that? What's she doing? How's she doing it? What changed after a millennium that allows her to do this now?

It's a far too convenient deus ex machina.

All in all, disappointing at best.

Art - 3: It's actually not bad, but Kara is WAY too skinny. Look at her in Lana's kitchen... she looks like she doesn't even have room for her internal organs there. Ew.