The Shattered Prayer

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It has been a busy month. I didn’t even have time to get to my third Supergirl installment — the one in which I talk about the anorexic midriff baring Supergirl of today. I’ll get to Superhungry — I promise. But in the mean time, I thought I would take a trip sideways in time, to a parallel world, one very similar to our own, but slightly different. A world where Superheroes first appeared during World War II, and not in the 1960s. I’m talking of course, about Earth-2! And just like on Earth-1, there was a Supergirl on Earth-2.

Or rather, a Power Girl.

Now, this is long. Extremely long — but there are boobs in it if you stick to the end.

First a quick word about Earth-2. DC Comics began in the 1930s (actually, it wasn’t called DC back then, but that is irrelevant. And it was also two companies, not one, but that is also irrelevant). Familiar icons like Superman (from 1938), Batman (from 1939),and Wonder Woman (from 1942) were present right from the beginning (in fact, these three are the only superheroes to be published continuously in some form since the 1940s). (Other super-heroes from other companies also sprung up at this time — but we’ll stick with DC). Along with the big three, there were other heroes who also withstood the test of time, even if they were somewhat changed from their now familiar versions. These heroes included Flash (1940), Green Lantern (1940), Hawkman (1940), and Atom (1940). There were also heroes that are not as familiar to later generation readers, like the mystical Dr. Fate (1940) and Spectre (1940) or the science heroes like Hour-Man (1940), Star Man (1941), and Dr. Mid-Nite (1941). There were also those “heroes” that made you wonder what the hell they were doing there like Mr. Terrific (1942).

Superhero comics were tremendously popular during War World II, regularly selling a million copies. But as the War ended and people returned to the homefront, Superhero comics started to be less popular. Only a few new heroes were created during the late 40s, like Black Canary (1948). By the time the 50s rolled around, only Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman had titles of their own. Western Comics had become all the rage. Even the first superhero team, the Justice Society of America, saw their title change from All Star Comics to All-Star Western Comics with Issue 58.

By the end of the 1950s, though, super-heroes were back in vogue. And DC decided to bring back some of their old characters, starting with the the Flash in 1956. But times had changed. Science Fiction was the new “in” thing, and comics reflected this. Origins were updated to include “white dwarf star material” and rings that were powered through science and not through mysticism. Everything got spruced up, including costumes. Even team names were updated. “Societies” were for snobby people. “Leagues” were much more hip. Although these new science heroes were extremely popular, eventually people lamented the loss of the 1940s version of their favorite heroes. To rectify the conundrum created with the new heroes, DC talent extraordinaire, Julius Schwartz, created the concept of the Multiverse when “our” 1960s Flash (Barry Allen) met the 1940s Flash (Jay Garrick) in “The Flash of Two Worlds”. “Our” flash lived on Earth-1 and the 1940s Flash lived on Earth-2, two worlds that existed on separate vibratory planes. Most things on the earths were the same, but some things were slightly different, like one Flash starting his career in the 40s and another in the 50s.

The concept of Earth-2 became very popular, and eventually, in the 1970s, DC had the idea to revive All-Star comics with the Justice Society of America. Trying to erase the All-Star Western fiasco, they started the comic at Issue 58 (believe it or not, there was a time when issue number 1 meant fewer sales, not more — even the updated Flash started at issue 105). DC feared, however, that people would not like a bunch of old geezers, so they decided to create new, younger heroes to fight alongside the Justice Society. And one of the new heroes they created was Power Girl!

Power Girl was the Earth-2 version of Supergirl. But unlike our intrepid Kara Zor-El who arrived Earth-1 as a teenager in the 1950s, Kara Zor-L arrived on earth as a young woman in the 1970s. (She left Krypton-2 at the same time as cousin Kal-L, but her rocket took too long to get to earth. She aged in the rocket and was given a virtual reality past). And like all good 1970s women, Power Girl was a FEMINIST! Unlike her weaker Earth-1 counterpart, she didn’t want to be known as Supergirl. She was her own woman. She would take her own name — POWER Girl (someone apparently forgot to fill her in on the feminist dictate that you do not call a grown woman “Girl” because to do so is to reify unequal power stratification via verbal infantilization in order to reinforce the male hetero-patriarchy — but hey, she had only been on Earth-2 a short while. Or maybe the feminists of Earth-2 didn’t think that way — after all, things are slightly different on different Earths).

But I didn’t care that she was a “girl.” As a young gay man, I loved this strong woman. There was no way she would let Superman shove her off to an orphanage and force her to wear brown pigtails. No one was telling her what to do! She didn’t want Superman’s name, she didn’t want Superman’s costume, and she didn’t want to take any shit from any male super-hero. In fact, when the Star Spangled Kid made her a “P” symbol that looked like Superman’s “S” Symbol, she tore him a new one and told him he was a sexist pig.

LOVED HER!

And she could hold her own. She was the only female member of the Justice Society during that time (Earth-2 Wonder Woman was in a semi-retirement and Earth-2 Black Canary had moved to Earth-1 to start a romance with a man half her age). She remained the only female member until the Earth-2 version of Batgirl, the Huntress, appeared a couple of years later. The Huntress was the daughter of Batman and Catwoman. She also didn’t take any shit from any one. The female heroes of Earth-2 were apparently always tougher than their Earth-1 counterparts.

