Not sure when issue 3 came out but I finally hit the LCS yesterday.
It's another solid issue of course; I'm well beyond expecting anything less from this creative team.
Cyborg has a nice role in the first scene, though his appearance has nothing to do with Naomi or Dee or earth-N or any of that. He just happens to be coming out of the same portal Naomi is investigating. Which....it's STAR Labs so okay, it makes *some* sense I guess...but him messing with dimensional portals, and *this* portal, while Naomi is on a totally unrelated mission, seemed to stretch credulity. For me, anyway. But I'll happily forgive it as I love Cyborg and am glad Walker got the chance to write him again. Aside from the sheer randomness of Vic's arrival, everything here was spot on excellent.
It's a fun moment and we get a few more clues about Naomi's power and their limits. She takes down a big tentacle Lovecraftian thing with a single, very impressive punch, and we find out she has a healing factor. I think it's the first time we see her get injured, and her armor/costume regenerates itself as well, though healing apparently hurts. Back in her appearance in Action Comics we learned that she's an energy generator and her power source is internal (as opposed to someone like Hal or Barry) but it's mentioned here as well, for those who missed Action.
I'm also noticing that care is still being taken to highlight Naomi's lack of experience even as they give her feats worth bragging about. We got that montage page of her beating up a bunch of villains last issue, some of them pretty impressive. But we've also seen that, as soon as things go beyond punching, she's out of her depth. And I appreciate that; Bendis and Walker are doing a fine job of showing the learning curve here. She's got plenty of raw power, but she's still just a high schooler and her knowledge base is very limited. It works, and it prevents her from being *too* capable and powerful. In fact, the entire mission to find Dee pretty much falls apart, her leads dry up, and she's forced to go home empty handed in defeat.
Hawkgirl meets Naomi's adopted parents and things with Greg go about as well as expected. The family drama definitely isn't over as he and Naomi have another argument but the subplot still feels like it's moving, which is all I'm asking for. Hawkgirl's appearance didn't impress me as much as last issue's; y'know how, when Bendis is writing a character he doesn't really have a handle on he'll resort to standard "Bendis-ism" dialogue? It happens here; Kendra doesn't really sound entirely like herself (though she seemed largely fine last issue) but the dynamics are all still spot-on even if the words aren't. After last issue I said I wanted Bendis to write a Hawkworld series but now I'm wondering if that'd be the best idea. But despite the words not feeling quite in-character I'm still relatively satisfied.
Naomi is apparently trying to go to school like a normie, but without the secret identity. We get to spend some pages with her friends and I'm glad they weren't forgotten in the face of all the superheroics. There's a conversation about whether Naomi will take up a codename, and how she's still weighing the pro's and con's of that, which reminded me of conversations we've had here about it, and I thought it was a nice touch with just enough meta-commentary to be fun.
And then, for the final page twist....Dee returns! Poor bastard, he's in rough shape.