There was something audacious about the Peter David run on 'Supergirl', especially if you didn't like what he was doing. The first fifty one issues were Christian angelic mythology overlaid directly onto superhero frolics, and then the last twenty-nine a mythic quest and unabashed comic book geekery. It was quite the ride, but I will always remember issue sixty, which almost entirely defined for me what superhero comic books could be, and almost always weren't. It was in this issue that Linda Danvers (the then Supergirl) fell over a problem that punching and kicking wouldn't solve, when she and her ex-demon travelling companion Buzz (he of the stupid one-liners) discover a school for deaf children being endangered by corporate legal shenanigans, by the same company whose pollutions may have caused a fair share of that deafness.
The first amazing thing is the amount of sign language that is incorporated into the comic book, mainly as Buzz makes fun of Supergirl behind her sign-illiterate back. If ever there was an admirable way to promote awareness of the deaf and sign language, then it was this, where the artist Leonard Kirk portrayed it so proficiently and elegantly that you wonder why you never learnt sign language as a direct consequence. Sadly, even though I very much wanted to learn sign language shortly thereafter, it never happened as the dreadful momentum of day-to-day life rolled on.
The second amazing thing, and one which has become increasingly rare in comic books that I've noticed, is that the plot is resolved not by violence (although Supergirl did try to rough up that slimy lawyer) but instead by the arrival of a veritable legion of superhero friends, making a massive campaign and event around the school and bringing the world's press to bear. In short, for once, we get to see the non-violent political influence of all those meta-humans working effectively to solve things that their fists never could, even if is their might that gives them that influence to begin with.
I'm just a big schmaltzy mess really. Mea culpa. It's lovely to see Superman get to do something that doesn't involve punching something, especially in the wake of the ultra-violent 'Man of Steel' movie. Thank you, people then at DC for allowing something nice to happen.
O.
Note: Check out 'Hero Squared' for something else that's very interesting, and the Dan Slott run on 'She-Hulk'! Oh, and JLA 60 was awesome too, the great capper to the Giffen and DeMatteis run.
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