In this review of The Powerpuff Girls #3, the Girls encounter a new adversary that wants nothing more than to becoming the girls’ greatest nemesis.
The Powerpuff Girls #3
Written by: Kelly Thompson
Art by: Miriana Puglia
Cover by: Leonardo Romero
Variant Covers: Karen S. Darboe, Ken Haeser, Paulina Ganucheau, Nicoletta Baldari
Page Count: 32 pages
Release Date: September 18, 2024
This review contains spoilers
The Powerpuff Girls #3 begins with the City of Townsville under attack by a giant monster! This is the story of that monster. After its inevitable defeat, the Powerpuff Girls list it in their notebook as “Miscellaneous Villain #432” to the consternation of the villain. The villain shrinks back down to normal size; though a monster, it is actually a super-intelligent monster with a secret lair and inventions.
It calls itself Big Bang and it wants nothing more than to become the Powerpuff Girls’ new nemesis and defeat them in combat. But designing the perfect weapon weapon takes all of Big Bang’s money (he must order parts on Amazon?), so he robs the Townsville Bank with a giant robot, not to lure the Powerpuff Girls out for another fight, but just to get more funds.
The Powerpuff Girls do show up though and we learn what the perfect weapon weapon is – it shoots out perfect weapons. For Blossom, it creates a Sherlock-in-a-box that presents her with an enticing mystery to solve. For Bubbles, she is buried in cute bunnies she dares not harm. For Buttercup, she encounters herself – someone who loves to fight as much as she does. It is, naturally, Blossom who thinks to switch opponents and the perfect weapons are defeated in short order. They team up to defeat Big Bang once more, but he has a victory or sorts when they stop to learn his name first.
Analysis
With The Powerpuff Girls #3, Kelly Thompson continues to dazzle me with tight scripts and done-in-one-issue stories. She could have taken this series in very different directions, like trying to find ways to incorporate the 2016 revival or the Powerpuff Girls Z anime, or taken the girls on longer, serialized adventures, but this title has felt like it could easily have taken place in the first few seasons of the original series and every issue feels like a television episode.
Kelly continues her pattern here of playing with, and subtly subverting, one trope of the superhero genre per issue, and this issue’s trope is the villain origin story — Big Bang badly wants an origin story, but he can’t have one because the Powerpuff Girls want to defeat him before he can even get his name out. Even though we accompany Big Bang to his hideout and observe his monolog, we still wind up learning nothing about him the Powerpuff Girls don’t themselves know by story’s end. And by story’s end, I do want to know more about this villain; my appetite is whetted for more details on what he is and how he became this way.
Why does Big Bang want to become the Powerpuff Girls’ nemesis? Note that he never says he hates the Powerpuff Girls or has any motive for wanting to destroy them. Only the Powerpuff Girls’ nemesi (nemesises?) get origin stories, so Big Bang may not, metafictionally, even have an origin story until he becomes one.
I may be prone to overthinking stories, but I also wonder why he was called Big Bang. It’s not like he has the power to explode. And I wonder if he is called Big Bang after the small comic book company, Big Bang Comics. Big Bang Comics, for those who know of them, were sort of the origin story for Image Comics, though they got defeated in the marketplace before many people learned of those origins.
While I’m citing my positive impressions, I want to repeat how perfectly Kelly has down all the characterizations from the show. Professor Utonium shows up in two panels in this issue, but his dialog is so spot-on during the one-panel tucking-in-to-bed scene that it feels like we got a lot more of the Professor this issue.
The cliche of the heroes switching opponents to beat them is fun, and each “perfect weapon” does seem well thought out and perfect for that character, but the cliche is not subverted cleverly in any way here. Further, the very idea of a perfect weapon weapon seems so much like something Mojo Jojo would have invented that I wish this idea was saved for him instead.
The art continues to rotate to different artists each issue, with this one going to Miriana Puglia, best known for her work for Dynamite Entertainment and the Gargoyles title. The work is good enough, but that still only puts her in third place already behind the exceptional work of Paulina Ganucheau on issue #1 and Karen Darboe on the first two pages of issue #2.
That Paulina Ganucheau is slated to become the new regular writer has me extra excited for the next issue!
Dynamite Entertainment provided The Comic Book Spot with an advance copy of The Powerpuff Girls #3 for review purposes. Find more reviews here. If you would like to buy a copy of this title, and help support the Comic Book Spot at the same time, consider purchasing this book at Amazon, My Comic Shop, or at Things From Another World.
