By Mark Rodriguez
I've always been a fan of Power Girl during her 2009 run. It took me a while, but I first started collecting it near the end of its run before the New 52 started. after finding back issues at Bent Wookee, Comic World, and Stories, and then filling in the gaps with Hipcomic, I finally have the full set of Power Girl's 2009 run. This was all before the New 52 came in and reset her story with the World Finest Huntress and Power Girl series. Let's check out how this series got started.
The story opens recapping the classic story of Krypton about to explode, and two parents send their child off into space. A refuge that will become the savior of a new alien world. That isn't exactly how the story played out as we see an adult Kara awaken in her space pod.
"A New Beginning" opens in New York City as Power Girl soars through the skies, wanting a fresh new start. She was born on a Krypton from an alternate Earth and was a former member of the Justice Society. There was a Crisis and she ended up in this universe, being cut off from anyone she ever knew and loved. The one time she managed to return to Earth 2 and find her cousin Kal-L, she was already replaced by another version of herself. She now wants to forget about returning to Earth 2 and defend the one she is currently on.
Everything was fine when suddenly a huge storm rolled in. Power Girl's super hearing could detect people screaming like maniacs, people in elevators strangling each other and nurses killing their own patients. A hysteria is sweeping across the city. The storm is resonating some sort of emotional shockwave driving everybody crazy. Several grappling hook-like devices are falling out of the whirlwind, stabbing themselves different parts of the city.
Just then an army of robot-like aliens drop out of the sky and into the city, as the citizens are in the middle of killing each other in a frenzy. The robots start to shoot at the people. Several of them bust into a restaurant as the people inside panic upon seeing them. Power Girl arrives to hold off the robots and tell the people to get to the back of the restaurant and tend to the wounded.
Power Girl scans them and sees that there are just robots. At the moment she can't tell if it's the robots or the storm that is causing this emotional spectrum. Power Girl is not immune to psychic attacks and every part of her feels like going back home and crawling under bed. That won't stop her.
Power Girl is fighting off the wave of fear an disgust she feels as she fights the robots. She recalls that everything was fine an hour ago. She was in the middle of putting her past behind her, buying back shares of the company she once owned. She was starting over as Karen Starr. As she recalls this, she grabs a car and swings it into a bunch of robots, smashing them to pieces.
We flashback a bit as we see Karen working on re-opening Starrware Labs. She wants to do good on two levels. She can't punch all her problems away but she can hire a team of smart and ambitious people to work with her. She's already assembled a new team with the first week since opening. She also wants normal human contact and a secret identity again.
She hires a man named Dexter and shows him around the place including a Drexler Chamber that has Drexler's Grey Goo. For a demonstration, Karen sets the self-replicating nanobots and raw materials she added to create a 1996 Pontiac. Dexter is impressed but asks why she created this old muscle car. Karen explains she wants to remind the team that America used to stand for ingenuity, style and a sense of adventure and dependability. She says they need that kind of spirit to tackle 21st century problems. Dexter is interested in the job and Karen tells him to go to the seventieth floor to see HR. Karen thinks he's the type of down-home values type of person she wants working at her company, even if she has to overlook him staring at her chest.
Power Girl continues to fight against the robots. She wonders if the sounds they make are some type of auditory fear code. She asks one of them why they are attacking people. Suddenly she's hit by a green light coming from the sky that fills her with a stronger sense of fear and pain than before. It also starts to suck her up towards the eye of the storm.
Power Girl awakens within the fortress of Ultra-Humanite, and is surrounded by the robots aiming their guns at her.
We flashback to earlier as Karen is going to interview the next team member. One of her team members, named Simon, tells Karen that Mr. Bevlin is in her office saying he's been waiting around for ten minutes when it's only been five. Simon warns that he's not just impatient but arrogant. Just then a woman named Martie Lieb comes in and starts talking up a storm much to Karen and Simon's dismay. Simon keeps her busy while Karen goes to see Mr. Bevlin. She finds him sitting in her chair and looking at her snow globes. Karen tells him to put the snow globe down and get out of her chair.