As you can see, Power Girl was, in a word, powerful. And she became a relatively popular character, showing up in a variety of comics. In fact, she was present at all the important Earth-2 events — which for a while, apparently, meant lots of deaths. There was no way you could kill Earth-1 Batman, the “real” Batman, but Earth-2 Batman could easily be killed off. Even minor, what-the-hell-are-they-doing-here, Earth-2ers like Mr. Terrific could not avoid the Earth-2 Reaper (Poor Mr. Terrific, not only did he have that lame “Fair Play” printed right on his stomach, he also had the misfortune of coming out of retirement to attend a party only to be murdered in the middle of it). Power Girl also was a regular at the Earth-1/Earth-2 get-togethers that happened every summer. In fact, she developed a little flirtation with young JLAer Firestorm. She was even present at the last JLA/JSA get-together, the one in which we found out that Black Canary wasn’t actually Black Canary, but was really Black Canary’s daughter, who had been implanted with Black Canary’s memories when she moved from Earth-2 to Earth-1. Besides being confusing, this meant, creepily enough, the younger Black Canary had memories of having sex with her own father. Someone didn’t think this story line through completely.

One hopes.

By the 1980s, however, an idea that started out brilliantly got a tad overcrowded, and instead of just two Earths, Earth-1 and Earth-2, we also had Earth-3 (no heroes, JLA was evil), Earth-4 (Heroes of Charlton Comics, which DC purchased), Earth-6 (British won American Revolution, gave us Lady Quark), Earth-A (Earth-1’s Johnny Thunder gets a Thunderbolt and destroy’s the JLA), Earth-B (where all weird non-continuity Batman stories from the Brave and Bold happened), Earth-K (the Earth with the future of Kamandi), Earth-S (Shazam heroes from Fawcett Comics after DC purchased them), and Earth-X (Nazis won World War II, Freedom Fighters ended up there). There was even Earth-Prime (Our world. You are reading this blog from Earth Prime. It had no Super-heroes until Ultraa and eventual mass murderer Superboy of Earth Prime showed up). So to “clean up the mess” DC made the Crisis on Infinite Earths and smashed all the worlds into one Earth, a New Earth (or, to some, Earth-Sigma, the sum of all that went before). The Justice Society appeared in the 1940s, with no Superman, Batman, or Wonder Woman, and the Justice League appeared in the 1980s.

But this messed up Power Girl to no end. On Earth-Sigma, Superman was the only Kryptonian. So what the hell was Power Girl? DC didn’t know. They tried various crappy retcons, like her being the daughter of Arion, the ancient wizard from Atlantis (from before the sea-sinking thing). Really it was just a desperate attempt to keep her around, but even so, they didn’t know what the hell to do with her. Kara Zor-L (or whatever her last name was now) got just as confused as the readers and started changing her costume. First there was a hideous yellow unitard , and then some sort of red white and blue thing. She floundered for years, even giving birth to a son, suddenly, a son who just disappeared and was never referred to again. It wasn’t until DC decided to revive the multiverse, that Power Girl came back into her own. In fact, we discovered Kara was really the Power Girl of Earth-2, the only survivor of the previous continuity.

But none of this touches upon the most important thing about Power Girl.

Her boobs.

From the beginning male writers didn’t know how to handle a powerful woman who reveled in her power (in fact, like most powerful female heroes, including Wonder Woman, she got depowered for a while). Similarly, the artists didn’t know how to handle her. She was often depicted as a scowling man hater. And to emphasize her anger and power, she usually had clenched fists.

But more than her scowl or her fists, what was usually emphasized on her were her breasts. In fact, her original costume had a hole cut out so that you could see her cleavage. Eventually they closed the hole, but still tended to emphasize the boobage. (There was a story that artist Wally Wood increased the size of the breasts in every issue, but that does not seem to be the case, in spite of his claims to the contrary.)

It only got worse as time went on. It was as if the only way the artist could depict a powerful woman was through powerful breasts. By the 2000s, they had grown to tremendous, almost unbelievable proportions and that hole in her costume had returned. In addition, the larger her breasts got, the larger the hole got. Her incredibly growing boobs culminated in the most controversial Power Girl cover of them all (the top version, not the bottom version). Believe it or not, in the solicited version, the breasts were even larger, and they were decreased for the final version.

Now, large breasts aren’t offensive. I mean, I love Dolly Parton as much as the next gay man. In fact, it is even possible to present Power Girl’s huge breasts and still make her appear powerful and not like a mindless sex toy. In fact, her boobs have become a distinguishing feature of the character. It is hard to imagine PG with imagining Triple Es. It is only a problem if that is all there is to her — if she becomes her boobs and nothing else.

As for me, I don’t care how big her boobs are. I love her just the same. So bring ‘em on! Large or small, keep ‘em coming.

So long as she continues to take no shit from anyone.

Buy me a beer!

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