Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow #3 // Review
Ruthye is incredibly tough for someone of her age. She was raised on a farm under conditions so awful that her own mother told her not to fear death or grieve for the dead. Even someone of her internal fortitude, the search for the man who killed her father would be very dangerous if it weren’t led by a young Kryptonian named Kara. Ruthye and her friend find darkness in their pursuit of villainy in Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow #3. Writer Tom King’s narrative complexity is rendered with impressive heart by artist Bilquis Evely and gripping emotional embellishment by colorist Mattheus Lopes.
Ruthye and Kara’s pursuit of the villainous Krem finds them in a small-town community called Maypole. The little, blue people there are friendly enough, but they aren’t exactly forthcoming with any information about Krem...or anything else for that matter. Why are they so tight-lipped beyond their surface hospitality? And what is it with the mysterious absence of any purple-skinned citizens? Kara and Ruthye investigate. They will undoubtedly find clues as to the whereabouts of Krem. What they find out beyond that is tragically predictable. The citizens of Maypole have a lot of explaining to do.
It’s rare that a story as sharply emotionally resonant as the one King and company are bringing to the page is also as deft with physical action. King and company point their panels largely away from more obvious violence, making the emotional percussion of the physical action in the issue much more powerful. The tragedy of the story of Maypole is little more than a reflection of human atrocity that has echoed throughout history. With poignant moments of drama and the endearingly verbose narration of Ruthye, King navigates through the allegory to develop a chapter that brings two very engaging characters closer together.
Evely really amps up the emotional power in this issue. Supergirl has been around for well over 70 years. Her cousin’s been around for a little longer than that. It’s difficult to get a genuinely new perspective on her visually. Evely does a brilliant job of bringing a new perspective to the page this issue. There’s a three-panel sequence in which she brushes a bullet out of her eye like a single tear...Lopes washing her eyes with the kind of red that would have come from tears of another sort as she confronts an official from Maypole. It’s a crushingly resonant moment.
Elsewhere Lopes paints the sky around Maypole with a gentle dazzle. The big-sky, small-town story could easily have come from an old cowboy story. The space western feel of the story thus far would feel overpoweringly silly were it not for meticulous work on the part of King, Evely, and Lopes. On a surface level, it’s a story that could have fit in just about any other genre setting. On a nuts-and-bolts level, this story wouldn’t have to happen in the company of Supergirl. King and company are bringing it to the page in a way that wouldn’t feel quite at home anywhere else.
