Review: Supergirl Vol. 3- Sanctuary
Quick Summary
Pros: The opening chapter is exciting. The Power Girl team-up has some fun moments.
Cons: The flow of the narrative is interrupted immediately after the opening chapter. The H’el on Earth event is lackluster and Supergirl’s role in it is disappointing. The event is poorly collected within this volume.
Overall: This is a collection with glimmers of potential that are overshadowed by a ton of problems. The book starts out solid and ends with a decent final arc. However, everything in between is generally awful and introduces the added problem of disrupting the narrative as a whole. This is not a collection for most readers and, overall, has very little appeal to it.
Story
Supergirl Vol. 3: Sanctuary, written mostly by Mike Johnson, starts and ends alright but is severely damaged by everything that takes place in between. The volume kicks off with an exciting opening chapter. Then, the narrative dramatically switches as the H’el on Earth (Review) (Reading Order) crossover event begins. This event is generally disappointing, particularly for Supergirl, and is collected in a way that cuts out massive chunks of information, making it nearly impossible to understand. Finally, the volume starts to improve, at the end, with a moderately entertaining team-up. If readers ignore the H’el on Earth portions of this book, it is just mediocre; if they read the entire volume, it is noticeably troubled.
(spoilers start here)
Sanctuary opens with a thrilling and exciting first chapter. Supergirl is forced to face off against one of her old enemies, who, thus far, has been the most developed villain throughout this entire series. Their fight has some weight to it and his increased powers make him a significant threat, creating some excitement that lasts throughout their encounter.
Then, things take a dramatic turn for the worse as the H’el on Earth (Review) crossover event begins. This crossover disrupts the flow of the series by shifting it from one of its only good villains to an entirely new story arc. It is also a lackluster event as a whole that treats Supergirl terribly. In this event, Supergirl plays out one of the most troubling and generic takes on a female protagonist: she falls in love with the villain, helps him execute his evil plan, and only experiences a change of heart at the very end. It is a bad event but a particularly bad event for Supergirl as a character.
In addition, the H’el on Earth crossover is collected poorly within this volume. Only the Supergirl issues are collected here despite the fact that large chunks of action happen in between issues of Supergirl. These collected issues only barely explain what happened in these missing chunks and also cut the ending out entirely. Readers only reading this volume and not the entire event will be frustrated all the way through.
Finally, Sanctuary closes with a team-up between Supergirl and her Earth 2 counterpart, Power Girl. This team-up is somewhat enjoyable and has a few compelling moments within it. The interactions between these characters are fun to see and their interactions with Supergirl’s sanctuary’s AI are even more fun to see. These chapters are still not the best but are some of the highpoints for this collection.
(spoilers end here)
Art
The visuals in Sanctuary feel similar to the visuals in Vol. 2: Girl in the World (Review) in that they land somewhere between good and bad. The opening and closing chapters, featuring art from Mahmud Asrar look appealing on some pages but also contain some problems. These chapters generally work well in making the action look exciting. However, they also contain places where characters look strange. Luckily, a chapter from Robson Rocha serves as the artistic highpoint for the volume. The full page spreads in this chapter look great and contain plenty of imagination, leaving me wishing the entire volume contained more art like this. Overall though, the visuals here are pretty average and do not disappoint much but also do not impress much.
Continuity
Supergirl Vol. 3: Sanctuary continues the story from Supergirl Vol. 2: Girl in the World (Review).
The story here continues in Supergirl Vol. 4: Out of the Past (Review).
This volume also references other comic books, detailed below:
- Supergirl #14-17 are a part of the Superman: H’el on Earth (Review) event and heavily reference what is happening in other issues from this event. See our H’el on Earth Reading Order for more details about how this event is structured.
- The bottle city of Kandor’s history was briefly shown back in Action Comics #3, collected in Action Comics Vol. 1: Superman and the Men of Steel.
- Supergirl #18 references an encounter with Superboy (Reading Order) from Superboy #3, collected in Superboy Vol. 1: Incubation (Review).
- Supergirl #18-20 references Power Girl’s New 52 history. This history is mostly explained across Worlds’ Finest Vol. 1: Lost Daughters of Earth 2 (Review).