Nowadays there is a lot of pressure to come up with a female superhero that walks the fine line between being sexy and a role model. Many comics try and fail. The Pro is a comic book that doesn’t even attempt to be politically correct with its heroine; in fact, it portrays the exact opposite with a smile.
The female protagonist is just barely that. She is a prostitute with a baby who received her powers from an alien voyeur. And if you think she cleans up her act after she receives her powers, you’ve obviously never read a Garth Ennis comic. When a group of superheroes invite her to join their Justice League, they are dismayed by her low-brow, who-gives-a-crap attitude. All the superhero conventions and mannerisms are ignored by The Pro, conventions like not killing criminals and not urinating on the villains.
Why do I get the feeling this is Ennis' version of Power Girl?
There are several moments where The Pro is given an opportunity to redeem herself and reform her ways. Yet she maintains her crass nature throughout the series. As a matter of fact, her habits begin to slightly rub off on other superheroes. At one point, she gives one of them a blow-job which almost ends up killing a bunch of civilians. There is a climax where The Pro finally does something heroic by sacrificing herself before others, but even then she does so with a grimace and a cigarette.
In case you haven’t guessed by now, The Pro is extremely crude. Nudity and gore are present, but what makes the comic so much more vulgar is the satire of the superhero convention. There are flat-out rips on Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman & Robin, and Green Lantern. The humor ranges from the sexual ambiguity of the sidekick relationship, to the disabling of Green Lantern by simply cutting off his finger. Not to mention watching Pro use her special powers for prostitution and street hustling is so over-the-top it’s hilarious.
The most violent nut-shot in comic book history.
While I had a great chuckle reading The Pro, it’s not perfect. There is a section in the middle where the dialogue wanders for awhile with no real action. Also, it would’ve been nice if Pro actually had a friend instead of being a crude slut in a politically correct world. Although there is a side-story where she meets a whore with many arms, allowing her to give multiple hand-jobs, it would’ve been nice if it had been incorporated into the main plot.
What makes The Pro work so well is that it is self-aware. Ennis realizes that his protagonist is a filthy, crude slut and that her world is extremely exaggerated. That is what makes it so much fun to read. While it’s a relatively short and closed story, it’s engaging enough where it could almost warrant a longer run. Though it might have gotten old after awhile, I’m curious to see how it would’ve played out. Perhaps she’d be taken in by a super pimp.
