Supergirl: Cosmic Adventures in the 8th Grade

Note: In an attempt to balance my desire to write about comics with the time demands of, well, life, instead of my somewhat-crazy attempt to review every comic book that this blog started as, I'm just going to try to write reviews of whatever I happen to have just read. This should be a reasonable 1-2 posts a week. Let's see if I can manage!

One-sentence summary: An ignored comic, but one of the single best superhero stories to come out of 2008 -- no, really!

I think kids' comics get a bad rap on a consumer-level. Critically, they're fairly appreciated (Tobin and Parker's work on the Marvel Adventure line comes to mind), but even this is hit or miss. I think this comic is a great example of that.

Let's be honest: there aren't a ton of well-written superhero comics about girls out there. Unfortunately, part of the reason for this is that they simply don't sell well (Slott's She-Hulk, Palmiotti's Power Girl, etc) even when they are good. I think it's a bit of a self-sustaining cycle: few comic buyers buy girl-centric titles because they generally aren't well-written, thus lowering the demand for girl-centric titles, thus lowering the chances for a company to strongly support a title, and so on. This isn't a new phenomenon, nor is it one that really shows signs of going away any time soon.

I lead off on this tangent because one of the most important aspects to this book is that it somehow manages the miracle of never once falling into a girl-comic cliche, all the while being, through-and-through, a girl-comic.

Maybe it's due to my absence from writing, but I can't really get describe how much I adore this book. The characters are solid, and when the emotional moments are there, you feel them. How many times does this happen in a kids' comic? Even Lex Luthor gets a heart-wrenching line at the end. One of the primary "enemies" of book -- Belinda Zee, her "evil" double -- really is just misunderstood, but you're never hit over the head with that, you're never forced to love the character, but at the end you sympathize with the position into which she's been created\. The emotional moments are sprinkled throughout the book, but at no point do they seem out of place or undeserved or overwhelming.

Now, lest you think it's a maudlin work, let me talk about the comedy. This is what first got my attention with the book; like a lot of kid comics published today, comedy plays a larger role than in mainstream superhero books. The main source of humor throughout the series is Linda Lee (Supergirl)'s image thought bubbles, usually showing her daydreams of an idealized super-heroic self, with the absurdity a misplaced 14-year old might have (one of my favorites was her fantasy of being moon Supergirl stopping moon robbers from robbing the moon bank. On the moon). The series also plays with the inherent absurdity of superhero books, embracing it fully, without any meta-acknowledgment, eventually giving a totally acceptable explanation for all the surreality that had occurred before (just in case there were readers wondering how, for instance, a piece of kryptonite shown through a projector could create an evil double).

But, in case you do like a dash of meta in your comics, the depiction of the 2-d world in the climax as crudely drawn crayon drawings with childish dialog ("Karate chop!!") might appease you. Or if you're a huge DC-canon nerd, you can enjoy the reference in the final issue as a giant hand reaches out through the multiverse. Maybe you simply yearn for the old funny editor note asterisk call-backs -- they're there too.

My point is: this book really does have it all. I'm not easily impressed -- at any given moment, the Big Two are putting out maybe a half-dozen books I really dig -- but this is great stuff. I can't recommend it enough, and it's only $13 retail ($11 on Amazon -- just sayin'). Give it a try. It's a nice, self-contained story, that's friendly to all ages, particularly a good comic for girls, but with more than enough substance to satiate any level of fan.

P.S. Looking up the writer, I see that he?she? has gone on to write some other critically appraised children's comics -- Batman: The Brave & The Bold, and The Incredibles.