@mraugen: By which time they will have lost all their current fans of those characters, who will have moved on to other things.

If done well any character can cultivate new fans or bring back old ones. Wonder Woman fans had to wait an agonizingly long time to finally see her on the big screen. It was done right and helped the character's profile and attract new fans. This should embolden DC to find passionate people to push other characters because they, much like Marvel learned, are sitting on a goldmine of intellectual properties.

I will be curious how "X-Men: New Mutants" portrays Magik's costume given she has the window some take issue with.

The difference being that Wonder Woman was not only continuously published and a very important character appearing always in multiple books as well as animation. PG....is often no published at all. She's not terribly important it DC's eyes. She almost never appears in multiple books and doesn't appear in ANYTHING now. She's had ONE appearance in animation, and it doesn't seem she's the Kryptonian Power Girl, or one with any of the character aspects of the original Power Girl

Yet Wonder Woman has never been a massive seller compared to Batman, Spider-Man, or the X-men. They saw the value to keeping her going despite years of tepid sales.

On the flip side as you've pointed out before Guardians of the Galaxy has been a huge box office hit twice because it was a labor of love, not because it had a huge comic following. It definitely adds a head wind, but not one impossible to overcome.

I won't argue DC in past several years has done nothing to help Power Girl's case, but it can start at any point to push her and if done right could pay huge dividends.

I can only hope so, but as you point out, they have to do it right. My confidence in that is very low.

Interesting how they changed Power Girl's CV picture to the Injustice 2 concept art that was never actually used. I like the design though.

It's okay, but I like the one they used better.

They changed the profile photo back to the terrible one with strange facial proportions and an out of place logo.

Shenanigans!

@mraugen: Who knows why they do that?

@achilles100: Trolling us? I have no clue. I do wonder if they get confused that this is one of the more active character forums on the site past several months.

https://youtu.be/QTcO_4UdwYc

A pretty poorly researched video...but she is the focus.

True, but this is a very minor site. Even CBR which does feature PG articles doesn't seem to move the needle on Power Girl.

Powergirl was supposed to be in batgirl and birds of prey #15

https://youtu.be/P4DI1NhL6sE

https://www.instagram.com/p/BYZSks7hVhO/

Comedy series "Heroes with issues" featured Power Girl. Comedic take on PG works pretty well, tell the actress enjoys the role.

Now have this .gif for "Power Girl approved" posts.

@mraugen: Funny.

Was she? And if so, much?

@achilles100 No she wasn't cause they said they already had too many characters

I can check it out and report on it. Not getting my hopes up right now.

She wasnt in it there cause the writers said they wanted to add her but they couldnt

Really? Did you see this somewhere? Why couldn't they? DC have other plans for her or they just didn't want her in any books?

http://dcwomenkickingass.tumblr.com/post/166304617456/dc-women-kicking-the-flu

Anyone you wanted to include that you couldn’t?

There were so many – when you think of writing a story like this, the “ultimate female team-up” you want to have everybody – but we knew we’d have a tough job balancing the 13 or 14 we were already jamming into the issue. Supergirl would have been a lot of fun. We talked about others like Hawkgirl, Power Girl, and Barda… But again, their availability was limited to us, so we took who we could and ran with it!

Okay, so a group of characters were not available. I do wonder why they said no to Power Girl given her current status though.

I went down a bit of a rabbit hole on Power Girl on YouTube and this video was one.

The big thing was this guy did a follow up explaining how big this video was for his channel. He has 16K subscribers, and his videos get between 3K and 10K normally. This video above has 112K views and is his biggest video. I think this is a small indicator that Power Girl "pops" when a minor channel that is struggling benefits by having a PG focused video.

@mraugen: That may be so, but nothing seems to be popping enough with Power Girl to get DC to use her again, much less in the epic, great fashion she deserves. Remember, when Flashpoint cancelled her series, it was selling above cancellation levels, (then), and far above what series like Cyborg and Blue Beetle sell today, (and in their prior series). She was even selling within a few thousand issues of Supergirl's main title (today), and that was without the benefit of a TV show, and half a dozen regular titles that SG has, not to mention all the crossovers with the Superman Family, which Power Girl mysteriously no longer appears in.

@achilles100: Figured I'd mention it in a hypothetical sales pitch to DC. There is a fanbase there, she deserves another chance.

Absolutely agreed. I just hope someone with power to make things happen at WB decides to champion her, and does so by first reading all of her most important character developing stories, and going onto the boards and listening to WHY people like the character. Hint, WB, it isn't just the boob window. And I say WB because I think someone there would have more power than at DC, and could get things going for her at both companies. Just so long as it isn't Johns. I get that he finally, after fan badgering, went along and put her back in the JSA after a regular publication hiatus for the character, and that he did what everyone wanted by retconning her back to being what she was, but he just never understood her.

Like I said, she was never meant to be the weepy type Johns made her all too often, never one to dwell on the bad events of the past, and never one who constantly needed to be rescued. By men nearly always. Way to take a female character and make her irrelevant.

