REVIEW: Power Girl #10
Power Girl #10, “It’s Crushin’ Time” not only concludes the team-up of Paige and Crush but also acts as a nice epilogue to The House of Brainiac crossover. That being said, it’s still an issue full of great action and fun quips. Things may seem to wrap up rather nicely, but an old threat still looms in the shadows.
The standard cover is by Yanick Paquette and Arif Prianto. Paige and Crush take a joy ride on one of the dragon cycles created by the nanoblaster spree of the castaway Czarnians. A slightly different version of this image exists as an interior panel proving how fun it must be to draw dragoncycles.
Nicola Scott and Annette Kwok gives us the Czarnians perspective of Power Girl crashing their party on this variant cover. Effortlessly creating her own entrance, Paige is all smiles as bullets bounce off her suggesting she’s arrived to have a good time.
Although tied into the ‘House of Brainiac’ crossover, Paige isn’t part of the conflict aboard his ship and doesn’t come into contact with the notorious villain. Dave Johnson’s variant addresses what it would look like if she had. Either that or we’re seeing her spin on one of Shakespeare’s famous lines from Hamlet. Regardless of your take, it makes for a pretty great cover.
Interior art duties are expertly handled by Penciller Eduardo Pansica, Inker Júlio Ferreira, and Colorist Romulo Fajardo Jr. Together they really bring the emotional center of this story to the forefront while simultaneously making it an action packed ordeal. They utilize several classic “Superman moves” dealing with Paige’s fight sequences but still maintain that nuanced scrappiness of her own. I can’t help but attribute a sense of playful wonderment to this trio’s work that reminds me of late Bronze Age comics in the best ways possible. Hopefully the break they took before ‘House of Brainiac’ was just that and we get to continue seeing their work on this title.
Leah Williams, lettered by Becca Carey, nails the landing with this finale/epilogue tale. Things may not be as epic in scale to the rest of the crossover but the personal and emotional stakes of this story feel equally important. Through her interactions with Crush and the way she refers to Harley Quinn as one of her closest friends we really get a look at how much character growth Paige has gone through since the Lazarus Planet event. That being said, Williams also makes sure to remind us how brutal a combatant she is and that her kick butt nature is still intact. Even with all the heroics and happy endings, there’s still a darkness stalking Power Girl that threatens to destroy her accomplishments and has the potential to be a powerful villain within the greater DCU.
(8.5/10) This one has it all. It’s comical and heartfelt in the right places with plenty of action and set-up for future stories. I feel like this Power Girl series as a whole is absolutely great for young or new readers and is a rather refreshing book for older ones. It’s possibly one of the more underrated books on the shelves these days and I encourage more people should check it out.
A nicely written and argued review, but I have to disagree with your conclusions. As a fan of Power Girl since the Seventies I don’t recognise this Paige person. She’s a meek soul, terribly naive, apparently inexperienced and constantly needing saving by Lilith. And while she’s had some fun encounters with Harley by writers who cared to write Power Girl’s actual personality, I can’t believe she’s one of her closest friends. I managed about four issues of this series but Leah Williams obviously has no interest in actual Power Girl so much as she is writing cutesie YA stuff. I can’t even be bothered to follow it on DC Infinite.
I would have to agree with the above comment. The direction of this series is impenetrable for longtime fans of the character, and her relationship with Harley is tenuous at best. Her best friends are in the JSA both on the main Earth and the original Earth-Two. This series ignores the substance of her past while at the same time attempting to reference them thus creating an incongruous mess.
-Matthew Lloyd