New Power Girl Creative Team: Judd Winick and Sami Basri

The creative team for Power Girl (2009) has been announced on the DCU Blog: Judd Winick is writing and Sami Basri is doing covers and interiors.

I’ve never read anything by Winick. I can only go by reactions from people I trust like Shelly’s. I’m going to go into this with an open mind and see what he delivers.

The cover to Power Girl #13 (above) by the new artist is gorgeous but sadly, it looks like the Amanda Conner costume revamp is being ignored which is a real shame.

From the DCU Blog:

As some of you recall, Power Girl was once a member of Justice League Europe. It seems like a lot of the characters that were under the umbrella of Justice League International are reforming in the pages of JUSTICE LEAGUE: GENERATION LOST. JL: GENERATION LOST is written by Judd Winick. Well, so’s POWER GIRL, starting with June’s issue #13.

Teaming with new artist Sami Basri, who contributed some fantastic covers to recent issues of THE SHIELD and is also handling interiors on POWER GIRL, the latest chapter in Power Girl’s life finds her inching closer to her former JLI teammates — but why? It’s too early to say, gang, but Judd’s got a few teases to keep us on our toes. Right, Judd?

“It is with GREAT fear and excitement that Sami and I leap into this gig. Jimmy Palmiotti, Justin Gray, and Amanda Conner have bought an amazing, fresh, and inventive rebirth to this character. Our greatest challenge will be to remain faithful to what they’ve created and also take Power Girl to a new place. As far as the course that the story will take, I’ll be uncharacteristically forthcoming : The story is tied to JUSTICE LEAGUE: GENERATION LOST. Not CHAINED to it, but tied. Power Girl has a history with the JLI that will be explored. A lot.”

I’m going to take whatever comfort I can from that phrasing “not chained to it”. And hey, maybe it’ll just be this first story arc when Judd takes over that will tie into Justice League: Generation Lost (announced in January) however that’s a year long run – good god, since when is a 26-issue biweekly a “miniseries”?! -so I don’t know. Just so long as she goes back to doing her own thing after with Atlee and StarrWare. It’s always frustrating when a new writer talks about talking the character(s) to “a new place” when you’re happy with the place she’s currently in.

That said, I was somewhat glad that the current writing team is leaving after reading Power Girl #10 with that awful stalking/blackmailing subplot, where the behavior of the little rapist-in-training was treated as harmless and worthy of indulging (rather than, say, dangling him off a cliff for a while until he begged for forgiveness). Yeesh, that was bad.

Here is a nice interview with Jimmy Palmiotti over at Robot6 that looks back at the series under this foundational creative team.