@achilles100: There were both good and bad things done with the character when Johns had handled her, like you stated. But personally, if they ever do bring her back then I would prefer it if they completely ignored what had happened to her during the coarse of the New 52. Everything to do with Tanya Spears and Mr. Terrific. Hell, Rebirth could be a perfect way of doing so. Kind of like the way that they are bringing Jay back. The only issue being presented to us is her "availability" to the people writing DC's stories. Evidently, writers still want to include her in stories and have the opportunity to work with her as a character. So the problem doesn't lye within the public or the writers, but someone higher up.

I reckon there ought to be a Worlds Finest title teaming up Nightwing and Power Girl. I dig their chemistry

She already has parts of her life that were retconned so I have no issue doing so again.

Unless there is some big JSA plan in 2018 it is simply down playing a character. I think we live in an era where people in the industry are scared of certain groups being outraged so prematurely cave to them. That said, if the sale go low enough I think there could be a reset and return to core fans who are not bothered. DC started it with Rebirth, I think Marvel botched it with Legacy, but the pieces are there that 2018/2019 could go back to what comics were.

I would kind of take it for granted that they'd Rebirth PG and ignore the nu52. That would of course mean quietly killing off the Tanya Spears character and just pretending Mr. Terrific never had anything to do with PG before, save possibly for the pre Flashpoint JSA, if they went that way. As for who's blocking her on high, it's hard to say. Didio did briefly push her as one of DC's "New Icons" back in the day before her series' numbers started dropping. I think Damian Wayne was one of the others, but don't recall the rest. So I don't think it was Didio. Johns OTOH is on record saying he neither liked the character nor understood her appeal. That was way back on the old DCU message boards in the JSA forum before he got so much flack from the fans there, (and he admitted that was why he did it), that he put her back into the team, giving her her first regular book in about a decade.

She evidently proved popular enough for him to then retcon her back to her original story, (though with the powers of modern Kryptonians). But....something happened then. She never really shined in the Johns JSA, always being about the first to get taken out. I can count her good moments on the fingers of one hand, and they were usually instantly reversed. Then things got worse, and he started making her weepy, maudlin, and basically useless. She was billed before Infinite Crisis as one of the breakout star players by Didio. Then she needs to be rescued by her returning cousin from a bunch of low level bad guys, immediately goes into weepy mode and stays there until she's taken out in a single panel by Prime, and spends most of the rest of the crossover as a statue on a tower, until she weepily ALLOWS the Martian Manhunter to stop her from following her cousin on a mission she knows will likely kill him. Johns writing all the way. Then he goes on with that Kingdom Come crossover, where he not only makes her completely useless and weepy again, (she basically lets herself be taken captive and tortured by the other JSA while crying a lot), but has a psycho twin in that universe. Then, in case you didn't get the depth of Johns' dislike for the character, when the KC Superman returns to his universe, HIS Power Girl, his COUSIN, is killed by the atomic bomb HE survives unscathed. Which was never confirmed in the original Kingdom Come, and contradicted in it's nominal sequel, where she's alive well. Also, she's been shown in the Tangent thing to be able to take modern nukes point blank without any fuss, (and of course all Kryptonians are supposed to be able to sundip.

So, barring some executive I've never heard of, it sounds to me like Johns is holding her back. Harras I don't think cares, Didio if anything seems to be a mild advocate, and Nelson probably never heard of her.

I think there should have been two goals after the failure of the nu52. The first would be to fix what DC had broken, the characters and their stories. The second should have been to simplify. I mean just look at the DCU these days, it's almost impossible for a new reader to jump on board, and even long-time readers can get very confused just within a single line. Going along with that should be a genuine effort to look at each and every character they have to decide what makes them work, and how to go forward with them.

More narrowly, for PG herself, they should have given her a detailed, but not TOO detailed, origin story back on Krypton. Make it simple, and leave room for future stories to flesh it out. They also should have detailed what exactly her mission in the DCU is, why she's different from Superman and especially Supergirl, and yet still fit in with the Superman Family, but with a unique mission, IMO she should have been the sci-fi character of the Superman Family, and more experienced and skilled than Supergirl. She should keep her flaws, they help define her and make her relatable.

While it was nice, and I liked the jokey aspect of it, Nightwing has been shipped with practically every female character in the DCU, and slept with many of them. Plus, he's most closely associated in that sense with either Babs or Starfire, with Huntress rounding things out, (and to make that even more creepy, also the Earth-2 Huntress, PG's best friend).

As a team, they'd work....BUT, the romantic angle would inevitably crop up, considering his rep. I'd go with a temporary thing only.

I think more self contained story lines are a good thing. Right now "Batman: White Knight" or "Doomsday Clock" are easier sells to casual fans I know because they require general familiarity rather than being steeped in the mythos the way "Metal" comes across to them.

