Mortlake on the Schuylkill

Supergirl #15 was out Wednesday, and to multiply the fun, Kara also appeared in The Brave and the Bold #2.

The Pretty Much Good:
In her own title the Maid of Might finally gets down to the urgent business of making out with Power Boy. However, the mood changes when she cuts things short after hearing Boomer call for her from his hospital bed. (He was tortured to within an inch of his life in the previous issue.) Power Boy, who has a special shrine to Kara's awesomeness in his room, goes ballistic and adds physical abuse to his stalker-tendencies. He lays down a beating on Kara the likes of which hasn't been seen in the book since Lex Luthor showed up just before Infinite Crisis.

I suppose the writer believed that the readers needed to see Kara's 'boyfriend' fully deploy his superpowers to beat upon Supergirl in order for us to derive the full satisfaction from her retributive smack-down. (Let's see how good a mimbo you are from here on out with those missing teeth, Apokalips-boy!) I go back and forth on this one, but I'm willing to grant the benefit of the doubt here because Kara does, in the end, utterly pound the crap out of the abusive bastard.

But, having said that, there is an important moment in the flow of things in which the artist chooses to flash Supergirl's panties, which I've got to say almost undermined the whole thing for me.

Marionette had a post a while back titled "Kara's Incredible Super-Skirt" in which she explored the strange fact that even though Kara's skirt was so short, her underoos never came into view; it looks like her clothing now conforms with the laws of physics.


The Thursday Morning Quarterback guys at Wizard noticed this, too. (I swiped the image from them.)

The Ugly:
I was cringing so vigorously as I read The Brave and the Bold #2 that I honestly can't exactly recall the incremental ways the over-arching plot was moved forward. For panels on end, Hal Jordan reminds himself that Kara is 17 years old. For panels on end, Supergirl bats her 17-year-old Kryptonian eye-lashes at him.

I had basically worked out how I was going to comment on this, but Justin, one of the Thursday Morning team at Wizard says it all, here:

JUSTIN: “Wow, this issue is creepy. It isn’t enough that Supergirl continually throws herself at Hal Jordan, who has to keep reminding himself, ‘No bad thoughts. She’s 17.’ No, after GL tells her off and gives her some bizarrely unsolicited romantic advice (‘Maybe you want to find someone, we all do…’) Supergirl decides to fight in an arena match and disguise herself to look non-threatening. So she comes up with…this.”


And, yes, in case you were wondering, this title affords the reader a glimpse of Kara's underwear, too.