Thursday, July 31, 2008

JSA Annual # 1

In the comic shops this week is the Justice Society of American Annual #1 (A1 from here on). I found it a very enjoyable read. Before I continue, let me state the following:

*** SPOILER ALERT! ***

**Do not continue reading** if you don't want to know what happens!!

In A1, Power Girl (PG from here on) is transported to a universe that is called Earth 2. For a more thorough explanation, go to Wikipedia's entry on it. I'll give the shorthand version here. Earth 2 (E2 from here on) is the universe that PG is originally from. In a recent storyline in the JSA title, PG had been teleported from the regular DC universe to this E2. The character that had sent her there was granting her her fondest wish - to go home - and that's what he did.

She emerges out of the wormhole and finds herself back on Earth. But not the Earth she just left. She has trouble believing it at first, but it appears to be - E2! Or is it? The heroes of this E2 universe remember the Crisis years when the skies turned red, after which they lost all contact with other universes. However, in PG's current universe, her E2 had been folded along with 5 other parallel universes into one "mainline" universe.

So - is this PG's E2 or not? I'll give my theories in just a bit, but let me continue with a complication that had arisen in the story - PG came face-to-face with: PG! This other PG was wearing the current PG's old costume, which has a scoop neckline that rides low enough to show cleavage. Here's a pic:

















And here's a pic on how her costume looks now:



















(By the way, both artworks were done by Amanda Conner. I love how she depicts PG).

Anyway, the other PG punched our PG, accusing her of being a fraud. After another punch, our PG goes into hiding, with the rest of the E2 heroes searching for her.

So what's going on here? My guess is that somehow, E2 managed to split from this "folding" event so that there were two E2s - one that got folded into the composite Earth that makes up the current DC universe, and another that somehow managed to continue on, isolated from other parallel universes. The other PG is the one that is native to the E2 in the story. Our PG is not. Her E2 is likely gone forever. Poor PG. Sigh.

Anyway, that's my theory. We'll see if I'm right in the next issue of JSA.

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