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Mild Mannered Reviews - Supergirl Comics

Supergirl #50

Scheduled to arrive in stores: February 17, 2010

Cover date: April 2010

"Queen"

Writer: Sterling Gates
Penciller: Jamal Igle
Inker: Jon Sibal & Mark McKenna

"A Hero's Journey"

Writer: Jake Black & Helen Slater
Artist: Cliff Chiang

Reviewed by: Jeffrey Bridges

Click to enlarge

Lucy has reconstituted herself out of matter from the person who found her, because "her will to live is strong". General Lane finds her and takes her away, but not before she exhibits Kryptonian powers even though her magical suit was destroyed.

In Metropolis, Gangbuster fights his way through giant insects to locate Kara in some kind of cocoon. He tosses some kind of sunlight grenade, which wakes Supergirl up and she helps him escape.

He takes her to see Dr. Light, who explains what happened. The hive appeared out of nowhere in Metropolis and the Science Police were unable to stop it. The JLA didn't respond and Dr. Light sent in some reconfigured STAR Labs bugs and found Kara trapped inside. Dr. Light says the insects are alien mixed with something else, but doesn't know what. Kara thinks they might be part human.

Kara and Gangbuster try to break into the hive to find what's controlling it, but they're ambushed and go down fighting. When Kara awakens, the Insect Queen is there. The Queen explains that before Superman imprisoned her, she implanted a part of herself into Lana and transferred her consciousness over there, and then fought to gain control of Lana's body for over a year.

The Queen says she forced Lana to get close to Kara because she wanted someone connected to the "S" so she could use their DNA to breed super-powered drones to take over the earth. Kara has heard enough and breaks out of her restraints as she orders Dr. Light (via communicator) to detonate the mechanical bugs she sent into the hive, and they explode as Kara attacks the Queen.

Dr. Light arrives with some device Kara asked her to make as the drones try to carry off the Queen. After a brief fight Kara takes the Queen to a hospital with an MRI machine, and they use it to somehow remove the Queen from Lana's body via no explanation whatsoever. This destroys the machine and apparently turns Lana into a statue, but then she cracks out from inside the statue ala "Ghostbusters" and is alive and well.

Kara checks in on Lana, who's fine, and then tells her she's "leaving her life", because although Lana was there for her for an entire year, she lied to her about being sick. Lana counters with lying to protect those you care about as being something good and human and part of being a family, to which Kara says then she doesn't want to be part of Lana's family anymore.

Then we go back to General Lane, where it's revealed Lucy now ACTUALLY has all the powers her suit previously had and is ready for more missions.

"A Hero's Journey"

Ron Troupe and Cat Grant briefly recap Supergirl's history on "Greet the Press". Cat mentions all the problems Kara's had, and then we hear from Dr. Joseph Cartwright, a Professor of Anthropology at Metropolis University.

He says that she is young yet, and now is the time when she needs discipline, guidance and training. We then get quotes from people on the street about Supergirl, who all seem to be in support of her, even though Ron then says people are wary of her... but she's doing a good job and trying to help and is growing.

Kara has been watching the report from the Daily Planet newsroom.

Story - 2: Fifty issues in, and this is what we get... a fight with bugs. Not only that, but they're bugs who can subdue Supergirl. So if they can do that, why the heck does the Insect Queen need Kryptonian DNA to make super-powered drones to conquer the world?

If your drones can subdue Supergirl, aren't they already super-powered?!

And I honestly can't even comment on the MRI angle. What the hell sense does any of that make, can someone tell me?

Dr. Light has a "device"... made to KARA'S "specifications"... which somehow makes an MRI pull the Insect Queen out of Lara's very blood? All so we can get an almost direct rip-off of the end scene from "Ghostbusters"?

This is all just a bunch of... hogwash. It feels like they wanted to make Lana "sick" and didn't know what to actually do with that, and this is what they came up with. The Insect Queen somehow knew Superman would defeat her and transferred her consciousness into Lana before she was defeated? Seriously?

And then, with no idea how to put Lana back to the status quo at the end and without the guts to actually kill her, we're given what might be the hokiest, crappiest explanation for anything in a comic that I've seen in a decade. The "magic" MRI machine pulls Insect Queens out of your friends, kids! Sign them up now!

What the hell is going on here?

This would be a crushing disappointment as any issue. As a milestone issue FIFTY, it's ridiculously terrible. Which I suppose is only an apt "celebration" of the majority of the run of this book so far.

So very, very disappointing.

Art - 3: Nothing to complain about (although that panel near the end when Superwoman vaporizes that person was far more graphic than it needed to be), but there's only so much you can do to make Supergirl punching giant bugs interesting to look at.

Backup Story - 3: I'm not even really sure how to rate this one, in as much as it's a "here's some things Supergirl's done in the past and people who don't like her should cut her some slack because she's trying" recap. It's not really a story, and I'm not sure there's a point to it other than getting Helen Slater's name on Supergirl issue 50, but it wasn't terrible. It was just more history lesson than anything else.

Backup Art - 5: Very nicely done. Cartoonish, but not goofy. It was a lot of fun and I would love to see art like that on the main story (sans giant bugs, of course).

Cover Art - 4: Props to DC for putting a Michael Turner image on the cover for this issue. As the man who helped launch the entire book, that was a great way of paying homage to everything he did to help the book get going.

It's a pretty basic image, but it's plenty nice to look at.

Cover Art (Alternate Cover) - 3: Sure it's right out of the issue, but without context you have no idea what the heck is going on, which doesn't make it terribly compelling. Also? Seriously over the covers where Kara looks 12 years old.

It's a pretty basic image, but it's plenty nice to look at.

Mild Mannered Reviews

2010

Note: Month dates are from the issue covers, not the actual date when the comic went on sale.

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Mild Mannered Reviews - Supergirl Comics

Supergirl #50

Mild Mannered Reviews

2010

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