Review: Power Princess

I’ve never really done a review before, other than my Halloween movie posts, which don’t really count, but I felt like this might be a good place to start. If you follow the Babes in Diapers blog (and if you don’t, you should), you’ve probably heard about his new comic, Power Princess, just released this week.

To start, I should probably mention that I like comics – I’ve even written some pitches for series for a fairly major comic company, though I never heard anything back – so I’m already somewhat biased towards this, especially since it features a more traditional comic-y story, with superheroes, sidekicks, villains, and the whole nine yards. 

This allows for a lot more story than Prisoner of the Mechanical Nursery (though the fact that it is more than twice the length doesn’t hurt, either) because it opens up the world more. Don’t get me wrong, I love the idea of a mechanical nursery, but there are only so many stories you can tell with that set-up, whereas the fact that there are still fresh superhero comics being put out decades after the birth of the genre shows that you can do a lot with that.

And, as shown by the preview pages on the blog post about it, it isn’t just a typical superhero setup, either. I’ve always found the idea of superheroes as celebrities an interesting one, and the story sets that up and plays with it a little. It’s also a good way to quickly establish that our heroine is a brat who deserves everything she has coming to her.

Of course, at 12 pages, you can’t pack in a ton of plot, and trying to would just make it seem rushed, but there’s enough action and twists to keep it interesting throughout. And don’t worry, there are plenty of diapers in there, too.

If you enjoyed Prisoner, I’m sure you’ll like this new comic even more. It has everything that made that comic good, other than the nursery itself, plus improved art, the same neat bonuses as Prisoner (sketches and the original script, which, to a comic fan anyway, are very interesting to look at) plus a fun pin-up. 

If you haven’t read Prisoner, or any of the other stories on the blog, which are all very good, but like my work, I would definitely still recommend it. Parker (the author) and I have a lot of the same interests when it comes to this kind of thing, so if you like what I do, I have no doubt you’ll like his work, too. Plus, if you buy this comic, you can get Prisoner for half price, though I don’t know how long that sale will be going on.

Either way, really, if you have the cash to spare and have the slightest idea you might enjoy this, you should give it a chance. If nothing else, it’s your support that allows this kind of thing to continue being made… But it’s also just a lot of fun. 

And now for something completely different…

As the title suggests, this is something a little bit different (though not the “something different” I promised a few posts ago… That’s a whole other project that I’m very slowly working on) for this site.

I suppose some background would be good. I found this years and years ago at my grandmother’s house while I was looking through some of my dad’s old comics. I’m not sure what comic this came from, or how old it is exactly… When I tried to remember it semi-recently, I always thought it was Casper in this story, which it isn’t, obviously, but looking the information for this character up online reveals that this could have been in the Casper comic, or one of four comics starring this character himself, and it seems it could have been published anywhere from 1953-1980, though I would guess somewhere in the late 60s or 70s.

Anyway, whatever comic it was in, I took it home and kept it for a while, then at some point got rid of it, but tore out these pages and kept them in a variety of hiding places, until finally finding one that even I quickly forgot about, as for quite a while now, I’d forgotten about saving them and just assumed it was gone with the rest of the comic, until tonight when I stumbled across them while looking for something else.

I’ve never seen this scanned, or even mentioned, on any AB/DL site, so I figured I might as well put it up. It may be out there somewhere – when looking for mentions of it, I usually looked under Casper, after all – but it would be pretty neat if I was the first. But enough with the explanation – here is Spooky, the Tuff Little Ghost in BOOtiful Baby!