Why I am reading "Power Girl," Batgirl" and "Cinderella" (And, maybe you should, too!)

(Before I start, forgive me for not writing about comics for a while. I promise to do better.)
I don’t know if anyone has noticed besides me, but there are a lot of really great comics being published with female lead characters.
My posts about She-Hulk always seem to stay at the top of my most popular lists (I am going to leave Jennifer Walters’ alter-ego out of this discussion.).
“Power Girl,” when it was written by Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray and drawn by Amanda Conner, was one of my favorites. When I came home with a new week’d worth of comics, that was always the one to which I was most looking forward.
I think what really hooked me was Conner’s art. Everything she draws has such personality and energy!
I think she could draw a story about a hospital waiting room and make it look exciting.
Sadly, all three left the book with issue 12. I was pretty well convinced that it would not be any good afterward.
What actually happened, however, was that after a few issues of the new creative team, I still really look forward to “Power Girl.”
The new writer, Judd Winick, has an entirely different sensibility than Palmoitti and Gray, but he has managed to keep the characters “feeling” the same. The book isn’t quite as in-your-face raucous as it was, it’s quieter, but it’s still in tune with what came before.
Sami Basri’s art took some getting used to. It’s a kind of a Manga-influenced style that depends heavily on the colorist to fill in the open spaces. His sense of anatomy is a little bit odd as well.
I said I wasn’t gonna talk about “She Hulk,” but, this was not unlike the artistic transition when Peter David started writing “She Hulk,” after writer Dan Slott and artist Rick Burchett left and the art chores were turned over to a team of fellows whose names I don’t remember and who drew an awful lot like Basri. For me, “She Hulk quickly thereafter plummeted into boring irrelevance.
That experience made me wary of what was to come for “Power Girl,” but I decided to be patient.
As a few issues passed (the series is on issue 21 now) I have gotten used to Basri’s art, and I have even started to appreciate the subtle expressions and body language he captures.
So, “Power Girl” is good. What else?
“Batgirl,” no kidding, is not the Batgirl of my youth, but a new character who fights criminals when she isn’t busy with her in high school drama. The stories are largely self-contained which is a big plus for me. I am getting so sick of cosmic stories wheer the entire universe is about to be destroyed. It’s fun to read smaller scale suoer hero stories that have a human side.
Dustin Guyen started drawing the book a couple of months ago, and he brings solid drawing and good storytelling to the interior pages and gorgeous subtly-colored watercolor-looking covers to the outside. If I had a vote as to best cover artist, I think I’d vote for him.
Another good comic with a female lead is “Cinderella.” This is a spin-off of “Fables,” but stands well in it’s own right, even if you have never read the original. (I have been buying the original series in trade paperback for, so I get the story in big lumps, but I have not gotten any of the other spin-off “Jack of Fables.”) The title character, the original Cinderella now living in our world, is a James Bond-ish spy for the Fabletown characters of the original title.
The second series just got underway, and the first was on the top of my reading list by the time it ended.
Why? For one, writer Chris Roberson is fast becoming one of my favorite comics writers. Roberson comes up with great plots, but also populates the pages with clever, witty characters using some of the fable characters we don’t get to see in the main book.
Shawn MacManus’ art has enough personality that it’s easy on the eyes, but is simple and classic enough that it doesn’t get in the way to telling a story.
The other artist who defines the series, Chrissie Zullo, draws absolutely perfect covers. Her style is very different that MacManus’ on the interiors, but they work together to produce a visual look that makes the book eye candy every month.
School Library Journal (via Amazon.com) tells about the series better than I just did:
In this spin-off of Bill Willingham's "Fables" series (Vertigo), Cinderella is a covert agent: her cover is a shoe store called The Glass Slipper. In her latest assignment, "Cindy" must work with handsome but infuriating Aladdin to find out who is sneaking weapons between Fableland and the outside world. Could it be Cinderella's fairy godmother? Roberson effectively integrates fairy-tale and nursery-rhyme characters into a complex, action-packed spy caper worthy of Alias or James Bond.
That’s three of the comics I wanted to talk about. I think I have four more I’ll post something about next time.