World's Finest: Huntress and Power Girl # 1 (The New 52)

 By Mark Rodriguez

The New 52 served as a big reboot for most of the DC Universe, though in Batman's case it was more like condensing. In the new continuity, Cassandra Cain and Stephanie Brown were never Batgirl, and some characters like Power Girl and the Huntress flat out don't exist anymore. Of the 52 new titles, one was Mr. Terrific which featured a familiar looking blonde named Karen Star which fans speculated might have been the New 52 Power Girl. While Mr. Terrific's title was cancelled, Power Girl returned in the second wave of the New 52 and brought Huntress along for the ride. Let's check out the rebooted versions of these two.

World’s Finest # 1 starts off the series with ‘Rebirth’ as Helena (Huntress) and Karen (Power Girl) have dinner at a fancy restaurant in Tokyo. As Helena burns down passports of her past identities, Karen holds a toast to their new lives. The women discuss how Karen bought a lab in Japan… when suddenly she gets an emergency call. 

 The women rush off to see Karen’s new lab up in flames. Karen asks one of the employees about the Quantum Tunneler, the reason she bought the lab, and she dashes in to find it. Helena leaves the supervisor to watch over the employees and people near the fire and runs off to dress as The Huntress. Now ready, the Huntress dashes off after Karen.

She finds Karen surveying the damage, in what's left of her clothes since most of it was burned off in the fire. Huntress asks if maybe Mr. Terrific had something to do with, since they broke up, but the blonde businesswoman doubts it. She finds the Quantum Tunneler in good condition and says it’s their ticket back home. Karen uses her x-ray vision to see that some of the radioactive materials inside the tunneler are missing, and some of the holes look chewed up.

We flashback to 5 years earlier on Earth 2 as Robin and Supergirl try to stop an attack from Darkseid. Suddenly a big explosion hit them and they’re sent through a portal. They land in the ocean and Robin pulls Supergirl over to shore.

Eventually Supergirl wakes up and realizes it wasn’t a nightmare. The Batman and Superman of their world died. However, Robin points out that they’re in another world and it has its own version of Superman.

We jump forward to 59 months ago, as Helena and Kara are adapting to the new world. They want to someday return to the point before Darkseid destroyed everything on Earth 2. Helena points out that she hacked into Batman’s accounts to get the money they needed to start a new life.

2 weeks ago, we see that Karen has been busy building her business empire and become somewhat of a celebrity… while Helena became the Huntress, an urban legend vigilante. Back to the present, Karen shows Helena that she also made a new costume for herself and decides they should name themselves Power Girl and Huntress. An explosion is heard nearby and Huntress says they can discuss first billing after they get out of there. Power Girl flies off saying whoever gets to the source of the explosion can get top billing.

Huntress follows on foot, saying first isn't always better. She arrives to see Power Girl being sent flying back by the intruder. They finally found the culprit behind the attack and get ready to face him. 

The villain is a huge man called Hakkou the Irradiated Man… and these pissed off women are unimpressed and ready to take him down!!

My opinions-

I have to say, seeing that Power Girl and Huntress were characters from another reality, they should have just been the pre-Flashpoint versions of themselves. It would have been an interesting way to harken back to before the New 52 since they would remember the original events and would be a cool way to show Superman and Batman in their classic costumes in flashbacks and whatnot. Also plus with this reboot, I found it too soon for them to already bring in an Earth 2. All the different worlds and alternate universes and whatnot are what lead to these huge continuity reboots to begin with, so I'm surprised they're already jumping in with that.

The new costumes take time to get used to. Power Girl's outfit and hairstyle in particular take a while to get used to, though it looks like eventually as the series went on she would eventually go back to her old look. Of course they felt the need to cover up Power Girl's boob-window and tone down the focus on her impressively sized chest, but again, she regains her own look eventually so while it might have caused some fan backlash back then, she does regain her classic look.

What I enjoyed the most are the interactions and the banter between the girls. Gotta love a good buddy series. Plus are both people that have been thrust into another reality where the Batman and Superman they see are not the ones they knew. Who better to relate than with each other. I was always a bigger Power Girl fan than the Huntress, I know her story has always been that she was an alternate reality Supergirl but in this version the Huntress was an alternate reality Robin. In other versions of DC comics, Huntress was the daughter of both Batman and Catwoman, so I wonder if they'll get into that here. Was she just Robin, or also Batman's daughter? We'll have to find out as the series unfolds.

Good story though, it introduced the concept and the new versions of the characters, and now we're ready for a fight against a giant monster. I love comics.

Geez, by this time Mr. Terrific's title was cancelled and he was only appearing as a guest character among many in the Earth 2 comic.