Credits: Written by Judd Winick; art by Sami Basri; coloured by Sunny Gho and Jessica Kholinne; lettered by John J. Hill;  edited by Rachel  Gluckstern (associate) and Mike Carlin; cover by Basri and Gho.

Synopsis “I don’t know your name (but you look really familiar)”: Power Girl has traced the mysterious mastermind who has stolen her company’s assets to a hidden base in Antarctica. She was attacked by a raven-haired female kryptonian as she approached the base. The woman (we later find out she is named Divine) admits that she’s a near-clone of Power Girl (“I think my boss wanted to put his own spin on it.”) However, that’s all she is willing to admit before she attacks Power Girl. The two women brawl across the ice as Power Girl tries to get the upperhand. The fight crashes through the roof of the buried base revealing tank after tank of earlier failed clones. Their brawl is brought to a sudden halt when Maxwell Lord disables them both with red-sun radiation. He then has CRASH help Divine up and they escape before PG recovers. As she lies on the ground she sees the Kord Industries logo and her memories of the Blue Beetle and Maxwell Lord come flooding back. An explosion incinerates the lab, the tanks, and any evidence, but it isn’t strong enough to hurt the recovering Power Girl. She pulls herself out of the crater and tells Nicco that she finally knows/remembers that Max is behind everything.

Continuity: Maxwell Lord created Divine by bargaining for Captain Marvel’s arch-foe Dr Sivana’s help. His speech implies he’s after the energy processing abilities of Kryptonian cells and that Divine is just a side-product. In the normal DC Universe Power Girl is a parallel universe version of Supergirl. However, in the DC Animated Universe of Justice League Unlimited a version of Power Girl called Galatea is a clone of Supergirl created by an evil version of the Cadmus Project. Divine parallels that clone origin. PG got her first look at Max in Power Girl #15, but she didn’t recognise him. She told Batman (Dick) about that in Justice League: Generation Lost #10 and they came within a whisker of remembering Max before his post-hypnotic blocks made them forget again.

Opinion: “As much as I like a good cat fight” says Max and this is quite a good cat fight. That’s what I like about PG -  the fights aren’t watered down just because she’s a superheroine (her battles are probably rougher than most male superheroes battles). Basri’s art is great as never really descends into a the T&A route that artists of the Ed Benes school would have taken. As always I think  Sunny Glo and Jessica Kholinne’s delicate and muted colouring is a large part of the success of this book. It just doesn’t look like most of the other books out there. It has a definite tone, look, and feel that is brilliantly its own. Divine has the potential to be a very interesting character (every superhero needs their own evil clone).