Issue Review: Supergirl 23 (New 52)

Following the events of last month's issue, Supergirl flees from the population of I'noxia, who are capable of making all her memories come to life. At the behest of "Cyborg Superman," the I'noxians have become all of the superheroes and supervillains Kara has ever met, and proceed to attack her.  Supergirl battles memories of Wonder Woman, Superman, Silver Banshee, the Worldkillers, Superboy, and Simon Tycho, before finally being captured and imprisoned by Cyborg Superman.  He still plans to use her body, but first he has to cleanse it of Kryptonite Poisoning. The I'noxians do so, and then Supergirl appears to disintegrate.  As Cyborg Superman's "creator," the Brainiac, hovers overhead preparing to attack, Cyborg uses Kara's body to regain his own -- and turns out to be (apparently) Zor-El, Kara's father.

Issue Review: Red Sonja 2

As an army invades Corinthia, Sonja stands alone against the charge of her greatest friend and enemy, Dark Annisia.  The two duel each other, while the armies around them clash.  Sonja and Annisia were the only survivors of the arena in which they were slaves, and neither really wants to kill the other.  Each inflicts wounds, but they can't bring themselves to issue the killing stroke.  Annisia claims she can see all those who died before them in the arena -- she says they haunt her.  Sonja thinks Annisia has gone mad with guilt.  But as they speak, King Dimath tries to ride Annisia down, and she throws a dagger into his throat.  Sonja rises up, preparing to kill Annisia, but then Annisia reveals that Sonja has the plague.  Annsia kisses Sonja after telling her this, and then offers to let the city die a slow death, as long as they build a wall around it and no one comes out.  And as long as Sonja goes off to the frozen northland to die.  Sonja agrees, giving up her sword, and heads off into the mountains for her final days with the plague.

Issue Review: Batgirl 23

In this first part of a 3-part story, Barbara Gordon has given up her life as Batgirl, because she believes she killed her brother, James, Jr.  Comissioner Gordon, who witnessed that killing, has put out an APB for Batgirl, and is trying to hunt her down and punish her for the death of his son.  Gordon begins by approaching Charise Carnes, whom he suspects is the vigilante Knightfall.  After verbally fencing with Carnes and her attorneys, Gordon convinces her to let him review security tapes of the night Batgirl saved Ricky from the bear trap in the parking garage (way back in issue 10).  After he leaves, however, Carnes tells her team to keep their guard up, because this might all be a pretext for Gordon trying to collar her instead.

Meanwhile, Barbara tries to enjoy a normal life with her room mate Aleysia. The two of them go shopping, but end up being harassed by some low-lives, and Barbara threatens them.  She manages to pull back, but Aleysia takes her home to talk about it.  Before they can do so, however, she gets a call from Ricky, who has been threatened by his former gang members.  Ricky's brother has been kidnapped, and Ricky is going to save him. He calls Barbara to say good-bye.  Against her better judgement, Barbara puts on a black outfit (but not the Batgirl suit) and goes out to help him.

Gordon and Detective Mckenna have gotten onto Ricky's whereabouts by now, and just as he leaves, they try to arrest him.  He shoves McKenna, causing her to hit her head and lose consciousness. Gordon then puts out an APB for Ricky as well, for assaulting an officer.  As the book reaches its climax, the police, Barbara, and Ricky all converge on the gang's hide-out.  Barbara takes down most of the gang members, but when the cops get there, they shout for everyone to freeze. Ricky doesn't freeze fast enough, and although Babs tries to save him, Comissioner Gordon shoots him.  As the story ends, Ricky appears to be dead (though we will have to wait for next issue to know for certain).

Issue Review: Thor, God of Thunder 11

In this concluding issue of the epic "God Butcher" storyline that began in issue 1, we finally see the three Thors, past, present, and future, defeat Gorr the god-butcher.  In the previous issue, Gorr's bomb had begun to explode. The bomb will destroy all gods down through all of time, past, present, and future.  As this issue opens, the bomb is exploding, and Gorr gloats to the elder Thor that he and all other gods are dying.  However, modern-age Thor has entered the center of the bomb itself, with both his hammer and the elder Thor's hammer, and he uses them together to create a giant lighting-and-thunder explosion inside the bomb's blast radius.  His display of power works, and he begins absorbing the essence of the bomb into himself.

Issue Review: Justice League of America 7

This issue represents the fourth part of the 6-part (plus) "Trinity War" Justice League event, and the crossover continues to be lackluster.  The story begins with Lex Luthor salivating over the fact that Superman has somehow been framed for killing Dr. Light, and in the middle of his prison, Pandora shows up with her skull-shaped box.  She encourages Luthor to open it.

As these events unfold, elsewhere, members of the three Leagues (JL, JLA, and JL Dark) burst into Dr. Psycho's base, and battle him.  They think he used his mind powers to trick Superman into killing Dr. Light, but they find out that he was not involved.  He does, however, implicate a "secret society."  Atom finally admits that the JLA was formed to fight the JL, and everyone feels betrayed.  At the same time, Steve Trevor leads another group against a mysterious house.  Inside, they find a mirror that shows the Phantom Stranger, who had traveled with a fourth team to seek out the dead soul of Dr. Light.  Unable to find it, the Stranger returns the team to the house through the broken mirror, and then disappears.

Superman's group returns to Amanda Waller, ready to accuse her of wrongdoing, but the secret society blows up Dr. Light's body, causing the entire building to explode.  Meanwhile, back in Luthor's prison, Wonder Woman stops Pandora from giving Luthor the box and takes it herself. The issue ends with Diana drawing her sword, and the clear implication is that now she has turned evil and everyone will have to fight her ("The box has me!").

The end of New Comic-book Night (probably)

I regret to announce I probably won't be able to do "New Comic-Book Night" the way I used to each week, from now on.  In case anyone is going to leap to conclusions in a single bound, this is not because I'm doing something radical like giving up buying comic-books. I did that back in 1999, so there's no guarantee I won't ever do it again, but it's not happening any time soon.  Rather, there are two other reasons why I won't necessarily post NCN snippets each Wednesday.

First, because I now live a rather long way from the comic shop, there's no guarantee I can get to the c-shop every Wednesday.  Today is a case in point. I had a meeting at work that ran until 5:30 PM, and I wasn't about to drive 45 minutes to the shop, and then 45 minutes back home, that late in the day (battling rush hour along the way, too). The distance is now too great for me to reliably post something every Wednesday.

Second, as I said in an earlier post, I have decided to start posting more detailed reviews of individual issues rather than quick summaries in my NCN posts -- this is mostly because indexing the NCN posts is not really possible, and it makes quickly finding a review of a particular issue difficult if not impossible.  With the review content removed from the NCN post, that doesn't leave much to write about, and we'd be down to a very short post and a picture. I'd rather do longer entries.

Therefore, as I say, I will continue to post the same content I always have... I just probably won't make the NCN-specific posts every single Wednesday like I'd been doing.

The Many Faces of Supergirl - Part 3: Kara Zor-El Returns

What has gone before

In the first installment of this article series, we examined the origin, history, and death of the original Supergirl, Kara Zor-El of Krypton.  In the second installment, we explored the origin, history, and disappearance of her post-Crisis replacement, the so-called Matrix Supergirl.  That character, a shape-shifting alien from another dimension who had merged with human Linda Danvers, hung up her superhero identity at the end of her 80-issue series, and vanished from the DC Universe in 2003.  For about a year, there was no Supergirl character active in the DC pantheon.