No, I still haven’t decided if I’m bringing back Friday Night Fights on this site.
Star Power #27
(September, 2019)
“The Life Smugglers” part 2
WRITER: Michael Terracciano
ARTIST: Garth Graham
Using the Star Power to track Burke’s tracking device despite the jammers, our heroes find their kidnapped friend and the other trafficked humans. Semme tells her that it’s more important to finally break the families than any one life, but when the head of the Embuvalij is about to kill one of the prisoners as an example to Burke when he fights back, Star Power isn’t going to let an innocent person die. It turns out to be okay. The boss’ son thinks getting into human trafficking is giving up their soul, the reason the Embuvalij never joined in the practice in the first place despite all their other crimes. Forced to all work together, they go ahead with the meeting but the other crime families decide to betray and eliminate them. Grel has a flashback to when her own family was attacked by the same death squad being used here, but Danica manages to keep her from crossing the line. Unfortunately both Burke and the son are attacked.
What they got right: I cheered when Star Power saved that dude. She saves lives, and a life you know is going to die now versus someone who might die in the future is not the chance Danica is willing to take. That’s how I like my superheroes. There’s also some nuance to the bad guys in that the son is questioning his father’s path, but despite mentioning “new scars on your back”, we do see he cares about his son when Grex threatens to shoot the young man to force daddy to help. The story does cover Grex’s trauma well.
What they got wrong: That’s a terrible job covering up a swear word by changing “s” to “z”. You can do better, guys.
What else is there: In passing we learn that Semme Smith sometimes changes between pronouns long before the current activist movement. The story does not become about Semme’s pronouns, we’re not sure if the son hates Semme due to their past encounters or for being…gender fluid? Activist terminology tends to shift with the wind and the old timer can’t keep up. Point is Semme is just a character and we at least know the detective is hot for Grex. The story isn’t suddenly about being gender fluid. It’s just an aspect of his character, meant to show Semme and the crime boss’s son have some kind of past history, and the focus remains on the various crime families and the human trafficking ring that this story started out being about. Since it isn’t addressed and everyone else has gone with male pronouns up to this point, that’s how we’ll be referring to him for the rest of the story. At least it’s what he’s using now.
What I think overall: Only two “issues” left and I go back to missing this series. This was a really good one. At least they went out on a high note.
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