Supergirl #15 // Review
After all of the conflict inside Argo City, Zora is alone. And though she’s managed to upset everyone else around her, she’s still really powerful and she’s still really desperate. And she’s cornered. This makes her kind of overwhelmingly dangerous as the heroes square-off against her in Supergirl #15. Writer/artist Sophie Campbell and colorist Tamra Bonvillain. Thecentral conflice in the “Hero of Kandor” storyline comes to an end with plenty of time to consider the implications of everything after the big climax. It’s an issue that leads-off into further crossovers within the DC Universe. Campbell juggles a lot in another satisfying issue.
Zora is getting attacked on all sides, but she’s still some kind of a major threat. She can do some serious damage to a place that’s already very much in danger. Supergirl is going to have to find some way of handling Zora that might limit her danger to the people of Argo City and the rest of her friends. As luck would have it, she’s got a perfect opportunity for that in a way tha might just level the playing field between herself and Zora. If they can defeat her, there are going to be some very serious conversations that are going to have to take place in Argo City.
The overall composition of the script for the issue is kind of an unenviable one to try to tackle. The climax of the story takes place 10 pages in and the rest is all denouement. It’s the type of thing that works better in a collected trade than it does in a single issue. Neverhteless, Campbell puts more than enough into the wrap-up to make it well worth the opportunity to read it in single-issue format. Major things shift at the end of an issue that launches Kara in a new direction.
Campell’s execution of kinetic action is a vibrant and dynamic as ever. Bonvillain’s colors grant campvell’s art a bright and heroic look on the page. This much is common among any of the better superhero comics on the rack today. What Campbell adds to the visuals makes this iteration of Supergirl one of the best mainstream superhero comics around today. It’s easy to rely on costumes to define the visual presence of different characters, but all of the bodies tend to look alike. Campbell renders a lot of different types of athletic body types to the page the grant the series a great deal of visual texture. What’s more...there’s depth in the drama. Campbell does a brillaint job of drawing the visage of someone who’s really doing a lot of soul searching. You can see the deep contemplation on their faces...that’s not an easy thing to bring to page and panel, but Campbell makes it look easy and natural.
There’s little doubt that things are going to continue to evolve for Kara. The new costume is a nice tough...it’s a symbollic movement away from what she’d been and a definite indicator that she’s really changing as a person in the course of this series.
