The Choke’s on You

Harley Quinn and Power Girl #3

Harley, PeeGee, and Groovicus Mellow are trying to find the captured Vartox. After beating up a bunch of spaceships, Groovicus gets everyone high with space-weed, which leads to a short Hunter S. Thompson-inspired mushroom samba sequence. When that’s over, they finally meet up with Vartox — but a Vartox who’s been turned evil! With a loincloth and nipple rings! Is he going to kill everyone?

Verdict: Thumbs up. I enjoyed the hallucination sequence the most, but the entire issue is really incredibly weird. I do consider this a good thing, obviously.

Sensation Comics #13

Wonder Woman intrudes on a footrace by a trio of girls, then spends a certain amount of time gloating about it and telling the star runner of the girls that she should try to be better. And then Superwoman, the evil superpowered Lois Lane from Earth-3, shows up and starts a fight. They also preach at each other a lot and endanger the girls.

Verdict: Thumbs down. No, I really didn’t enjoy this a smidge. I entirely agreed with the girls at the beginning, when they pointed out that a god-powered super-being doesn’t get to brag about being able to run faster than normal teenagers. And the Wondy-Superwoman battle also cheesed me off. It wasn’t particularly exciting, and I was bugged that Diana didn’t try to get the fight farther away from the girls, especially after Superwoman showed a willingness to put them in danger. It just seemed like a story that wasn’t working as hard to be great as the other tales in the series…