| Welcome to the world of Tangent Comics — where you only know the names. Parallel Lines: A DC Comics Tangent Universe Podcast is a bi-weekly, issue-by-issue exploration of DC Comics’ Tangent Universe events, hosted by Shawn Engel and Michael Bradley.
“I know, Rey … the past always comes back to haunt us.”
The development of a secret Chinese super-weapon, Codename: Powergirl, brings back old demons as the Metal Men are forced back into action. The penultimate chapter in the second Tangent wave brings us more top-flight military action and espionage in “Power Struggle,” courtesy of returning writer Ron Marz and new art team Dusty Abell and Dexter Vines
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NEXT TIME: The end — and a new beginning — with JLA #1!
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Powergirl is a character I really wished had another comic–her journey to find herself and the way she was created could’ve filled at least a mini-series at best, and would’ve been really interesting to read. (Or maybe I’m just a sucker for sci-fi mixed with genetic concepts.) Would she have chosen her own path? Rejected the government that created fully or just partially? Would she have ended up eventually with either America or Nightwing after everything in a really downer twist? (spoiler: Tangent Superman’s Reign answers that…sorta.)
Being the language nerd I am, I actually once tried to look for the Chinese characters placed on PG’s chest. The problem with Western artists “drawing” Asian characters, in my experience, is that they don’t take care to at least do them CORRECTLY, so uh, it was hair-pulling in a sense. I initially thought it might have been her name in Chinese. Since English is the lingua franca of modern times, the Chinese government may have been trying to make her seem “acceptable” to the world or whatever. Buuuut it’s not.
There IS a word related to her name but doesn’t really say much. The Chinese writing that came closest to being similar was traditional Chinese (link here), since in the simplified version two of the three letters don’t “exist.” The first letter only Superman knows, but the second letter is a verb, 動 (dòng) which means to move, set in movement, to alter. The third letter *should* have been written as 戰 (zhàn), which is a noun meaning fight, war, battle. Besides being the only letter semi-related to her name as I said before, the letter used in her design is actually the way you write it in Japanese. Oy. (But it still means the same. Hurray for families of the same language tree!)
Yeah, I clearly have time to do this for comics. Because comics.