Helena Wayne (and possibly Power Girl on the far right) is featured on the spread page of next month’s Trinity of Sin: Pandora. From DC’s News page:

Back in September of 2011, we launched The New 52. And in each #1 issue, Pandora made a cameo appearance. But what was she doing in each of these books?

Well next month, this question will finally start to get answered. TRINITY OF SIN: PANDORA will find this mysterious character starring in her own ongoing series. Today, take a look at this incredible spread from the series’ debut issue, which shows Pandora’s appearances in all of the New 52 #1s. The twist? They’re all seen from her perspective for the very first time. She’s clearly on a mission to find something … but what – or who – could that be?

The interesting thing here is that Helena Wayne did not make her debut in the New 52 until a month after the initial relaunch, and the other two books that she appeared in didn’t launch until eight months later.

Between her Huntress miniseries, Earth-2, and Worlds’ Finest Pandora was no where to be found in either of those books.

So unless I really missed something here, I think it’s safe to say her debut book next month will be the first time Pandora sees Helena Wayne in the New 52?

What do you guys think?

/And now I must really call it a night. Looooooong long day today and an even longer next two days. >_<

newearth2:

Comic Vine’s Sarah Lima asks what Worlds’ Finest needs to make the series more of a consistent good read?

I think the best response that I saw on Sara Lima’s article was from RDClip who was very spot on about the problems this book has been suffering from (and ones I’ve been addressing all year long):

The best way to improve this series is the get Levitz off writing duty and get a writer that cares about the characters and is passionate about the series. So far, it seems that Levitz is just going through the motions with a boring meandering story with very little in the way of an overall plot. The largest complaint with the writing is that Power Girl has lost almost all the character traits that made her awsome that were developed by writers like Roy Thomas, Geoff Johns and Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray.

The sales of Worlds Finest have not been good and I am in fear that Power Girl and Huntress will be without a series again (and this time PG doesn’t have JSA to co-star in)

That pretty much sums it up.

Also, I’m pretty baffled by the number of people who think that replacing Helena Wayne with Helena Bertinelli will be the saving grace of this book.

To begin with, Levitz is already struggling to write a character who had the privilege of being raised by Batman and Catwoman because he can’t get by without reinforcing some kind of cliché or stereotype associated with the fact that Helena’s a woman. It’s lazy and nonsensical characterisation for a character of Helena’s standing.

What makes them think he will have a better handle on Helena Bertinelli who is an Italian-American and Catholic? Given how bad his use of Italian grammar was in the Huntress mini and his use of Italian stereotypes, I’m willing to put money on the fact that his characterisation of Helena Bertinelli would’ve been just as equally horrendous.

I’m not opposed to Helena Bertinelli coming back since she works perfect for the mainstream continuity, but the issue with Huntress should never be a case of ‘one or the other.’ Both women are equally loved and valued by fans, and fans of Helena Wayne deserve to keep their Huntress as much as Helena Bertinelli fans.

Lastly, the problem with the book isn’t the characters. Kara and Helena by themselves have a shit tonne of potential given their rich histories and the legacies that they both inherit. It’s also part of the reason I feel their book should be taking place on Earth-2 and not on Earth-Prime (or whatever they’re calling it these days). 

If they had done that from the get-go, Earth-2’s past could’ve easily been further explored in Worlds’ Finest while Robinson focused on the present. Also, in fleshing out Kara and Helena’s past on Earth-2, we could’ve gotten better insight into the women they became as adults and further develop them from there. I would have loved to have seen that!

Power Girl had at least one more design for her Supergirl costume prior to the finalised version she ended up in the New 52.

Someone clearly wanted Peege to show her arms in the New 52. :P

Power Girl’s costume redesigns for the New 52.

I’ve gotta say…she’s certainly had uglier ones.

At least the one on the right looked decent but still overkill on the design.

I am increasingly starting to feel this should become my new icon.

Helena Wayne’s face says all. TT_TT

I honestly wouldn’t call it a redesign since all they did was make him look like The Master from ‘The Deadly Assassin’ episode of Doctor Who:

A genuine redesign should’ve—in my opinion—followed the New 52 standard for all rebooted characters: Young, ideal body type, and more importantly: SEXY! SEXY! SEXY!  