Bevlin says Karen wants to save the planet and his research can help with that. He tells her about how the world is psychologically unhealthy. He says that if she wants people to care about global warming, pollution and other things, they have to change the way humanity thinks about themselves and their planet. Karen says they are making strides in changing how people think about the environment but change is slow. Bevlin says change is too slow and he suggests changing human thought patterning on a global scale. Karen says that he's starting to sound psychologically unhealthy himself.
Bevlin goes into how people develop based on being influenced by other people and their personalities, or by values taught by civilization and its moral and religious traditions. Karen says she's running an engineering company, while he's talking about philosophy. Bevlin says he's talking about reality and in order to change the world they need to genetically re-engineer the human race. Karen says the interview is over. Bevlin since she's a woman so it is in her nature to raise children but they can only change society if they understand its essence.
Karen says she understands that he wants to control how people think by bioengineering them with pre-programmed ideas. Bevlin says she's just like the others, keeping humanity from achieving godhood. Karen says people like her keep the lunatics away from the technology to make their twisted dreams come true. She tells him to take his sexist attitude and leave. Bevlin says she, as well as the rest of the world, will be sorry they didn't listen to him when he had the chance. Karen gives him one last chance to leave before she throws him out.
Karen says guys like Bevlin turn into guys like Ultra-Humanite, who she is currently fighting with. The madman that inserted his brain in the body of an albino ape grabs Power Girl by the hair says he was promised the world in exchange for her. Ultra-Humanite has powerful psychic attacks, so Power Girl elbows him in the face before he can use them. She says he doesn't belong here, as he throws her away. Ultra-Humanite says the world is his and he will rip it to pieces. He states that his only regret is that he can't kill her, but the same does not hold for the city beneathe them. Power Girl is hit by energy blasts, holding her in place.
As Power Girl thinks to herself how Ulta-Humanite never had this much power or hardware at his disposal. All the ropes from earlier start to pull the city from its foundation and lifting it into the sky. Power Girl thinks he's never had the motivation for this type of attack. Ultra-Humanite says he has taken Manhattan hostage. Power Girl asks why he's doing this. Ultra-Humanite says he wants his brain in Power Girl's body. As Manhattan is now suspended in the sky, Ultra-Humanite asks whether Power Girl will choose the city or herself.
My thoughts-
We're off to a good start as right off the bat as Power Girl is facing off a city-wide threat. A storm causes destruction, robots are attacking people, and psychic waves are causing people to flip out and start killing each other. It's madness and Power Girl had her hands full as she was also affected by the psychic waves. We also get some backstory with Power Girl getting settled in with her new life in New York. She mentioned she was re-buying shares of the company she used to own and she is re-opening Starrware Lab, but it makes me wonder who used to own the company the first time around.
Power Girl is awesome as always, as she strives to fight the world's evils both as a super heroine but also with her engineering company. I did love her interactions with Simon, and I hope we see more of the banter between those two. The artwork is pretty cool and energetic. The robots had interesting and detailed designed, and I love the effects of the storm.
Power Girl is, of course, also known for being well-endowed, and we get that referenced a few times. One was pretty obvious as her employee Dexter was caught staring at her chest. While Power Girl decided to ignore that, it's not a smart thing to do during a job interview.
One clever panel though is when Mr. Bevlin kept messing with Karen's snow globes, as apparently she has a bunch of them on her desk. This panel positions the snow globes in very suspicion angles, while Karen tells him to stop 'messing with her globes'. I mean, that had to be intentional despite the fact that Bevlin showed no attraction to her.
The villain this time around is Ultra-Humanite, who I first saw on the Justice League cartoon years ago. He was slightly less evil there, as he was willing to sell out Lex's Injustice Gang just so he could get better cell conditions thanks to a deal with Batman. In the comics, Ultra-Humanite was actually Superman's first super villain before Lex Luthor would eventually get introduced. While his story changed a lot over the years, he's a super intelligent scientist with a deteriorating body that would eventually transplant his brain into the body of an albino gorilla. As we can see here, he is clearly way more evil and sadistic than he was in the cartoon.
Power Girl finds herself in a hell of a jam as the city of Manhattan is suspended in mid-air as Ultra-Humanite wants to put his brain in her Kryptonian body. We'll find out what she'll do next issue.
Finally, I occasionally like to show one of the old ads from the comics of back in the day and this one gave a double-doozy.
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