SUPERGIRL: WOMAN OF TOMORROW #1
This story is written by: Tom King, with visuals from: Bilquis Evely and Matheus Lopes.
After being burned by the latter portion of his Batman run and the cluster that was Heroes in Crisis, I have pretty much made a point of avoiding everything to do with Tom King, no matter how much acclaim any one series seems to be getting at the time. I just could not bring myself to go through any potential disappointment from him once again, in much the same way that I have struggled with certain Joshua Williamson works, and even Hickman’s X-Men run. However, I simply just could not pass up the opportunity to pick up this title, to see what King could do with the iconic Supergirl character, with hopes that it would be more Vision than Batman, and the fact that it is only an eight issue series doesn’t hurt too much either to be honest.
Although I am often quick to criticise any series following the first issue, I am here to hesitantly say that this was a very solid start, restoring a little bit of my faith in King’s abilities, after those previously mentioned divisive works, that I feel had more negative responses that positive. This first chapter presents us with a slightly different side of Kara Zor-El than I am personally used to seeing, as the past books of hers that I have read have had her slightly more family friendly, with stakes that I never really identified with. However, here King is establishing a much more mature tone, with Kara as kind of a badass, despite being on a world with a red sun, meaning that she is not in possession of her much vaunted powers. This gives Tom King the opportunity to play around with the tone and genre of the piece a little bit more, in my opinion, giving us something akin to Supergirl meets Red Sonja, meets Conan the Barbarian, giving us a story that is more Sword and Sorcery, than a traditional Super Hero story. Despite a couple of missteps along the way, I felt that King really made the effort to make sure that Kara was able to fit in to this genre, with the characters seeming very at home with swordplay, albeit tending to revert to trying to use her fists, resulting in her getting pretty torn up most of the time.
Quite possibly the best decision that Tom King made with this story was to tell it from the perspective of Ruthye. Personally, I do not think that it would have worked as well if the narration was done by Kara, as with Ruthye we are given the views of an outsider to the actions of our protagonist, giving us a story that is relatively free of personal bias, at least when it comes to Kara. My one problem with this course of action was the fact that King has already pretty much told us how this story is going to end, and it was basically on the first page: Kara Zor-El is going to kill a man. While I am all for a change in the character, giving her more of an edge that distinguishes her from her cousin, I think I would have preferred it if King had perhaps built it up a little bit more over the course of the story, instead of using the idea of Kara becoming a killer just for some shock value right at the start of the tale. In a way, you do not really have to read the rest of the series, as the journey to killing the guy isn’t likely to be the most groundbreaking thing ever, but in my opinion the rest of these instalments still hold some intrigue, as we will likely learn to ultimate fate of Krypto, and I would not mind knowing a bit more about Ruthye as well, especially who her nameless father is.
The star of this show, despite King producing some of his best work in years, as to go to the art team of Bilquis Evely and Matheus Lopes. In a word, their art is tremendous, giving us truly one of the most beautiful books that I have ever seen. It kind of reminds me of a combination of Greg Capullo at the peak if his powers, and the better parts of Chris Bachalo (yes, his art does have some good qualities, shocking I know). Despite a somewhat bleak story, dealing with the death of loved ones, the bright colours provide a lovely contrast, evoking feelings of hope that it will all turn out alright in the end. If anything that I have ever reviewed deserves a 10/10, it would be this artwork, as while I have given that rating to many a book in the past, many of those still pale in comparison to the way that this one looks.
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