First Appearance of Power Girl

[Great Rao]

Behold!

The first appearance of Power Girl!

(This was actually contributed by somebody who sent me a bunch of old comics a few months ago, including this issue of All-Star.  Unfortunately, I don't remember who it was.  If the generous contributor is reading this, please speak up!  Thanks!)

[Super Monkey]

Wally Wood is one of my favorite artists ever!

[JulianPerez]

I've said for years that if they were to have killed ANYBODY off in the Crisis, it ought to have been Power Girl. She has never had that interesting a personality (under ANY writer that has written her, from Gerry Conway to Paul Levitz to Roy Thomas to Geoff Johns, and that says something), and the tittering, immature adolescent fixation with her breasts that is her single distinctive trait got old decades ago.

Power Girl was a redundancy whose existence was only justified by the fact that there is no Superman Family on Earth-2. If the multiple Earths were to be eliminated, she is deprived of her one uniqueness - indeed, her only true reason to exist. You guys blew your best chance to get rid of her with the Crisis. Instead, the bullet missed the target and hit the infinitely more interesting character of Supergirl. Way to go, boneheads!

I'm not a big fan of character death for the simple reason that one of the "rules" of working in a medium like comic books with a continuum, is that you can never "close a door." You can't blow up a place forever or kill a character. Even if you can't think of a story there, some other writer in the future might. That said, if I had to pick five characters to die, they would be:

Power Girl;

Immortus (I could write an entire post about this, but here's my justification in a nutshell: if he isn't a reformed Kang that has learned the err of his ways, like Steve Englehart wrote, what's the point of having him around at all? Kang is a better time travelling villain than Immortus could ever hope to be)

Wolverine (this choice speaks for itself)

Cable (ditto)

US Agent (or at least have him made into a villain. There are some traits that destroy any chance of a character that has it being likeable in any way. If a superhero was an antisemite, for example, I would not like him no matter how much personality he has. US Agent's mindless, cynical Ultra-Nationalism makes him profoundly sinister and unlikeable no matter how many issues of AVENGERS WEST COAST he appears in - and the fact that he's a Cap clone is just frosting on the horse manure-flavored cake)

Apocalypse (despite being derivative in name and appearance from a villain a thousand times greater than he could ever hope to be, his complete lack of anything resembling a concrete motivation, his vague non-personality reduced to saying cryptic things the writers never explain, and his power that is so vaguely defined as to be virtually limitless, I still have a few more bad things to say about Apocalypse nonetheless: for instance, his gag-inducing overexposure and level of undeserved veneration in the X-Books)[/list]

Incidentally, I take it as a source of pride that the one woman I would select to kill is Power Girl. Fans, when asked this question, fans give lists comprised mostly of female characters, and that speaks volumes about 1) the inherent misogyny of male oriented comics fans, for whom strong women are intimidating; and more importantly, 2) the irrelevancy of female characters: they can die because they won't matter. Batman had his spine damaged and he recovered. Babs Gordon on the other hand...

[Super Monkey]

Please note that DC had and still has I believe a strict no other Kryptonians besides Superman rule, so the Earth-Zero Power Girl is therefore not suppose to be the same person as the old Earth-2 Power Girl, no matter what the ending of Crisis might led one to believe, afterall, she was last seen there with the Pre-Reboot Superman, so they both were re-conned.

Read all about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Girl

[Captain Kal]

Geez, gone for over a week with over a dozen replies to make ...

OK, first, I agree that the original Supergirl was a superior character to Power Girl.  Given my druthers, I'd keep her over the E-2 copy.

That having been said, I also agree with DC's decision to axe E-1 Kara and keep E-2 Kara.  Consider that the original Supergirl had an unbroken history of not being salesworthy.  She'd never been able to sustain her own book.  Power Girl was still relatively virgin territory without that 100% fail record, and she had a lot of potential as a non 'S'/'super' character to be worked into something that would sell.

If it were a choice between the proven failure and the hopeful newbie, I know where the business guys were going with this.

The jury's still out on how the 'new' Kara Zor-El will work out.  Again, all incarnations of Supergirl, both Pre and Post Crisis, have tanked.

[JulianPerez]

Please note that DC had and still has I believe a strict no other Kryptonians besides Superman rule, so the Earth-Zero Power Girl is therefore not suppose to be the same person as the old Earth-2 Power Girl, no matter what the ending of Crisis might led one to believe, afterall, she was last seen there with the Pre-Reboot Superman, so they both were re-conned.

Read all about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Girl

I'd read that, but I don't think I want the migrane right this instant.  

My point here is this:

Crisis messed up a lot of things. Characters that were previously interesting (Hawkman, the DC space heroes, Superman) were changed unrecognizeably and hideously. The only DC character that actually benefitted from Crisis is Wally West, and that was because he was given over to talented writers (Baron) that made him likeable and distinctive. Supergirl died, which surely was a case of throwing out the baby with the bathwater if there ever was one.

Oh, but heaven and earth had to be moved to let Power Girl survive somehow.

Despite the fact come post-Crisis she has no real reason to exist. Despite the fact that her presence in a future DC universe would not make sense. And most importantly of all, despite the fact that she was never worth saving in the first place.

Many characters killed in Crisis (or altered abysmally and cluelessly by later events) were interesting and worthwhile. Power Girl was never interesting or worthwhile. Yet, she survived the Crisis while better characters did not.

Go figure.

[Captain Kal]

To rephrase what I said earlier, Supergirl was a proven failed property while Power Girl still had potential to be salvaged given the distinctiveness of the copy and the relative newness.

Geoff Johns, the character doctor, has his hands on Power Girl now in JSA Classified.  While I think Johns is overrated, he does have a tendency to make characters fresh and workable.  Hey, he fixed the Hawkmess which was no small feat.  While his science and pseudoscience stinks, his themes and characterization tend to be bang on.  My only complaint is how he handled Guy Gardner in the recent Green Lantern: Rebirth series, but it's a minor nit at that (Guy cheating on his taxes?  Lying about not wanting the ring back?  GLs are chosen for honesty as well as fearlessness!).

[Super Monkey]

Please note that DC had and still has I believe a strict no other Kryptonians besides Superman rule, so the Earth-Zero Power Girl is therefore not suppose to be the same person as the old Earth-2 Power Girl, no matter what the ending of Crisis might led one to believe, afterall, she was last seen there with the Pre-Reboot Superman, so they both were re-conned.

Read all about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Girl

I'd read that, but I don't think I want the migrane right this instant.  

My point here is this:

Crisis messed up a lot of things. Characters that were previously interesting (Hawkman, the DC space heroes, Superman) were changed unrecognizeably and hideously. The only DC character that actually benefitted from Crisis is Wally West, and that was because he was given over to talented writers (Baron) that made him likeable and distinctive. Supergirl died, which surely was a case of throwing out the baby with the bathwater if there ever was one.

Oh, but heaven and earth had to be moved to let Power Girl survive somehow.

Despite the fact come post-Crisis she has no real reason to exist. Despite the fact that her presence in a future DC universe would not make sense. And most importantly of all, despite the fact that she was never worth saving in the first place.

Many characters killed in Crisis (or altered abysmally and cluelessly by later events) were interesting and worthwhile. Power Girl was never interesting or worthwhile. Yet, she survived the Crisis while better characters did not.

Go figure.

Your point makes no sense, since it's NOT the same Power Girl.

The Power Girl that is running around is NOT the pre-crisis Power Girl, she didn't make it, she didn't survived crisis. She is NOT a Kryptonian, she is not Superman's cousin. She is NOT the same character in those two pages.

Again, have some pills handy and read the link.