It should be perfectly fine that a person can read one book each month and feel satisfied. Knowing more is supplementary enhancing the experience, but not mandatory.

There's no actual Power Girl news, save that yet another month's solicitations passed without mention of either the JSA or Power Girl.

@achilles100: If they aren't mentioning it now then they must me saving it for later. Probably--and unfortunately-- not in PG's case, but for the JSA. With Johns at the helm there absolutely must be a JSA book or story in the works. Especially because Johns is widely recognized for his revival of the JSA, what's keeping him from doing the same now?

Well, I assume a JSA will eventually surface, but it sure seems like it's about DC's last priority. And at this point, though Johns wrote and co wrote JSA for a long time, he's more noted for other things like Flash and GL and other stuff. I don't expect much when JSA eventually comes around, not even that PG will be there, or if she is, in the horrible nu52 version.

I've given up on next six months. Best case might get news sometime next year of better days ahead.

Well, it's looking more and more like it might be at least a full year away before we see any JSA news, and I think we'll see a Bwana Beast solo title before we see another Power Girl one. I have strong doubts we'll ever in fact see the character again.

Ever is a long time. Even if they had killed her off I'd still bet money she'd be back. She's endured so many ages and changes, I think she is durable enough to last through the current rough patch.

Well, IMO it's a matter of management's opinion about her. It seems to me that they really just don't like her or get her appeal, and they've moved on to have other priorities with who they want to push. We've all talked about what we think she needs as a character, but I think we can all agree that what she needs more than anything is someone at DC and WB with real power who is a passionate advocate for the character and all her possibilities.

IMO, she doesn't have that now, and TPTB at both DC and WB seem very entrenched; they're not going anywhere any time soon. There doesn't seem to be much likelihood that they'll change their minds about her either. Their whole attitude about her seems to be demonstrated by her absence from publication or any other media apart from the game as a skin, by the fact that her origin character Supergirl is getting ALL the ink and airtime she might have gotten, with nothing thrown her way, and by the fact that DC saw fit to create another character, a black teen girl Mary Sue with the name "Power Girl", but little else in common with the OG character. I doubt they'd have done those things is she figured in their plans in any way.

Due to the continuous long form style of comics plans change, just with a delay. I remember old days when Ben Reilly was set up to be the next Spider-Man and Peter Parker would retire. They seemed set on it until fan response happened and changed course. It was a mess of a story as they tried to figure out ways to make it work before scrapping it.

Characters go through dark ages or rough patches, even the big ones. The difference is general major characters display their faults in public while minor ones get pushed to the side. We are in a particularly bad era for female characters who are comfortable being sexy. My thinking is these people complaining on social media don't buy the comics they demand in significant numbers and within a few years the core fans will be the target audience again. Rebirth was a sign, Legacy was a sign, and Doomsday clock is a sign. It is frustrating because often the execution of an idea takes 12-18 months delay from its inception in the industry. Why I think 2018/2019 could be better days for fans.

@mraugen: It's not just that she's comfortable with being sexy, its that she isn't ashamed to be proud of her physical form. Like you stated, the people who complain probably don't even understand that she's the complete opposite of what they make her out to be. Personally I think that times are changing. With Marvel trying to bring there comics back to their roots from the sixtees era of their history, as well as DC bringing back their more emotional and character driven stories with Rebirth. Eventually Tanya Spears will fade away and we will get a proper JSA book with PG (Karen Starr). Just a matter of time, and time is something that we don't seem to have too much of these days.

One of the hardest aspects when discussing fictional characters is the aspect of agency. Power Girl is controlled by the writer, they can have her say anything they want. However, the audience participation in comics means a reaction can mold the character to our preferences. For example, PG has explanations for her costume design that writers have put in her mouth. She is comfortable in her skin and it is on others if they objectify her. She feels a void as lacks an identity. Personally the former matches my mind better than the latter. I think the majority of her fans over time have developed a fixed image of her and want those traits displayed.

Her challenge has been when others project their worldview on her. "Large breasts mean low intelligence or revealing clothes mean being a sexual plaything". Rather than accommodate people who see an image and judge rather than read books I think giving the character dignity and good stories allowing them to stand on merits is the path forward. Not every book is made for every one. Go to any comic shop and 99% of people pass over 90% of books and that's fine. The industry can be diverse and make new characters to chase blue ocean markets, it's not asking too much for us old fans who have been here for decades to enjoy our classic characters.

I do agree we will continue to be here so eventually market forces will get them to come around.

Recently scrolled through the solicitations for DC in January and noticed Power Girl on the cover for the Elseworlds book Nightwing: The New Order. It doesn't take place in the main DC universe, but it's still interesting to see her featured in her classic costume.

Good eye. If she is in it, I'll check it out regardless of what timeline it is set in.

@scott_summers52: I knew it was only a matter of time. Can't tell you how glad I am to see her in a new book again.

@teliporter334: Hopefully she actually appears in this issue, and she's not just on the cover to fill up space.