The Price of Fame
Supergirl (volume 6) #20
Cover Date: July 2013
Released: 1st May 2013
- Writers: Paul Levitz
- Pencilers: Kevin Maguire / Geraldo Borges / Robson Rocha
- Inker: Kevin Maguire / J.P. Mayer / Wayne Faucher
- Colourists: Rosemary Cheetham / Hi-Fi Design
- Letterer: Carlos M. Mangual
- Editors: Anthony Marques / Mike Cotton / Eddie Berganza
After spending a few issues over in Supergirl getting a new costume Pee Gee spendings the majority of the comic either in civies or her older costume (in flashback).
We pick things up from Worlds’ Finest #11 with a suitably disgusted Kara reacting to discovering DeSaad, though she doesn’t seem to know quite who he is, though he doesn’t seem to know she’s Kryptonian either. Kara and Helena have a little fight with DeSaad until security try and arrest them for attacking “Mr Holt” causing Pee Gee to just fly off with Huntress.
We then flashback to Tokyo, a random amount of months (where before they were all counted out), with Huntress fighting Yakuza goons. When they bring out the big gun, or really just guns, Pee Gee turns up to quickly taken down. Really apart from an obligatory fight scene we find out Ms Starr is missing a press conference and that she likes being famous, so we can cut to now and her star haven fallen (yeah they make the fallen star joke as well).
Then Somya tells her that the Cambridge lab has exploded and we finally get to she her in the classic costume to go fight the fire. Whilst she does we get one last look at Somya and some ominous Chekhov’s rosary…
Because whilst they distracted DeSaad and any army of tanks level Starr island, with him taking time to kill Somya Spears personally. Her body of cause acting as, further, motivation for PeeGee. As you may know there is a trope in comics where a character, generally female, is killed to motivate the, mostly male, hero to go defeat the heroes. You could argue that Somya has been used to much to count as a woman in refrigerator, but really she’s only an extended extra for the comic. The only reason I started to pay attention to her was because she ended up as Tanya’s mother, something that not been set up what so ever so probably wasn’t the original plan.
It’s a shame because it a solid, if transitory, story slightly ruined by an obvious and blatant tug on the heart strings, to motivate characters that were already pretty motivated to fight DeSaad as one of the Darkseids minions