Book: World' Finest: Hnutress & Powergirl #1Written By: Paul LevitzPencils By: George Perez, Kevin MaguirePublisher: DC ComicsRelease Date: OUT NOW IN STORES & DIGITAL DOWNLOAD (VIA COMIXOLOGY)
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DC 52 wasn't happy with there newly created universe, so they've (re) introduced Earth 2. Starting this month is Earth 2 in its own run featuring the death of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman of Earth 2. I also read that and it crosses over a bit with this World' Finest issue but it takes a lot for a multiverse story to grab me and I wasn't all that fussed if I'm honest. That said, if a new multiverse is bringing back Power Girl, a favorite character of mine that was sadly left out of the DC 52 launch, I had to give it more attention. Okay, cutting to the chase. Huntress is not who you think. Here she is the daughter of Batman (and supposedly Catwoman but they've haven't gone there yet) and on Earth 2 she was Robin and she saw her dad die defending the Earth (2) from Darkseid. Also on Earth 2, Powergirl was in fact Supergirl. The pair were sucked through some sort of portal for a yet unknown reason and wound up on our Earth. Now five years later, Huntress skimmed a bit of cash off of Wayne Enterprises or order to establish a life on DC 52 Earth and Kara is Karen a 'young mystery mogul' using her fortune to find tech to find a way home to Earth 2. Anyway, this issue is a bit of a flitter. Starting modern day, jumping back to Earth 2, jumping forward to 59 months ago, hopping forward to a few weeks ago and winding up back in the present where Kara (now Karen remember) dons her new uniform for the first time and we we begin to discover who or what has destroyed some of the tech that might have got our pair home. As a first issue, I much preferred the back story to the current drama. For starters the art is much better but somehow the characters are better presented in this brief flashbacks as well. As for the all new Huntress and Powergirl, both ain't sitting right for me. Huntress isn't Helena Bertinelli (we get a send off for that version of Huntress in the opening panels of the issue) so this alternate version of Huntress is new-ish to me. She seems way too nice and very much the level headed one out of the two which is a different spin on Huntress. I am sort of interested in what the daughter of Bruce Wayne will do going forward but so far she seems a bit too sensible for me. As for Powergirl, this one really is the head scratcher. For starters this new costume is guff. It looks like the sort of costume someone would design in about five minutes when tasked with coming up with a superheroine costume off the top of their heads but more importantly messing with Powergirl after the likes of Justin Gray, Jimmy Palmiotti and Amanda Conner did such a great job at making her such a strong character in the DCU seems ridiculous to me. I loved Powergirls solo adventures. They gave the much needed 'fun' angle to comic books, had a real sense of humour and made Powergirl such a likable character. Hell, at one point they were the only DC titles I looked forward to reading every month. They played on Powergirls 'assets' really well and just accepted the whole cleavage costume part of the characters charm. There was a tongue in cheek approach to Powergirl when she's at her best I feel and here they've stripped that all away (though the levels of nudity still remains to a certain degree). So far I like this Karen a little bit but when weighed up again how much I adore old school Powergirl, there's just no contest. Sure I'll stick around for a few more issues to see what pans out and to see how Earth 2 cope in on the DC 52 (leading up to a probable crossover event no doubt) but this first issue has only just about got it's hooks into me but a large part of that is that I've really grown to enjoy female led comics of late (thanks largely to pre DC 52 Powergirl -(*grumble*).