Batman Superman #8 Review

Family reunions aren’t always a good idea.

Batman/Superman’s latest arc deals with the duo’s meeting with two relatives from Earth 2 – Bruce Wayne’s daughter Helena aka Huntress and Superman’s cousin Karen aka Power Girl.

This title crosses with World’s Finest, which provided the prologue to First Contact last month. Greg Pak is coming off a less-than-good arc concerning Mongul and video games (can’t believe I wrote that) and he has Jae Lee back for this sojourn with Earth 2 again.

SPOILERS FOLLOW………..

One of the highlights for me would have been the first interactions between the Earth 2 and the main universe heroes.  That doesn’t disappoint as we get a really entertaining first encounter with Huntress and Batman.

Though the dialogue comes off as slightly stifled, the head boxes for Batman and Superman are very illuminating, as we see how differently they react to these incredulous circumstances.

Batman keeps Huntress in a cage and though he exudes a distrusting demeanor, his thoughts tell a different story. He identifies the DNA sample as matching his, and when Huntress manages to get herself loose, takes her under his wing despite his apprehensions.

Huntress provides a great outsider look to the New 52 relationship between Batman and Superman, which while based on friendship, also delve into suspicion and apprehension.

Power Girl, who has been encountering problems with her powers, is located by Batman and Huntress. There, she endangers a nearby village and is stopped by Superman.  He takes her away, but not before we get some interesting conversation between the two Kryptonians.

In the middle of the Pacific Ocean, he helps her burn off the residual power while elsewhere, Batman has located the source of Power Girl’s problems – Rheelesia. A man named Kaizen Gamorra took over the backward locale and converted it into a fast growing hub   renamed ‘New Gamorra’.

Helena recognizes the man as someone Karen was dating, and we get a flashback where Earth 2 Bruce and his daughter conduct a sting operation on Gamorra. Batman contacts Superman with some disturbing news – Power Girl is about to detonate.

Power Girl overhears the conversation and attempts to escape into the Earth’s outer atmosphere, but Superman catches up with her and they both bear the shock of Power Girl’s power discharge, leading to an agonizing scream from Superman.

SPOILER END………………

I’m not a fan of Jae Lee’s minimalistic art and this issue didn’t change my opinion. It was hard to follow the plot and the faces aren’t exactly detailed either. This was supposed to be a very emotional issue, especially for Batman, but the Power Girl problems distracted us from that.

Greg Pak does well with the interactions though, as the Batman-Huntress interaction is poles apart from the Superman-Power Girl meeting. The dialogues, especially the inner monologues from Batman capture the changing moods of the hero in a way the art never does.

I’m not sure the villain-of-the-piece treatment with a 3^rd rate villain is going to help this arc, but there is enough heart in this to redeem the story.

So, I give it 8.0 out of 10

+Some good inner monologues, especially from Batman
+Nice contrasts with the two meetings

-Art is ill-fitting
-Power Girl’s problems seem to take away rather than add from the story