Keep (more) politics out of my comics! – Firestorm #77

Journey to Eden

Apart from the dodgy gender politics of her early appearances Power Girl rarely gets to deal with any kind of political issues. And in case anyone is confused I mean politics as in the societal sense, the kind of things a certain type of fan decries as being shoved into modern comics when it’s been a thing since Captain America punched Hitler on the cover of his first comic!

Personally, I have no problems with such things in comics, I wouldn’t be spending so many words on it here if I didn’t, I might not want it every week but I enjoy media to sometimes challenge me to think about a subject.

Which is good as Kara only appears on one page in this comic, not as Power Girl but as Karen Starr CEO of Starrware Industries. Firestorm’s main body, because he’s made up of two or more people bound together (three at this point), mom is going for a job at Karen’s company. The character I question is Felicity Smoak, who CW fans might recognize from her appearances in Arrow, as with here she’s a computer expert.

There’s some really good stuff about how hard it is to be a female executive in the (then) modern world, for extra comedy Felicity puts it in terms of being a superhero. Which obviously Kara agrees with for obvious reasons! The page even references the previous plot lines of the Power Girl comic, though it’s only from a few months ago.

Whilst the comic deals with three people and their families in the standard soap opera antics, but the rest of the issue is rarely slight, but not in a bad way as it’s to spend time discussing an important issue. After being rejected by Firehawk for an uncalled-for kiss on the first page, as shown on the cover, in a decent call out about consent (this issue just packs them in). The main host for Firestorm, here Ronnie Raymond, goes to the fictional country of Ogaden (just south of the more important here Ethiopia) to help out with famine relief.

And here we get to the core of the issue. In 1986 a massive famine hit Ethiopia which got picked up by the western media, I know it by the BBC report that had a pretty big effect. From it came Live Aid where the musician came together to raise money to help the starving of Ethiopia. Compare to the more media-driven, sometimes more hollow, efforts by celebrities nowadays the people involved generally seemed to be interested in doing good rather than raising their profile.

The issue spends about half the comic laying out the issues that led to this famine, from the post-colonial status to power and corruption ending up in just a few families to the civil war that is tearing the place apart. To be fair most of this information is unfortunately given out by the white characters, only really one of the local characters gets any real development and to express themselves. 

We end with the reason I’m covering this here, Ronnie decides that the best way to deal with this is to create a pocket of land where the refuges can recover from the famine that infests the land, the Eden of the comic (and the comic calls it that through the next couple of issues). To its credit the comic call this out for being a really bad idea, the mouthpiece for a reason, a nun called Sister Agnes Martinon calls Firestorm out with how stupid this idea is, now that he’s created the most valuable land for both the government and the rebels. This is basically the whole adage of “If you teach a man to fish” write large.

As with other efforts at of the time, it’s a little heavy-handed and fails to tell the point of view of the locals, but it is told with some heart and a genuine desire to educate people about the state of the world at the time.

That’s not all because this story is told again in a different form, a far less innocent form. Because in the 90s a far my cynical writer (who I won’t name for reasons) wrote a similar setup in a comic, this time Stormwatch.

Now to be clear I have a soft spot for Stormwatch and it’s follow on The Authority, but’s its from a time when classic superheroes were seen as out of fashion and basically stupid. What’s So Funny About Truth, Justice & the American Way? filmed as Superman vs The Elite is the counter to all this saying that comic book superheroes are fun and we basically need them in this pretty (sometimes) crappy world. Personally now I’m more towards the idea of fun superhero antics, with the occasional serious story rather than the rather cynical take that seems to come from writers who don’t like the medium but just write it for the money. And ironically in the comic now Superman is in charge of the DC’s version of Authority, keeping them honest as they do their part to keep people safe.

For the curious in Stormwatch #48 the original Engineer creates a nanite garden, because the 90s, that can provide for the needs of the world at large. The US government defeats him and destroys most of the gardens the remaining being used to create weapons because the government is bad m’kay!

Maybe it’s because I have some memories of the original event the Firestorm issue deals with, but I prefer its well-meaning, if heavy-handed, attempts to talk about issues rather than the more cynical take of Stormwatch. And as I said as I like Stormwatch as I whole!

Oh, and the replacement Engineer, Angie Spica, is one of the best superheroes introduced in the Authority, though I have a soft spot for Jenny, and she really needs to be bought back to the DC Universe!

And finally back to Pee Gee, this is another potential use of the character that we don’t see again, as the future of the character will be set for the rest of the decades, but first, we need to deal with her first event appearance since her lackluster appearance in Crisis…