Supergirl #5 // Review
Kara and Lesla are off to the big city of Metropolis to run some training exercises. This leaves Lena alone with a few super-powered animals to look after. She’s really smart, but she lacks anything in the way of superpowers to help keep the critters under control. Still...she IS a super-genius. What’s the worst that could happen? She’s about to find out in Supergirl #5. Writer Sophie Campbell takes a break from the art on the series as Paulina Ganucheau and Rosi Kampe take-over the art for an issue that focusses on the super-pets.
With Kara and Lesla gone, Lena turns her attention to the pets...who all seem to have disappeared. Kara’s dog Krypto is being chased by Lesla’s super-bunny Kandi. The little rabbit doesn’t know that Lesla and Kara have vecomes friends. So if she’s given the opportunity to defeat Kara’s dog, it might make Lesla happy. Krypto is a bit cofnused about the situation. Meanwhile Kara’s cat streaky had taken to the aire for a little flight only to find Tiny Tano hopping on her back as she takes off. The minuscule gorilla and the super-powered cat find soon run into trouble in the form of super-powered kittens...
While Campbell had been leading-off in a direction suggesting a menagerie of super-powered pets, it’s a bit jarring to see an entire issue focussed exclusively on the, There’s been a textured complexity to Campbell’s scripts that mixes simple social concerns with deeper societal issues. Any textured nuance fades into the background of an issue that really feels like it could be a cozy, little children’s book. It doesn’t really feel like it fits-in to the thythm of what Campbell had been doing with the first four issues of the series.
All this being said, it’s really, really fu to see Ganuchaeu get more work in the DC universe. There’s a remarkably strong sense of clean, simple fun in her work that accentuates some of the more adorable ends of the DC Universe. Her work on Young Diana had such a vibrant sense of life about it. That cute energy radiates like a warm hug through an enjyably silly, little adventure around the eges of the panel in the distinct end of the DC Universe that Campbell has been developing for her series.
Given the right momentum, Campbel. Ganuchaeu could develop a remarkably strong kid-friendly end of the DC Universe that would fit perfectly in and within the larger whole. Just because it feels more like kids’ fare doesn’t mean that it has to inhabit its own universe. It would be cool to see issues like this integrate with everything else in a way that could grow with readers as the age-out of the younger adorability of work by people like Ganucheau. It’s the sort of thing that could help expand the consumer base of a company like DC. A more fluid connection between kids’ fare and more sophisticated stuff could really help build and maintain readers.
