Supergirl #4 // Review
Lesla-Lar is guilty of some very serious crimes. She’s being judged by her mother. Literally. Her mother is a magistrate in her home city of Kandor. She’s not going to go easy on Lesla just because she is her own daughter, though. She orders Lesla to one Earth year of council-ordered service. Kara feels sorry for her...so she offers to serve as Lesla’s sponsor on Earth. It’s a tricky poroposition in Supergirl #4. Writer/artist Sophie Campbell delivers another captivating chapter in the new adventures of an old favorite who continues to show herself to be a lot more interesting than the far more popular character she’s inspired by.
Lesla doesn’t know how to react to the situation. She keeps expecting Kara to be angry with her...to lash-out in some way. Instead, Supergirl keeps being so...understanding. It’s not an easy thing for her to understand, but she’s going to try to live-up to Kara’s trust in her as both women return to the tiny town of Midvale to resume life and attempt to engage in a little super-heroics in the process. They’re both just t rying to deal with the complexities of the relationship. What could possibly go wrong?
So often it’s the case that villains are treated simply as villains and put away or disposed-of until such time as they are needed again for the next conflict. Campbell gives Kara that much more of a sense of altruism by advocating for someone who was essentially trying to mess-up her life entirely. That aspect of the story lends extra power to Kara as a hero and extra depth to Lesla as a complex person who ISN’T just some mindless villain looking to take over the world or achieve wealth or status or kill-off half the life in the universe or the usual sorts of things that supervillains get up to. It’s a charming dynamic between Kara and Lesla. And while it’s not exactly original, it’s executed so rarely that it’s really nice to see a hero looking to actually help reform a villain.
Campbell’s art is a real balancing act. The drama is amplified to a ridiculous degree without ever looking overly cartoonish or undermining the gravity of the drama that she’s bringing to the page. Everything looks so cute the way she renders it, but that cuteness never goes over the edge to feel any less believable than a highly-detailed hyper-realistic rendering might look. There’s real impact. in the drama that doesn’t ever upstage the actual action that’s making it to the page. It’s all so well-balanced. Even the color manages to look bright and vibrant without compromising a very clean visual aesthetic that steers well clear of cartoony exaggerations. There’s real visual depth on the page throughout the issue.
Once again, Campbell is delivering a series that has a disticnt look and feel that doesn’t feel like any other comic book on the rack today. And yet...it fits perfectly into the overall realm of the DC Universe. Campbell’s Midval feels perfectly at home in a DC universe populated by Gotham City, an orbital JLA base and everything else. That’s quite an accomplishment given how distinctive and...indie it all feels from cover to cover.
