Supergirl #17 // Review
Ursa wants to save a doomed planet. What could possibly be wrong with that? Well: it has to do with the fact that it's actually in the past. Damn this wouldn't be just any planet that they would be saving in the past. Theoretically, if they really wanted to, they could save the planet of Krypton. Kara is totally aanst it, of course...but would it really be so bad? Even she’s having second thoughts in Supergirl #17. Writer Sophie Campbell continues the big Kingdom of Zod crossover event with the art team of Bruno Frenda and Joe Quinones. Color comes to the page courtesy of Luis Guerrero and Joe Quinones.
Ursa is bound and determined to save Krypton. She might find out that it's not quite as easy as one might expect. However, things are very unpredictable when one the way, the time travel and the traveling into the past with knowledge of the future. Kara is very conscientious of this. Still...things are very delivate. How do they know that they haven’t changed the past simply by treading on the surface of a long dead planet long before its death? They will have to tread lightly and avoid any interpersonal issues that might arise...
Campbell had a very definite rhythm about the way that she was telling her stories. It's really cool to see a way she developed things with respect to Kara and her psycho-emotional growth over the course of the early going in the series. Campbell hasn't done a perfect job of making sure that larger crossover is necessarily surface for momentum with respect to the character. It's not an easy thing to do. And this particular storyline has her yanked pretty far from the center of her momentum. Nevertheless, Campbell does managed to tell a very entertaining story, even if it doesn't quite fit into the momentum of the series leading-into it.
Campbell’s art is quite distinctive. Any other artist delivering her scripts to the page can feel a bit awkward next to what she had managed when doing art and writing on her own. Frenda and Quinones lack exposed expressiveness that Campbell had managed in her own art. That being said, there is much to appreciate about the current art team. Krypton comes across as being very well-conceived. There's a definite and distinctive culture that seems to be brought to the page quite vividly through the artwork. A bit of a cross between the traditional images of an advanced, futuristic culture from the golden age of science fiction and something much more grounded in reality.
There is much to be appreciated with respect to the larger concerns of the bigger crossover event. It just feels like it's been a while since Campbell has really had an opportunity to define exactly what it is. That's going on with Kara on her own. And it would be nice to see her have an opportunity to get back to that. It would be nice to see Supergirl get back to her own momentum her own title.
