Powerpuff Girls #5 // Review
It’s a beautiful morning. The sun is literally smiling down over the city of Townsville. A beautiful, refreshing weekend has begun and everyone is starting their day. Of course...in a place like Townville, there’s always some kind of danger lurking around the corner. The sinister Mojo Jojo is every bit as happy as everyone else, which can only mean danger in Powerpuff Girls #5. Writer Paulina Ganucheau continues the adorably strange adventures of the kawaii group of superhero girls in an issue that is faithfully brought to the page by the art team of Silvia DeVentura and Carlo Lauro.
On the surface of things. There really isn’t anything too terribly sinister about Mojo Jojo’s plans for the weekend. He’s drinking coffee out of his Bubbles coffee mug. He’s planning on inventing a new sustainable form of unlimited energy. Sounds like important stuff that could really benefit humanity. He needs total focus, though. And clearly it’s a bit of a challenge maintaining total focus as there are kids outside being kids. And then the Powerpuff Girls accidentally knock into his lair while fighting a giant spider and well...things are going to get really, really substantially frustrating for everyone involved.
Ganucheau has a lot of fun with the beloved characters. The overall moment of the plot goes in some pretty strange directions. But there's a natural escalation that seems to flow from a very clear and clean logic. It's just a ridiculous amplification of what one would expect out of some incredibly intense superhero fiction. It's a fun progression as the villain comes to frustration and tries his best to refrain from being the kind of villain known as being. The superhero and villain dynamic is particularly enjoyable as Ganucheau whimsically engages with it. It’s all a lot of fun.
Debenture and Lauro faithfully recreate some of whitehead made the classic animated cartoons so enjoyable. There's a few moments where they take advantage of texture and depth that would not have been present on the screen when these characters were first introduced. But for the most part, it's really just an enjoyable amplification of the animated series for page and panel. Reaction has a tendency to hit the page from interesting angles that all seem to be every bit intense. They need to be in order to deliver the absurdist level of superhero action that the franchise is known for.
Ganucheau and a company are doing a delightful job of doing justice to the old animated series. It's been a lot of fun in the course of the run of the series so far. And it had played with superhero tropes so effectively that it really isn't that difficult to find ways to needle around the edges of it and make it into something, that much more enjoyable. Multi series is the erratically really interesting amplification of everything. Particularly if there was some attention being paid to the overall continuity of everything. A true fusion between the animated series and the current trends in superhero comic books could really be a lot of fun under the right circumstances.
