In this review of The Powerpuff Girls #1, the girls realize new destinies for themselves with the help of the Highly Intelligent Machine
Review:
THE POWERPUFF GIRLS #1
Written by: Kelly Thompson
Art and Main Cover by: Paulina Ganucheau
Variant Covers: Leonardo Romero, Karen S. Darboe, Nicoletta Baldari
Page Count: 32 pages | Adventure | $4.99 | Teen
Release Date: July 17, 2024
In 1998, television cartoons were in the middle of a renaissance thanks to Cartoon Network. Groundbreaking work was being done by Genndy Tartakovsky and Craig McCracken on Dexter’s Lab and Craig followed up that masterpiece with the jewel in his own crown, The Powerpuff Girls. Or at least for one masterful season; the remaining five seasons were more hit and miss.
At the same time, DC Comics had licensed the Cartoon Network series and produced a Powerpuff Girls comic book for a remarkable 70-issue run from 2000-2006. I’ll confess I had bailed on the series when the very talented Phil Moy handed over the art chores (he did come back later in the run), but it was a good series from what I read of it.
Since then, there have been efforts to bring back to the Powerpuff Girls, to age the Powerpuff Girls into teenagers, to keep them young but change their voices – none of which caught on. And the question became – had everything already been done with the Powerpuff Girls that could be done with them….?
Dynamite has tested that theory by returning the Powerpuff Girls to where they started — kindergarten, in a story that feels very much like the original series did. Kelly Thompson, who has 10 years of writing comics for various companies under her belt now, plus an Eisner for a Hawkeye series, captures the voice and flow of the original series and the voices of all the characters.
Paulina Ganucheau (I literally had to try three times to type that correctly) has already made a name for herself with family-friendly art on titles like My Little Pony and is here a worthy successor to Phil Moy, even though the plot to this particular story, separating the three Girls, requires a lot of repetition of page layout. I will point out the opening splash page, that remarkably feels like you are watching a camera pan down, on a static page. The color palette is as lavish as a Powerpuff Girls story needs to have and Paulina does double duty on this too.
The plot of The Powerpuff Girls #1 is not unfamiliar to comic book fans – the Mad Thinker had lured the Fantastic Four away from the Baxter Building by tricking them into taking up other careers way back in FF #15. The resolution of the story, though, is charmingly new, and along the way we get some wonderful moments like Blossom changing her professional name to B. Lawsom and opening a private detective agency (suitably noirish, of course, despite the bright reds) and I was surprised by the twist about the Highly Intelligent Machine (no, not that it’s up to no good; the other twist). I hope B. Lawsom comes back someday!
I am looking forward to seeing where they take the Powerpuff Girls from here! As long as they don’t stray too far from what works…
Dynamite Entertainment provided The Comic Book Spot with an advance copy of The Powerpuff Girls #1 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 or from Things From Another World.
