Superwoman #16 Review and **SPOILERS**

-->

Avoid the Void

Writer: Perkins 

Pencils: Stephen Segovia 

Inks: Art Thibert 

Colors: Hi-Fi 

Letters: Josh Reed 

Cover: Ken Lashley 

Cover Price: $3.99 

On Sale Date: November 8, 2017

**NON SPOILERS AND SCORE AT THE BOTTOM**

Since there was that awful song “Superman Dat Hoe,” about ejaculating on the backs of women and then putting a sheet on them to create a sort of cape, do you think the world is ready for the “Superwoman Dat Dude” response track? I’d proffer that being “Superwomaned” would be to have your genitalia set on fire and/or electrocuted. I hope someone makes that song! Check out my review of Superwoman #16 for some inspiration!

Explain It!

Look, I get it: making new characters connect with readers is tough. More difficult with villains, most likely, than heroes. There was a time making villains was simple: Phillip Hornwaggler was obsessed with stamps as a kid, and now he’s Philatelist, a guy that robs expensive stamps and wears a postal carrier’s uniform or something. Now you’ve got to give them this tortured backstory and a whole list of brutal crimes to justify the attention of a superhero in the first place. But you can’t make them too sympathetic, or else the reader won’t want to see them get thrown into the side of a skyscraper. It’s not easy, is what I’m saying, and I get that. Far too often, new characters fall on the side of tepid rather than memorable.

But this Midnight, this is such a throwaway character that I think she must have been dragged from the wastebin a day before the script’s initial deadline. A sentient computer virus that grabs people to gain power and tangibility. All some kind of digital residue that emerged as a result of Lena Luthor’s demise. It’s not a matter of being obvious—though it is—it’s more like…oh, we’re doing this again? And now Midnight has Steel inside of her, which only makes her more powerful. Within Midnight is a poorly-rendered purple void of little imagination or development. Sort of like this whole story, to be frank.

Aside from Traci 13 connecting electrodes to her head and chest in order to surf the Internet more efficiently, and the revelation that Lena Luthor is, wittingly or not, behind this whole Midnight problem (specifically that she leaves black holes in her wake), much of this issue is given over to watching the characters learn stuff we knew already. In the end, Midnight is able to take over Lana’s body, after a several overwrought pages of little substance. What a shame. Everything looks okay artistically, though that’s a big on the uninspired side, as well. Word on the street is that this book isn’t long for this world, and it seems like it might be going out treading water rather than making a splash.

Bits and Pieces:

A lot of this issue has the characters learning what we've already gleaned from the last issue, and the secret origin of Midnight does little to inspire more than memories of Sandra Bullock in The 'Net. Which, since I'm not recovering from a hangover on my living room couch on Sunday afternoon, is not a good thing in this instance.

5.5/10