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| Front cover of World's Finest (New 52) volume 1 |
Score (out of 5 Capes)
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| 4 Capes out of 5 |
A fantastic reboot of two established heroes, this book is loads of fun from cover to cover. 4 capes out of 5.
My Review
An ongoing comic book series so bold as to call itself World's Finest better have some darn good stories in its pages. This volume, collecting the first five issues plus a #0 prequel, meets that bar in so many ways.
Writer Paul Levitz reinterprets, in DC Comics New 52 style, the origins of Huntress and Power Girl: They are the Robin, daughter of Batman and Catwoman, and the Supergirl of Earth-2. Thrown through a dimensional portal in the climactic final battle with the forces of Apokolips, they land on Earth-1 and reinvent themselves.
The backbone of the tale is their quest to reopen the portal and return to their home world. A quest that drives them to attempt some pretty amazing things.
Helena, the Robin-turned-Huntress, uses her intelligence and tech savvy to siphon off enough money from certain sources to fund both a fine, globe-trotting lifestyle and the labs, scientists and tech research toward finding a path back home.
Kara, for her part, plays the face of a research organization, a wealthy playgirl out to have fun, push scientific boundaries and make some cash on the way.
It's this ongoing research that brings them to their Tokyo lab to explore the most promising discoveries to date. Except they are met by a rampaging nuclear energy foe calling himself Hakkou. There is clearly more to Hakkou than is revealed in these pages.
Unfortunately, one of the more frustrating aspects of this book is that Levitz offers all these teasers throughout the book but they never pay off. When the final confrontation arrives, versus the now colossus-sized monster splashing through the Tokyo waterfront and battling the Japanese navy, the ladies find a way to destroy him then fly off all happy with their work. All the plot teasers and questions are immediately forgotten.
The Hakkou arc with all its flashbacks fill the first four chapters. Numbers five and zero set aside the grand battle and fill in lots more of the "how we got here" details, expanding on the flashbacks of the first few issues.
The creative team made a fun choice for those flashbacks. Rather than present them in sepia tones or rounded-corner panels like the recently-reviewed Spider-Gwen book's flashbacks, they switched artists. The result is a fun, flirty, immediately identifiable shift in time and place.
Legendary artist George Perez, who has drawn such classics as New Teen Titans and Crisis on Infinite Earths (both with Marv Wolfman writing), takes the mainline story. With his decades of practice filling his pages with countless characters, these pages feel almost subdued. But they lack nothing in their power to communicate through his images. Sometimes subtle, sometimes clear as a bell, Perez rises to the occasion and presents gorgeous pictures to illustrate the present.
Kevin Maguire, with a solid portfolio of his own, especially with books like Justice League International, handles the flashbacks. His is arguably the more challenging assignment, showing the growth and trajectory of our heroes over the course of five years. The contrast with Perez and the present panels is immediately recognizable, with his simpler backgrounds and stacked panels of faces and the range of emotions the characters experience, all done with his well-established simple lines.
At heart, Levitz gives us a buddie-story of two friends and partners learning to depend on each other, their relative strengths and weaknesses, and committed to a common goal, wherever pursuit of that goal might take them.
It is a partnership with a stark difference in the power levels between the two, yet to see them work together it is easy to forget that one is nearly invulnerable while the other has no meta-human powers, just courage, intelligence and athleticism. The biggest reminder of this difference is the need for Power Girl to carry - and occasionally drop - Huntress around when they fly to their next destination.
Since issue #0 is all flashback, Maguire draws the whole thing, a tale of their final moments on Earth 2 and their first meeting, forming trust and friendship in the midst of the death and destruction wrought by the invaders from Apokolips.
This is a delightful volume, two strong women and all that they have been through together that has helped them to forge an unbreakable bond and common cause. Solid storytelling, if centred around a so-so villain for several chapters, good banter and eye-pleasing visuals earn this book four capes out of five.
What I loved
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| Beautiful, detailed visuals |
Every page of this book is a visual feast every bit as rich as the one that our heroines are enjoying in the two-half-pages spread shown in these two panels.
George Perez has made a career of packing his panels with loads of characters and fascinating details. This restaurant panorama is almost subdued compared to some of his previous work. Yet there is so much going on. The food. The array of passports spread like playing cards in front of Huntress. The echo to the Earth-2 past of our leading ladies. The engaged conversations and behaviours of the other patrons. The restaurant's beautiful view of the city below.
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| Second half of 2-page spread |
But Perez only drew the sections set in the present. Flashback sequences get the inimitable touch of Kevin Maguire and his unparalleled ability to turn comic-book dialogue into a stack of simple yet emotionally loaded images.
Issues #1-4 follow this pattern of Perez in the present and Maguire in flashbacks, and they are an absolute joy to read.
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| Beautiful banter |
What I didn't love
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| Hakkou the meh first foe |
The first few issues of this book introduce Hakkou as a powerful and mysterious new foe. His energy blasts, fired or delivered on contact, are able to wound even the nearly invulnerable Power Girl and he seems dedicated to defeating them and thwarting their plans to return to Earth 2.
Or something like that.
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| Hakkou as Godzilla |
As he absorbs more energy, he grows in both strength and stature. Emerging originally from a lab in Tokyo, he begins to stomp around through both urban areas and nearby ocean bays, confronting navy cruisers in the process, like other famous Japanese monsters.
What does not grow is our clarity. Who is this monster, what does he want, what is he talking about with pathways? By the time we reach the happy-ending victory for our two heroes, we have none of these answers and everyone who seemed to care in the heat of battle simply shrugs and moves on.
It leaves us with a multi-part battle with a giant question mark of a super-villain. Surely this otherwise excellent series could have done better in the foe department.
Related Reviews
A more recent Power Girl TPB
Earth 2 series of reviews
Spider-Gwen also included lots of flashbacks but used a completely different visual approach to show them
Quick Reference Details
Writers: Paul Levitz
Artists: George Perez (#1-5), Kevin McGuire (#0-4)
Published By: DC Comics
Published When: April 16, 2013
Parental Rating: Teen
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| Back cover of World's Finest: Huntress and Power Girl |
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