

The New DC Universe continues to roll on, and today, the Source provided us with a look at another upcoming title: World's Finest, which features a cover by the legendary George Perez. Set to be released in May as part of the "Second Wave" of DC's rebooted titles, the story arc by Perez, Paul Levitz and Kevin Maguire is focused on two characters from the alternate world of Earth-2 trying to make their way back home.

But more importantly than that, it's got a new costume for Power Girl, replacing her classic "cleavage window" suit. Truly, it is of dire importance.Power Girl is, of course, most closely identified with the original costume from her first appearance back in 1976 in a story by Gerry Conway, Ric Estrada and Wally Wood. Despite essentially being Earth-2's version of Supergirl, they opted not to go with a varation on the "S" logo, giving Power Girl her own distinctive look in the form of a plain white suit accented by a cutout:



Over the years, this design choice has become both beloved and be-hated by fans and creators, often being criticized as emblematic (or lack-of-emblematic, I suppose) of the trend in designing heroines purely around sex appeal. Dresden Codak artist Aaron Diaz, who tried his hand at redesigning Power Girl with his take on the Justice League, even theorized that fighting crime and flying around with a giant hole in your costume is even less practical than dressing up as a Dracula and trying to drive a giant bat-shaped car through a fictional New York City:

But despite the costume's prominence, this isn't the first time that Power Girl's gotten a new look. Heck, she went through two costume changes in the pages of Justice League Europe alone:





But for whatever reason, they didn't stick around -- probably because they were from a time when Power Girl herself was going through a series of weird versions that briefly saw her retconned into being the time-lost daughter of an Atlantean wizard that was invulnerable to anything except "natural, unprocessed materials," meaning that sticks and stones could quite literally break her bones.

It's also worth noting that both of those costumes were pretty generic, especially the white-and-gold one. Say what you want about the cleavage window, but at least it's a fairly distinctive design element, which is why it was revived for the toothpaste-mascot lookin' one on the right.

In the end, she went back to the original suit, after some tweaks from the phenomenal Amanda Conner that saw more detailed seams (since everyone loves those these days) and the big medallion becoming more of a pauldron:



But with the relaunch and the trend in redesigning characters to fit the new aesthetic of the DCU in the early '90s year 2012, that brings us to the All-New Power Girl:



As for my reaction, well, I'm not crazy about it, and I'll admit that as impractical as it may be, I'm a pretty big fan of the classic suit, particularly Conner's version.

I don't dislike the new costume - the logo is actually a pretty nice touch - but I do think it's interesting that it's extremely reminiscent of Supreme, the Superman analogue created by Rob Liefeld that Alan Moore scripted for a few years:

But that said, I'm wiling to roll with it until the inevitable return of the old suit. If nothing else, having Power Girl in this means that there's a good chance that in the New DC Universe, she never had to have a tortured sobbing monologue about how her cleavage was sadness.



And the further we get away from that, the better.