Probably the most hotly-anticipated comic of this week (at least for DC fans) was the JSA annual, featuring Power Girl’s long-awaited return to Earth-2.

Following on from the previous issue of JSA, Power Girl crash lands in Gotham City, and is promptly found by her old friend Helena Wayne, aka The Huntress. Initially reluctant to believe she’s finally back on Earth-2 Power Girl is nonetheless happy to hang around with her old best friend. Sadly Helena’s going through issues of her own, hunting down the Joker after he attacked her long-term love interest, Harry Sims on the night he proposed to her. The pair track down the Joker, but there’s a bigger twist around the corner, as another Power Girl turns up, revealing that she’s the Power Girl who’s been missing on Earth-2, and our Power Girl finds herself being hunted by the Justice Society Infinity (a nice blending of the JSA and Infinity Inc).

This was a great read, and a great exercise in nostalgia. You really feel for Power Girl, as she goes from being unable to believe she’s back, to rekindling her friendship with Helena, only to have it all torn away again.

Of course, there’s still a question hanging in the air at the end of this story. Which Earth-2 was this?

I took it on reading that this is the “New” Earth-2, spawned from 52. Admittedly, you have to ignore the panel in 52 which showed the characters in updated costumes and assume everyone was suddenly in a retro mood, but otherwise it certainly explains the second Power Girl turning up (in her classic outfit). If this is the case, then its a pity to see some of the updated costumes from that 52 panel go. I quite liked the Huntress outfit with the red in it.

The other theory doing the rounds however, is that this was indeed “the” Earth-2. We see a panel with the Spectre and Dr Fate, neither of whom are happy that there’s a visitor from a parallel world turned up, and one theory has the second Power Girl as a duplicate created by them to try and get rid of our Power Girl.

For now, I’m assuming that this the 52 Earth-2. Of course, it was heavily hinted in the Infinite Crisis trade, that the original Earth-2 might still be out there and was where the golden age heroes were being drawn towards. I’ve got no problems with there being two Earth-2s, although I think they would need to be merged in some way at somepoint to avoid confusion. The new Earth-2 is still missing a Superman, Lois and Wonder Woman, so there’s nothing to say that the originals couldn’t take up residence there, with the other characters assumed to be duplicates born during Infinite Crisis.

I think my brain may be starting to melt from thinking this through too much

Anyway, cracking read. Well worth picking up if you’re a fan of Power Girl.

Well, some of the others that caught my eye anyway

First off, Rann-Thanagar Holy War #6.  Its back!!!! Going from the cover, Adam Strange has his Planet Heist kit back.  Yay

JSA #20 features the New Earth JSA and the Earth-2 JSA with Power Girl torn between the two.   I’m really looking forward to this storyline, as is probably most of DC fandom.  But I’m still really intrigued to see how this Earth-2 JSA is going to be approached.    As I’ve mentioned before, the Earth-2 JSA shouldn’t be the Golden Age JSA, so I’m wondering how they’re going to reconcile this.   Earth-2 in 52 was shown to have some kind of link to events on new Earth (both Kryptonians missing), but it also showed differences to the classic Earth-2 we see here.  Of course, there was obviously something going on with Earth-2 during Infinite Crisis (it was the only unpopulated world, E-2 Lois and E-2 Wonder Woman seemed to hint at being drawn somewhere - in the trade at least), so I wonder if this story arc will start to address that.

Booster Gold has a new writer in October in the form of Rick Remender. I’ve not read any of his other stuff (off the top of my head), but I love the sound of this arc, with Daniel unwittingly being possessed by Starro. It sounds like the kind of light-hearted adventure that suits this series down to the ground.

The Tangent Comics crossover is another mini I’m really loving (although it has been pointed out that the JLA really didn’t come out of the last issue looking that great. Powergirl versus Powergirl should be an entertaining matchup and I’m really intrigued to see where this series takes the Tangent Universe. I’ve been really enjoying the trades they’ve been releasing and re-casting Superman as the villain makes a lot of sense for the character.

Finally, the Superman titles explore the fallout of the Brainiac story, with 100,000 Kryptonians living on Earth.    Sounds like a really interesting story setup.  I guess I’ll be picking up the titles for a little while after the Brainiac arc ends.  It certainly gives them a lot of scope to really dig into where Clark sits in between both cultures.  Supergirl’s part in the story should be incredibly interesting, as I imagine she’s going to be really pleased to be around Kryptonians again (especially since this iteration of the character has really struggled to find her feet on Earth).

Yup. October’s going to be an expensive month for this DC fan.

Well, one of the early announcements at the NYCC was that Power Girl is finally getting her own ongoing series and it features Amanda Connor doing the artwork.

Brilliant. Sign me up. PG getting her own monthly has been coming a long time, and I love Amanda Connor’s artwork in both the JSA Classified story, and in the Green Arrow/Black Canary wedding comic (although I wasn’t a big fan of the story).

The really interesting thing is that the title will apparently be using events from the upcoming “Welcome to Earth-2″ annual as a springboard. Does this hint at the series being set on Earth-2, or just the her experiences there force Power Girl to take a fresh look at her life?