Leah Williams' Power Girl Vol. 1: Electric Dreams feels hastily put together, rife with moments that move the story along but don’t truly make much sense. When I read this, I was honestly surprised to see the book still going at 20 issues — was there an audience out there getting something from the book that I’m not? (Cancelled not much later.) I was here largely for the run-up to the House of Brainiac crossover and picked up the second volume for the same, but I was rather sorry to see this book didn’t get a revamp with DC All In.

[Review contains spoilers]

Power Girl feels off-kilter from the first issue. We open on Power Girl, now Dr. Paige Stetler, debuting her new secret identity as Daily Planet tech reporter by talking about something she’s “genuinely passionate about” — the inequalities that underlie the technology supply chain. That’s part of a fundraising auction of alien artifacts representing sustainability successes in other cultures. But with no acknowledgment of the irony, we find out that Power Girl actually got the artifacts from a smuggler in exchange for a future favor — that Williams presents Power Girl as adopting inequality as a cause, but not so far as to not auction stolen artifacts in order to bulk up her credentials.

Later in the same issue, Superman approaches Power Girl about recent deaths near Bermuda, which Superman says are “rumored to be casualties of a Kryptonian virus that uniquely affects humans.” There’s clearly some leaps in logic there — how it can be “rumored” to be a Kryptonian virus, how Superman knows about it, why a Kryptonian virus would “uniquely affect humans” — all of which Power Girl asks Superman about. “None of this makes any sense,” she tells him and Superman agrees, “Exactly — it doesn’t,” so that’s why he’s sending her to investigate.

It’s never a good sign when a writer’s poking holes in their own plot. Furthermore, even as Superman acknowledges that, somehow, the virus is tied to Power Girl’s multiversal Krypton, Williams has him be totally dismissive when Power Girl suggests it could be the influence of her former problematic symbioship, which she’s also been having dreams about. Later, of course, Superman has to return with proverbial hat in hand to apologize (I believe they call this “carrying the idiot ball”), for which Power Girl rather generously lets him off the hook.

Again, it all feels hasty — the needs of arriving at the next page overwhelming sensible plot turns. And I could go on — “Paige”’s second-issue meeting with Daily Planet boss Lois Lane, where Lois demands Paige’s column but also uncharacteristically wants to know why Paige isn’t out the door on Superman’s errand yet; later, Supergirl comes to Power Girl’s for help doing something “illegal” (which never actually even manifests), but then Supergirl is aghast when Power Girl takes dangerous drugs away from college kids, calling it “stealing.” It’s befuddling, the story seeming to favor what sounds good in the moment over even issue-to-issue story continuity.

I’ll also mention that, some seven issues and the Power Girl Returns specials into this series, we still don’t have much insight into the ever-helpful, ever-cheerful Omen, to the point where I still catch Power Girl calling her “Omen” and not “Lilith,” if she ever does at all. I’m sure the continuity dispensation of the former Titan is murky, but there’s plenty of DC series lately writing around murky continuity; the greater problem is Williams wanting the audience to care for a character given almost no nuance. Nor is it really clear who Power Girl’s cat Streaky is — in the setup of this series, Power Girl got Streaky from Supergirl, but I can’t seem to pin down where Supergirl got the cat or how it gained super powers. Streaky gets her own spotlight issue in this book, but to an extent she’s as much a cipher as Omen.

It is not all bad. David Baldeon illustrates that Streaky issue well, and Williams' conception of the nonsense that cats hear when people speak is priceless. I was not much of a fan of the cutesy interdimensional fantasy story that ends this book, but I appreciate artist Marguerite Sauvage’s versatility in drawing both the realistic and cartoony sequences. Some of the issues' Gary Frank covers are stunners (see Power Girl face to face with an alien lion for issue #3). And I did think Williams' sequence where Power Girl cared for the dying lion Hamlet was moving, and that Hamlet returning as the symbioship was clever — though, please, let’s not have to call it “Symbio the symbioship” if we can help it?

In its final issue, Power Girl Vol. 1: Electric Dreams spends three pages on a storybook retelling of how scientist Avice Stanislava passes through a dimension portal to meet the fractal witch Queen Adroris Gildrosque, whom she swiftly betrays and enslaves. This is posited on “Madame Avice” having previously fought Superman, though near as I can tell that’s Leah Williams' creation. All of which is to say, there’s a lot of messing about in this Power Girl volume, head-scratching moments and things that, for me, just didn’t work. If it worked for someone else, I’m genuinely curious to hear about that.

[Includes original and variant covers]