On the planet Valeron, Vartox fights to defend his kingdom from Yeti pirates. He routs the army, but, gasp! The pirates snuck a bomb into the Crystal City that rendered everyone sterile but, no worries! Vartox uses a Cosmosis Crystal to find potential mates to help kick-start a new genetic lineage, and one of them is Power Girl. Vartox is very impressed by the fact she survived the death of her universe, among other attributes, so it's off to Earth!
Where Power Girl is helping Dr. Mid-Nite capture an old Wonder Woman enemy, the Blue Snowman, who stole a sapphire Mid-Nite figures is worth less than the pipe that shoots icicles. Just as Power Girl gets in a groove lampshading the economic impracticality of comic book super-villainy, Vartox arrives in his head ship. It doesn't look a thing like him. Because Vartox is a man of surprising humility! Surprising in that he has any.
While Peej is not excited, Dr. Mid-nite suggests he could be nice, if eccentric. Mid-Nite has no time to revise this opinion, as he collapses once Vartox uses a 'seduction musk rifle', which Power Girl thinks smells of 'burnt armpit hair and elephant urine.' Then, as seen above, Vartox shushes Power Girl.
Well, that result is no surprise to anyone (other than Vartox, the universe proving uncooperative today.) Blue Snowman wakes up and turns out to be Blue Snowoman, and the musk worked on her. Which is too bad, because Vartox is on to his next plan in the wooing! He brings out Ix Negaspike, a creature that required an entire galaxy's worth of superwarriors to give their lives imprisoning it in a 'gravity well beneath the known universes.' Palmiotti, Gray, and Conner were clearly having fun coming up with ridiculous shit for this story, and I am here for it.
Power Girl is not here for it, or Vartox's plan to fight Ix Negaspike to demonstrate he has sufficient prowess to "take" her. Especially once Blue Snowman attacks Negaspike to protect Vartox. You see how that went. While PG flies Mid-Nite to safety, Vartox gets knocked through about 4 buildings, which doesn't hurt him (or his mustache), but does destroy the transport leash that would let him send Negaspike back home. Power Girl returns and starts to throw down, but it's not going great, so she flies the thing somewhere into the Arctic and chucks it into a mountain.
Vartox, still not reading the room, thinks Power Girl's just playing hard to get, but admits he maybe should have tried a more romantic approach. Did he mention he's a good cook? (This is a lie, he's absolutely not a good cook. Maybe his widow's peak is because his hair's growing inside and constricting his brain.) Truly fed up, Power Girl tries the old, "freeze and shatter it" approach.
Unfortunately, the Negaspike is self-replicating, so now there are a lot of them. On a positive note, Vartox did listen to her constructive criticism and stop referring to himself in the third person!
{8th longbox, 108th comic. Power Girl #7, by Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti (writer), Amanda Conner (artist), Paul Mounts (colorists), John J. Hill (letterer)}
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