Stephane Roux

Harley Quinn and Power Girl by Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti (illustrated by Stéphane Roux) is a graphic novel featuring the adventures of the titled characters. This is an expanded story from a joke mentioned in joke in Harley Quinn #12.

Harley Quinn and an amnesiac Power Girl were sent through a transporter ring held by the Colk King and the Sportmaster, only to come back with Power Girl in a wedding dress.
This is the story of what happened in between.

As we found out, in the 1970s Power Girl once helped a certain Lord Vartox of Valeron to repopulate his plant and he became obsessed with her and the hippie counter culture. Vartox turned his world into a hippie paradise filled with statues of Power Girl, but there are trouble in his paradise as he is captured by Oreth Odex, a tyrant who’s objective is to destroy hedonism in the universe.

I did not expect much from this graphic novel, I read it because a friend recommended it and I’m glad I did. Even though I like the DC Universe, I never really followed any of the standalone Harley Quinn or Power Girl books so reading Harley Quinn and Power Girl by Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti (illustrated by Stéphane Roux) was a new experience for me.

I liked Harley Quinn in her debut in Batman: The Animated Series, one of the few characters in comics who transitioned well from TV to comic books (and not the other way around). She has become an iconic character and, no disrespect to Margot Robbie’s excellent interpretation of the character in Suicide Squad, all the fans probably hear the voice of actress Arleen Sorkin in their heads.

This comic was funny, full of great pop-culture references from the 70s on, and, appropriately, a mad caper for a plot which allows the heroines to put on a great, hilarious show. The art is gorgeous, full of detail and tells a story instead of just illustrating the narrative.

The book was very entertaining, especially if you’re a pop-culture junky. A character named Vartox is hilariously outfitted as Sean Connery’s Zed from the movie Zardoz, to dressing him up in a male version of Princess Leia’s slave outfit.

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As anyone who read Harley Quinn #2 will remember, Harley and her amnesiac Kryptonian friend Power Girl were sent through a transporter ring held by the Sportsmaster and the Clock King twice. Readers were treated to their first adventure in space in volume 2. If they wanted to know what happened in the second adventure, which ended with the girls returning with Power Girl in a wedding dress, they had to wait for this.

It seems that Power Girl once helped Lord Vartox of Valeron repopulate his planet after he visited Earth in 1974. How is not made clear. He became obsessed with both her and the counter culture. He turned his world into the grooviest place in the universe and filled it with statues and androids that looked like PG. Alas, the girls find him in distress, for his utopia has been invaded and his person captured by a tyrant determined to wipe out hedonism in the universe, the square Oreth Odeox. PG has no memory of Vartox and despises him when she meets him, but he has a teleportation ring that can return her and Harley home, so they must placate the womanizer by liberating his world.

I liked the art, usually. Artist Roux has largely overcome her early difficulty with putting emotion into Harley’s doll face. I didn’t react to the humor with enthusiasm. I didn’t hate it, but I expect to laugh at loud when I’m reading a humorous comic, and I only did that once, during a re-reading. And, honestly, I didn’t like hippies when I was young and I now feel about them the same way Power Girl does.… (más)

Amanda Conner expands what began as a between-the-panels joke in Harley Quinn #12 (collected in Harley Quinn, Vol. 2: Power Outage) into a six-issue miniseries in Harley Quinn and Power Girl. The story follows the titular characters as they battle to save Vartox (a comical version of Sean Conner's "Zed" from Zardoz) in the Sombrero Galaxy. The story is everything readers expect from Amanda Conner's run on Harley Quinn, but with sci-fi themed jokes thrown in and even more fourth-wall-breaking. The only downside is that the story, occurring between-the-panels, has no lasting affect on characters or continuity. If readers only follow Harley's solo book, they would lose little in skipping this miniseries. That said, it makes a nice companion piece.… (más)