Helena’s adventures from the Huntress miniseries come back to haunt her, as she is targeted by mercenaries out to collect the billion Euros bounty on her head.  She doesn’t fare well, losing a lot of blood.  While she recovers, she flashes back to her conflicted childhood, being raised by Earth 2’s hard-nosed Batman and the more maternal (who knew?) Catwoman.

With her best friend laid up, Power Girl takes the fight to the man who placed the reward on Helena’s head.

As per usual, there are multiple artists this issue, including regular George Perez, who draws an absolutely stunning opening sequence, depicting Huntress savoring the flavors of the streets of New York City, that strongly reminded me of his work on The New Teen Titans, which is arguably my favorite series of all time.

Helena’s flashbacks are rendered by Cafu and were interesting.  The artist employed full page panels, but were surreal and slightly abstract.  The rest of the pages, depicting Power Girl’s mission, were handled by Cliff Richards, who does a really good job.  What really worked for me is that while his work doesn’t necessarily look like Perez’s, it complimented it a lot more than that of the other series regular illustrator, Kevin Maguire.  I LOVE Kevin Maguire, but the mixture on art in this book just has never worked for me.  Richards’ work is a better compliment.

I liked the continuity, both the throwback to Helena’s solo miniseries and the added elements of her childhood.  I loved the idea of Power Girl stepping in to both avenger her best friend and to carry on her mission, but if there was one thing about that that didn’t quite go down smoothly, it’s that I felt that it was a bit off that Helena needed Karen to do her work for her.  But Huntress cannot do the things that Power Girl can, so I can overlook that.

Overall, though we don’t see the heroes working together, we do get some nice development and the art was more cohesive than it’s been except on issues that have only had one artist.

 

WORLDS’ FINEST: HUNTRESS and POWER GIRL #8
Written by Paul Levitz
Art by George Perez, Cafu and Cliff Richards
Cover by Kevin Maguire and Rosemary Cheetham