Is DC Comics' "Power Girl" supposed to look like a man/transvestite, grotesque?

[Mister_Rik]

@cckerberos

Here’s the scene he’s talking about (from Hawkman #23).

C’mon, I wanna see the next page! What’d she do to those guys?

There’s a great sequence in JSA: Classified #1. In the last panel on one page, she says in her narration, “Green Lantern used to ask me why I never wore a mask.” The first panel on the next page shows a closeup of her cleavage. The narration says, “It’s because most of the time, they ain’t lookin’ at my face.”

[Miller]

@Tengu

At least once (in Birds of Prey, the arc where Joker threatened to nuke New York), she displayed the ability to grant other characters (Black Canary, in this case) the ability to fly.

Man, I was really hoping you were going to go somewhere else with that sentence than “the ability to fly.”

[Kamino_Neko]

@Phase42

There’s a great sequence in JSA: Classified #1. In the last panel on one page, she says in her narration, “Green Lantern used to ask me why I never wore a mask.” The first panel on the next page shows a closeup of her cleavage. The narration says, “It’s because most of the time, they ain’t lookin’ at my face.”

I prefer the sequence in #2, when she’s waiting for Superman at the Planet and talking to Jimmy.*

She realises the kid isn’t looking at her boobs, and starts thinking. ‘No wonder Superman likes him. He’s as whitebread as he a… There he goes.’

(At this point, Jimmy stops in mid-sentence, because he’s only just noticed the Power Boobs.)

Since she wasn’t already pissy, and had come to like Olsen, all she did was roll her eyes and ignore it.

• It ain’t really Jimmy. It’s Psycho Pirate making her see things. Since when can he do that, anyway? I thought he could just fiddle emotions.

@Miller

Man, I was really hoping you were going to go somewhere else with that sentence than “the ability to fly.”

… snerk

[foolsguinea]

@Wolfian

A wizard did it. Wait, they already tried that one. :smack:

As one of the vanishingly small minority of fans that has actually read the Secret Origins issue that de-Kryptonianized Peege & “fobbed her off on Arion,” I would say that the idea as presented there sort of works. (At least it sort of works in that immediate post-Crisis retcon madness context.) Kara was supposed to be the product of Atlantean superscience in an age when magic was fading (though enough remained for ol’ Arion to still be alive). This corresponds to the Atlantean technology seen in the Warlord.

The problem with all this is…

1. DC stopped publishing both* Arion* & Warlord, so what the late-Atlantean stuff looked like was simply unseen by most post-Crisis DC fans.
2. The Secret Origins issue was probably more widely read than the Power Girl mini that followed it, so whatever established the character there was completely unknown to most fans (& creative types, for that matter).
3. Given the never-stay-in-print nature of comic books, it’s easier for a character to have an origin that remains consistent. People want PG to be PG, not some new character. And ideally, every PG story should be in continuity with every other PG story. (But that’s a general DC problem.)
4. Also, in that system, concepts tend to collapse to simplicity. So, if you change things, expect them to be reinterpreted by someone with ignorance &/or disregard for the stories where you change things. “Superman’s cousin” is recognizable, 'cause Supes is an active high-profile trademark. But with Arion out of the picture, PG became “a wizard’s granddaughter,” which is an oversimplification.