For those unaware, which might be everyone because I’m not sure I’ve explained it, the way I go about picking the Supergirl Surprise issues each month is by consulting a random number generator and my excel document that lists all my Supergirl comics. The excel document is something I put together soon after I started the blog for the sole purpose of tracking Supergirl Surprise but I’ve since also used it to track just how many comics Supergirl has headlined since I’ve got (pretty much) all of them now. This list currently sits at 412 comics, so each month I’ll pull up a random number generator and key in a request of a random number from 1-412 and consult my list then go to my long boxes and find the respective issue. This is a long winded way of me saying I was gob smacked when I pulled out a Supergirl comic with Power Boy on the cover after just talking about one of Supergirl’s other abusive exes in last month’s Supergirl Surprise #16 (H’El). I really did not want to go through another entry of talking about red flags, but upon re-reading I was quite refreshed at how Supergirl was shown approaching Power Boy and his specific brand of affection.
“Love the Ones we Hurt” was written by Joe Kelly, with pencils from Ian Churchill, inks from Norm Rapmund, colors from Rod Reis, and lettering by Comic Craft. This issue gives us some backstory on nobody’s favorite character, Power Boy. For those unaware, Power Boy was introduced in the post-Infinite Crisis era and was very briefly a part of the Teen Titans. He went on to have about a dozen appearances and died rather unceremoniously soon after his introduction. About half of his appearances were alongside Supergirl and he was set up as a romantic counterpart to the girl of steel but I imagine it was never meant to last and was more-so a depiction of what a bad boyfriend would look like.
Captain Boomerang Jr. was another of Supergirl’s supporting cast members in this period of time in her comic and the story opens with him in the hospital for reasons I can’t immediately remember. Supergirl and Power Boy are flying and making out when Supergirl realizes that kid boomerang is awake at the hospital now and tries to break away from Power Boy to go check on him. Power Boy, realizing that he is no longer the center of her attention, yells “Don’t turn you back on me when I’m talking to you.” and then punches her through a hospital. Yikes. He then has the audacity to tell her to calm down. Double yikes. He continues putting the beat down on her, telling her he loves her, and eventually renders her unconscious. You can probably see why I was nervous about covering this one.
Supergirl awakes on a heart shaped bed with power dampening cuffs on her and then looks up to a wall full of photos of herself that can only be described as stalker-esque. He response is justified when she says “Power Boy is psycho”. Power Boy then opens the conversation with saying that Supergirl was out of line before and proceeds to talk about how his powers work and we find out that he is from Apokolips which is where he first noticed Supergirl. This was when she was brainwashed by Darkseid as part of the Superman/Batman: Apocalypse storyline and she wasn’t at her best. But to Power Boy, this villainous, scantily clad girl of steel is what he thinks is best for her and says “We can be prefect together, if you’ll just let me fix you” while holding up her costume that she was wearing on Apokolips.
At this point is when I really started getting into how Supergirl approached this situation and why I preferred this issue to the H’El issue from last month. Supergirl, at this point, has had enough. She uses her heat vision to burn her cuffs, the Apokolips costume, and Power Boy’s hands while saying “I think we need to break up”. I love how Kara is shown here having full ownership of herself and her body and knows when to say no to a problematic partner and she knows that what Power Boy is calling love is anything but.
Also we get like 6 pages of Kara kicking the shit out of Power Boy whilst saying lines like “you said you loved me…and you hit me” and “no one who says he loves you should hit you, ever”. This comic is not the most nuanced take on domestic violence and it’s not particularly subtle, however it is nice to see Supergirl standing up for herself like this and holding her own. I don’t love this period of Supergirl comics, we’re right in the middle of the Zor-El sent Kara to earth to kill Kal arc which is just a bit dumb in my opinion. I was also never really fond on Captain Boomerang Jr. so his inclusion here doesn’t really matter too much to me. Also Felix Faust was here for a page, I guess that was setting up things to come. The issue ends with Power Boy’s Father Box exploding in space and Supergirl looking a bit worse for wear as a cliffhanger.
Nothing super notable in the ad space this time out, but we do have a couple I wanted to show off. There’s an ad page that’s split in half so the top half is advertising the critically acclaimed comic Green Lantern: Rebirth while the bottom is just an absolutely baffling abovetheinfluence ad where one kid is telling the other to play football instead of smoking pot. Most of the other ads here are for 52 and Countdown as it was that time at DC but the inside cover boldly proclaims “Jimmy Olsen Must Die!” which at the very least caught my husband’s attention while I was reading so maybe they’re doing something right in the 2007 DC offices.
The Daring New Blog of Supergirl 
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