Actually, I did do a few quick sketches of what a genuinely rebooted Desaad should look like. Using this image of Young Desaad as a reference:

I came out with this version complete with a suit and tie (Damn you Justin Timberlake):

Or if he looks too normal for a guy who’s a sadomasochist that gets off from torturing people and serves as Darkseid’s right hand man, we can always go back to Desaad’s classic look of wearing a hooded robe. Just deaged with a better hair style, glowing Apokoliptian eyes, and maybe a few scars on his face to emphasise the sadomasochism bit:

Truthfully, I think the ‘Dorian Gray’ look makes him scarier since you’d never guess he’s that guy just by looking at him. He would therefore be more effective at luring any unsuspecting victim into his torture chamber, which I think is more eerie than a guy you would expect to be into that sort of thing at first glance. 

Damn. Someone actually took the original Kevin Maguire costume redesign and actually made it look good. 

And honestly? If they would’ve simply made the gloves and boots blue and gave Power Girl a belt to help break apart the white, the original redesign that DC came out with would’ve actually worked just fine.

The thing that still annoys me about the current costume design is that god-awful P logo on Kara’s left breast, which is terribly asymmetrical. I still feel that if it was actually centred, I’d feel better about it. 

Helena and Selina on Earth-2. ♥

dcugays:

Bleeding Cool has just published a rumor that DC’s next event would be about villains being introduced to the New 52.  Is there hope for Catman?

I’m sure he’ll surface eventually. He always does. 

Now if only they’d bring back Deadshot from the dead and put him in a book with Thomas, I’d be sold. 

That is a good question. Can I say lots?

Truthfully I don’t think we can begin to fix what’s broken without essentially rebooting the entire universe again, but I do think one thing that can be improved upon is the people working at DC understanding the value of their characters and the emotional attachments people form with these characters. Even if characters like Cassandra Cain and Stephanie Brown are not as well known as Barbara Gordon outside of mainstream comic fandom, they still have a fanbase and that’s still more money in DC’s pocket. 

Similarly, I do think that if a writer has great ideas for a great story involving a particular character, I think that writer should be allowed to use that character and should be allowed to tell the story they want to tell. I think editorial should only step in if an idea a writer wants to convey is potentially (if not outright) offensive or if an artist depicts characters in ways that are exploitive. But that’s only in an ideal world, I suppose. 

I get that comics have to constantly reinvent themselves in order to sustain and even gain a new audience, but I also feel that characters and stories should be retold in ways that actually make sense for their characters. For example you can’t have Superman without one of the most influential women in his life, Lois Lane, you can’t tell Wonder Woman’s story if it doesn’t break away from any sexist and misogynist ideas and stereotypes about gender, you cannot have Catwoman without Batman as an important influence in her life, and you cannot tell stories of Earth-2’s Huntress and Power Girl without seeing how they relate to their families and how their upbringing has moulded them into the people they become as adults. 

On the subject of Earth-2, I think DC missed a great opportunity to do something great with this. If Lois and Clark couldn’t be married on the main DCU Earth because they are at the beginning of their journeys and need time to build a relationship, why not establish a version of them as a married couple on Earth-2 like they were originally? Similarly if they needed to undue Bruce and Selina’s relationship because DC has other plans for them (i.e., more focus on Bruce and Talia’s relationship to Damian), then why not keep them as a happily married couple on Earth-2 as has been reestablished? Or if Barbara Gordon had to go back to being Batgirl on the main DCU Earth to gain television audiences, why not have a version of the character on Earth-2 who continued to function as Oracle and was paralysed by other circumstances (i.e., the Apokolips War for example)?

Given that Earth-2 did have a first generation of heroes and the original Black Canary (Dinah Drake) was originally an Earth-2 character, I didn’t see it necessary to retcon Baby Dinah out of continuity. I liked that Dinah Drake was both a mother, a wife, and a heroine, and I liked that her daughter continued her mother’s legacy. Similarly, since the mainstream universe already has a Supergirl and Helena Wayne functions best on Earth-2, I didn’t see it necessary to continue a tradition of retconning Helena’s origin every reboot by removing Helena Bertinelli out of existance either, as was done with Helena Wayne in 1986-1989. I also felt it was an unnecessary development as it did not add anything significant to Helena Wayne’s story other than give her an alias for the main DCU Earth. Being Catwoman’s daughter alone should have made it easy for Helena Wayne to come up with any name she wanted and falsify the necessary documents.

One of the great advantages of having a parallel universe (in my opinion) is that it allows for a different kind of storytelling, and should give you an alternative to the mainstream universe. It’s also one of the few ways you can try to please everyone or “have your cake and eat it” as they say. It works perfectly well at Marvel, I’m not sure why it couldn’t work out at DC as well. 

Truthfully, the only thing I liked out of the New 52 was the reinstating of Earth-2 and reestablishing Helena Wayne and her friendship with Power Girl, but even these could’ve been handled a lot better than they actually were.