The Good

The decision to split the art between Kevin Maguire and George Perez based on characters (Perez drew Power Girl's panels while Maguire focused on Huntress) was a smart move. Splitting it this way made the transitions between stories far less erratic and very easy to read. I thought that was really well done. For the most part (with the exception of a few panels), I felt Maguire did a really great job.

The idea behind this book, the idea that these two Earth 2 characters should meet their Earth Prime counterparts is clever. What better way to introduce Helena into Earth Prime and introduce her to characters in the current universe than by introducing her to Damian Wayne, Batman's son? It's a great idea that wasn't executed very well, unfortunately.

The Bad

I hate to say it, but I was not a fan of George Perez's pencils, particularly in this issue. There were moments that felt awkward and strange, particularly some of the expressions he illustrates. Also, brace yourself for yet another issue where Power Girl loses her clothes, because yes, that happens. If Paul Levitz spent half as much time thinking about creative ways to push the plot as he did in finding ways to remove Power Girl's outfit in every issue, we might have a better series on our hands.

There were several details about the plot that felt poorly thought out and poorly planned. For example, I find it hard to believe that Karen Starr could acquire a live feed of Wayne Industries without Bruce Wayne's knowledge. There is one scene in particular which she does this: she suddenly discovers the fight between Damian Wayne and Helena Wayne via a feed she has to Wayne Industries, and intercepts the battle between the two. The fact that she managed to instal this without Batman's knowledge is a little bit unbelievable.

But the silliness doesn't stop there. In the beginning of the issue, Helena breaks into Wayne industries (we don't see how, we just see that she does) and she gets ready to steal 5 million dollars of WI. As if the billionaire playboy won't notice. Normally when a person steals from a company and doesn't want to get caught, they do it in a discrete way. You know, like, a little bit every day over a long period of time. Clearly, Helena wanted to get caught.

There is a very strange single page spread in this issue that depicts Power Girl literally kicking Damian's butt, and it is very awkwardly illustrated. Additionally, as much as I was looking forward to Damian's appearance in this, I felt he was very oddly depicted. His dialogue did not sound like Damian.

The Verdict

So, clearly, I had a few issues with this comic. I felt that the issue left a lot to be desired, the structure was weird and the direction of the story was unclear. Levitz takes a lot of liberties with character's who aren't in panel, and sort of just does whatever he wants. I didn't feel like he put much thought into the way the plot should unfold at all. I think this issue has a lot of problems. The idea behind the story, the first encounter, could have been great but I felt that overall the story was poorly structured, disorganized, not very well thought out and just badly executed.