Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow #2 // Review
Kara just had her vehicle stolen by a sinister individual. To make matters worse, she’s very far from home. To make matters even worse than that, the vehicle in question was a spacecraft. Now she and her new friend Ruthye are forced to pursue the murderous individual...by bus in Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow #2. Writer Tom King continues a really fun adventure across the galaxy with the young Kryptonian. Artist Bilquis Evely imbues the strange and intrepid journey with a pleasant familiarity that cleverly renders the weirdness of Kara’s latest quest. The end of the first quarter of the mini-series is deeply enjoyable.
Kara sleeps through the first few pages, which are heavily narrated in charmingly ornate prose by Ruthye. Supergirl is sleeping at the opening of her second issue, and there’s an opportunity to get to know her companion a little more. Her thirst for revenge continues in the midst of a long bus ride through deep space. It’s a strange, little road trip of an issue that explores an odd corner in the life of a hero as she finds herself lost in the midst of the passions of a little girl’s blood vendetta against the man who killed her father. A space dragon shows up, and she’s out of power from the long journey. Someone onboard happens to have a red kryptonite pill. It’s dangerous, but it’s her only chance.
King is taking his time in developing a relationship between Kara and Ruthye with very subtle and nuanced characterization. At the outset of the story, Ruthye is attempting to scare off a potential thug on the galactic bus by warning it about Kara and her powers. What could have been a simple warning actually resonates with great admiration for someone she admires on a great many levels. Kara’s respect for Ruthye begins to grow in response to her determination as the two continue to travel together. King seems to be having a lot of fun with the verbose nature of Ruthye’s narrative. She’s very articulate, and she often uses a couple of sentences to say what might be better communicated in a couple of words. It’s difficult for an author to do that without exaggerating things. King nails it, though. Ruthye genuinely THINKS that she needs to say way more than she does, and in the process, there’s a hell of a lot of information revealed about Ruthye. She’s very charming, and there’s a great deal in her to be charmed by.
Aside from a distant fight with a space dragon, this isn’t some wild and crazy road trip in deep space. (Not yet anyway.) Evely has fun with the surrealism of silent moments that might have come out of a sleepy trip on a Greyhound gliding through the night somewhere in the narcotic haze of another American night. When action bursts forth, it does so in a way that seems to spring directly out of the substance of the stillness of the journey. Evely manages a very peaceful grace about the silent tension that’s building in and within Ruthye and Kara, who is quite clearly still in a relaxed mood from her 21st birthday. It’s a very distinctive mood that Evely is tapping into here that is quite unlike anything other than the journey she is illustrating.
With the story already 25% over at the end of issue #2, King has quite a bit of ground to cover before the two characters are fully resolved in their journey. He’s got some time, but timing is going to be a huge factor in getting everything to develop as slowly as it is and still resolve by the end of the eighth issue. Evely’s art seems perfectly matched with the pacing and the strange setting of a dusty interstate journey that just happens to be taking place in deep space.
