Random Back Issues #149 - Power Girl #7

Well, that's one way to get yourself killed.

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)}

Not That I'm Advocating It. . .

These Black Lantern rings are reviving corpses where the person had strong feelings at the time of their passing, right? It couldn't revive Dove because he was at peace, no strong feelings left over to work from. When Blue Snowman was devoured by the Ix Negaspike, she was under the influence of Vartox' seduction musk, and consequently, was intensely attracted to him. Which might be construed as love. 

It's probably not really love, but the level of devotion the scent had produced in her seems beyond a mere physical attraction. Then again, maybe physical attraction is all it takes, if it's intense enough. So could she be revived as a Black Lantern (ignoring the fact her body is on its way to being digested, which might make things a little tricky for the ring)? Also, if she hadn't been eaten, would her feelings have gotten her drafted into the Star Sapphires/Pink Lantern Corps? Or would their ring have been able to distinguish that her feelings were artificially induced, and so not real?

I'm Always Up For A Money-Motivated Villain

Prior to Power Girl #7, I'd never heard of the Blue Snowman, but she's my kind of villain. She had a gimmick, and she uses it to commit robberies. 

Sure, the technology at her disposal is probably worth more than what she steals*, but you have to find some way to market it, set up a system for mass-production, and that requires capital, or selling your ideas to someone with capital, and since this is comics we're talking about, whatever businessperson Blue Snowman tried to make a deal with would undoubtedly tangle her in contractual mumbo-jumbo, and ultimately hoard all profits for themselves. At which point she'd swear vengeance, and get beaten up by some costumed do-gooder before she could carry out her revenge. Better to just skip all that and go straight to jewelry store heists. 

Plus, if she's successful, it probably brings a greater sense of accomplishment than hammering out some deal with International Cooling Experimental, Limited. But you know me, I'm a sucker for the old-school villains that use their weird abilities for things other than revenge schemes on the hero, or random mass slaughter. It's what I like about The Blank, and it was nice to see there was at least one super-criminal left at DC that had the same goals. I'm sure there are others out there (I guess most of the Rogues would fit), but they seem badly outnumbered by the other types.  

* Question: Do you think it a good idea for Palmiotti and Gray to have Power Girl and Dr. Mid-Nite actually mention that impracticality? Blue Snowman was being used as a joke villain, so discussing the absurdity of her strategy fits, but I'm not big on pointing out those sort of holes in superhero world logic, since it draws me out of the fictional world in question. I udnerstand that yeah, she'd probably make much more by patenting her ideas than by stealing in our world, but I'm willing to set that aside for the characters' world.