Power Girl is one of the many characters that got caught in the wake of Crisis on Infinite Earths. DC got rid of the multiverse (temporarily) for all time and instead of starting over from scratch or just retiring the characters that had their entire existence tied to being a version of a character from another Earth (or associated with a character from another Earth) the decision was made to simply revise the character’s background, sometimes entirely.

Power Girl was a special case, though. She was the Kara Zor-L of Earth-2 and not only that Earth erased from all existence but the powers that be at DC decided that Superman was going to be the only Kryptonian. Full stop. No exceptions. I guess it says something for Power Girl that they decided to keep her around.

Too bad things got weird.

To be fair, the weirdness came much later. Look up what happened to her around the time of Zero Hour and prepare to have a lot more questions.

But the mini-series that explained her new origin. It works.

Mostly.

The idea that she was actually from ancient Atlantis and put into a magical crystal to save both her and Atlantis and then, centuries later, released back into the world where she was found by Superman, who was led to believe via false memories that she was his cousin was clever. On the surface it worked and gave her a new shot at life. A few years after this mini-series she became a member of Justice League Europe where her personality was mainly being really angry all of the time. Oh, and she had a weird cat. And her anger issues could be traced back to a reaction to diet soda.

Aspartame can be a bit nasty. It gives my wife migraines, so this part of her history makes sense.

To me, at any rate.

After bouncing around the DCU for most of the nineties and early 2000s Karen eventually ended up in the JSA, which I was very excited about at the time. I was even more excited that she would be the star of the first storyline in JSA Classified where Geoff Johns revealed her true origin. It turns out that Power Girl was…the cousin to the Earth-2 Superman and survived the Crisis by a cosmic fluke.

I thought it was brilliant.

I more or less followed her adventures after Infinite Crisis. Her ongoing by Jimmy Palmiotti, Justin Gray, and Amanda Conner was a lot of fun at a time when DC wasn’t all that much fun.

This is the point in the post where I write about how I want to catch up with what she’s been up to over the past few years, but given what I’ve heard and the little bit I’ve read it might not be for me.

Or it might be. I’m weird like that.

The only thing about his house ad that I don’t like is the, “After 12 years , she’s back in her own story,” copy. It’s the phrasing. It makes it sound like she’s been off the table for 12 years and now she’s back, but that wasn’t the case. Other than that, a great ad. I loved the Kerry Gammill covers to this series.

More to follow…