mithen: (Smiling Chris Reeve)
[personal profile] mithen
I've always said I like more realistic, detailed art in comics. But lately, I dunno...I'm starting to see the appeal of art that's more "cartoony." I'm sure it can be done badly, but when it's done well there's an energy to it that the more static pin-up art style we see in flagship titles doesn't seem to have.

Case in point: Supergirl's Cosmic Adventures in the Eighth Grade. It's a Johnny DC title, which means marketed to kids. But it snaps along at a good pace and has some real emotion in it--not like the "Super Friends" title, which I love in part because it's so very, campily young, but this is good stuff for any age IMHO.

Plus, this title made me like Kara, which is very cool. And gave her a real secret identity, which I really want her to have more often in the main titles.

The story is that a rocket suddenly interrupts a fight between a power-suited Lex and Superman. It opens to reveal a Kryptonian girl, who is immediately harassed by the media--especially frightening to her because her powers start developing willy-nilly:



Kal rescues her from the media and has a talk with her:



"This request for seasoning is your final display of insolence!" is going to be my motto from now on.  Yes.

Of course, Kara is being a bit disingenuous here, and Kal eventually gets her to confess that her parents weren't being unreasonable, she just got in a snitty mood and decided to run away from home in her father's experimental rocket:



Uh-oh.  Wibble alert.



*wibble*  Although I do like her "I didn't like that."  LOL, poor Kara.

I also like the way they got around the trauma of having her parents be dead.  She's still really alone and lost, but it's a kind of alone and lost a kid could empathize with, not a world-devastating one.

So Kal enrolls Kara in school as Linda Lee, but I'm afraid he fails to give her a crash course in Earth customs and history--although I suppose he couldn't have covered all the random topics an 8th grader would run into:





Augh, poor Kara.  It's like someone's fantasy of how horrible school was condensed into one perfectly awful day.

Then there's gym class, with pretty much the ur-gym teacher.



Awwwww.  I mean, what kid (or adult) wouldn't sympathize?  Dodgeball--no one is invulnerable to dodgeball.

And so Kara limps back to her dorm that evening, sad and alone:





Humiliation and mind control machines?  I thought this was a kids book!  (ba-dum-DUM-ching).

Aw, but seriously, I like this book a lot.  Who couldn't like nerdy Kara trying to get by, and who wouldn't love to get a little note from Superman saying "You are not alone"?  *melts*

(no subject)

Date: 2009-01-19 05:54 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] seriousfic.livejournal.com
More Kryptonians should embellish their reasons for ending up on Earth.

Krypto: I went on the carpet.

Zod: I walked on the grass where there was a "do not walk on grass" sign.

Brainiac: I just got fed up with being used for downloading porn all day. Brain the size of a planet and I have to find all the girl-on-girl action on the Kryptonet. Call that job satisfaction? Because I don't.

(no subject)

Date: 2009-01-19 02:23 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mithen.livejournal.com
Ursa probably littered. Or jaywalked. Those Kryptonians take their laws really seriously.

Also: alas, poor Brainiac. Does he have a pain in all his diodes along his left side?

(*feels the urge to write Brainiac and Marvin sympathizing*)

(no subject)

Date: 2009-01-19 03:16 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] seriousfic.livejournal.com
Does that make the Fortress of Solitude AI into that elevator that was so happy to take people to different floors?

(no subject)

Date: 2009-01-20 12:59 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mithen.livejournal.com
"You've made a simple Fortress very happy, Kal-El."

(No, no, Fortress/Kal is not acceptable).

(no subject)

Date: 2009-01-20 05:13 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] seriousfic.livejournal.com
I've read Fortress/Lois.

(no subject)

Date: 2009-01-20 06:21 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mithen.livejournal.com
I can totally see that, actually. o_O

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