Let me start off by saying that my Power Girl is not THE Power Girl. I had to pick and choose pieces of the Power girl mythos to sew together into a coherent character. Because honestly to call the character backstory a toxic incoherent disorganized train-wreck of a disaster of a mess is a insult to toxic incoherent disorganized train-wreck of a disaster or messes. Power Girl’s history is incredibly messed up. This is an unintentional messed up of editorial mandates, 50’s weirdness and generally poorly thought out writing, but it’s still messed up.
http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/2015/01/grumpy-old-fan-the-power-girl-problem/
I rebuilt Power Girl from the ground up using bits and pieces of her history all focused around a core concept. Power Girl is your symbolic big sister.
When you think about it, Superman, is a symbolic representation of the big brother. He is powerful and strong and will save you from the bullies in the world. He is the guy you look up to and who you want to be when you grow up.
Power Girl then should be the big sister that you are a little nervous about asking for help because while she’ll help she also sort of tired of putting up with your crap. She is the babysitter that was so worldly and fun but at the same time her presence was demeaning, she is the sexy teacher who you have so many conflicting feeling about, she is the bully’s girlfriend who get him to stop beating you up with a single word.
If Superman is a male power fantasy Power Girl should be a female power fantasy. She should not, however, a female icon in the same way the Punisher or the Hulk are power fantasies but not icons. She is someone we want to be but don’t want PEOPLE to be. Wonder Woman is an icon. Superman is an icon. Power Girl is a fantasy, she’s a super-powered super-heroic “mean girl”, a good guy version of the the bitchy cheerleader. No one likes the bitchy cheerleader but the do want to be the bitchy cheerleader.
The not letting tragedy define you, the surprising balance in her life between work and super-heroics, even her physical appearance which comes off more intimidatingly sexy instead of sex object, all these things were accidents of twisted crazy comic plot-lines and artist being on a little to long of a leash. And yet they add up to something powerful in a very weird way if you throw out all the attempts to turn her into something less intimidating to the comic book nerd or more acceptable to the Starbuck Slacktivism set.
This is is my Power Girl. She has had every crappy thing you can imagine happen to her, and many you couldn’t imagine, and that has taken her to a place of perspective, and snark. She fights dirty and mocks you while doing it because in her eyes if you’ve done something that makes her decide to fight, you’ve screwed up. Oh, and don’t even think of asking her out. She is totally got a thing going with Lobo. Not that they like to pinned down by “labels”. They’re just keeping causal, you know. After all, he owns his own cosmic motorcycle and you don’t even have your space licence, nerd.
Image from Pinup Corner Shop
On a side note the I got the basic understanding of Power Girls history from these two videos. I don’t exactly agree with many of bob’s interpretations but the histories are pretty well covered: