The Many Faces of Supergirl - Part 3: Kara Zor-El Returns

What has gone before

In the first installment of this article series, we examined the origin, history, and death of the original Supergirl, Kara Zor-El of Krypton.  In the second installment, we explored the origin, history, and disappearance of her post-Crisis replacement, the so-called Matrix Supergirl.  That character, a shape-shifting alien from another dimension who had merged with human Linda Danvers, hung up her superhero identity at the end of her 80-issue series, and vanished from the DC Universe in 2003.  For about a year, there was no Supergirl character active in the DC pantheon.

Legion of Super-Heroes - Series 5

The Legion of Super-Heroes has been around for a long time.  First appearing in Action Comics and Adventure Comics, the team of teenage super-heroes from 1,000 years in the future made regular appearances alongside Superboy.  They had a very short-lived (four issue) series in the 1970s, which we will not count as a "series" because of its brevity. Eventually, the Legion found a permanent home in the Superboy comic, which was re-named Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes, and then, eventually, simply Legion of Super-Heroes.  This series, which eventually went past issue 300, is known as the first series.

In the 1980s, +DC Comics decided to experiment with high-quality format, direct-sales titles, and the Legion was chosen for the experiment.  The series was re-numbered to issue 1 (without a reboot of continuity, since the tendency to do that had not begun yet in comics), and this was the second series.  Then, after the Crisis on Infinite Earths, DC moved the Legion timeline five years into the future, making all the Legionnaires adults instead of teens.  The series was re-started again on number one.  This was the third series.  Eventually, a companion title, called Legionnaires, was begun, following a younger team (the older team was revealed to be clones of these younger kids).  This is not considered a "fourth" series because it happened concurrently and the stories crossed between the two series.  Finally, the third series ended, and a new version of the team, in a book simply called The Legion, was published.  This was the fourth series.

Then, in 2004, +DC Comics rebooted the Legion yet again, as part of one universe-spanning crossover or another (I have no idea which -- they all blur together in my mind at this point), once again naming the series Legion of Super-Heroes.  Written by Mark Waid and drawn by Barry Kitson (for the first 2.5 years), this version of the Legion is now available in eight trade paperbacks that encompass the eight story arcs of the entire series -- you won't miss a single issue if you buy these as trades.  This series is distinguished by having two different names.  The first two, and last two, trade paperbacks are sold under the name Legion of Super-Heroes.  The third through sixth, however, are sold under the name Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes. In this article, I will review the full series.

Story arc 1: Legion of Super-Heroes - Teenage Revolution

In the 31st Century, the galaxy has known peace. War has ended, and computers help in every aspect of our lives.  People don't meet face to face anymore, instead staying home and interacting via holograms.  Food is delivered by replicators.  Everything is safe and secure.  To many, especially adults, this condition is seen as utopia.  But to the teenagers, it is viewed as stagnation.

As the story begins, thousands of young people have gathered outside of Legion headquarters, to simply be a part of the movement.  The core members of the team are, of course, young super-heroes like Brainiac 5, Sun Boy, Light Lass, Shadow Lass, Cosmic Boy, Saturn Girl, and all your favorites from the Legion's earlier runs.  The team battles rogue "macrobots" that the Science Police have been unable to stop, stops a rebellion on Lallor, and foils an attempted assassination of U.P. diplomats.  Meanwhile, Dream Girl has a vision of someone causing death and destruction.  Brainiac 5 begins trying to find out who he is, and what he is up to.

As the story continues, the U.P. passes legislation against the Legion, and the Science Police (S.P.s) try to capture them.  After a protracted fight, the U.P., unable to defeat the Legionnaires, agrees to a truce.  While this is happening, Lightning Lad takes a contingent to Rimworld 19, to defend them against an attack.  They end up battling a group with Legion-like powers called Terror Firma.  After fighting the Legion to a standstill, Terror Firma returns to a secret base, where their mysterious leader prepares them for the coming war.  Following this, Princess Projectra's world of Orando is destroyed by Terror Firma, throwing the U.P. into financial chaos.

As the story arc ends, the mystery man shows up to gloat before Brainiac 5.  He explains to Brainy that he is Praetor Lemnos, and his power is to delete evidence (and memory) of his existence from anyone and anything (people's minds, computer chips, etc).  He does what he wants and then erases evidence he was ever there, making it impossible for anyone to catch him.  He wants to end the time of peace, because he, like the teens, believes it leads to stagnation. However, unlike the Legion, he's willing to destroy worlds and slaughter billions to do it.  He leaves Brainiac at the end with no memory of the encounter, implying that he will have a free run of the galaxy in the future.

Story arc 2: Legion of Super-Heroes - Death of a Dream

The second story arc continues the struggle between Lemnos and the Legion (even though they don't quite know they are fighting him).  Brainiac managed to leave himself a message within some computer code that Lemnos didn't know to erase, enough to tell the Legion that Colu (Brainy's homeworld) is next on the list. Unfortunately, by the time they get to Colu, a virus has already damaged the high-level intellect of the population.  Light Lass uses her powers to trick Lemnos into appearing after Cham's sense of smell detects him, and now the Legion knows their enemy.

In the mean time, Cosmic Boy uses Brainy's absence to sneak into his lab and find out what the "twelfth level intellect" is up to. This leads to a massive rupture, with half the team siding with Cos, and half with Brainy.  The battle is aborted by word that Cosmic Boy's world is seceding from the U.P. and sealing itself off, and he has been summoned home. Cosmic Boy departs for home while Brainy leads the Legion to the planet Helegun. There they are attacked once more by Terror Firma and the fight goes badly. Seeing this on a monitor at the trans-station, Cosmic Boy returns to the Legion to help out.  In the end, Cos and Brainy decide to work together against Terror Firma and Lemnos.

As the Legion regroups, Lemnos orders a final attack. Bombs go off both outside and inside Legion H.Q.  The building is destroyed, and collapses, harming many and killing Dream Girl. Brainy refuses to accept her death, and traps her in a force field to prevent her soul from escaping her body, with the plan of eventually, somehow, bringing her back to life.  Meanwhile, Phantom Girl leads a strike team to Lemnos' base, where they prepare to attack his invasion army. Praetor Lemnos' forces are defeated, and Lemnos captured, thereby ending the threat of galactic war.

Story arc 3: Supergirl/Legion - Strange Visitor

The Legion of Super-Heroes, recently endorsed by Earthgov and the United Planets, has been alerted to a powerful missile-like object heading toward earth.  The entire Legion tries to stop it, but only succeeds in slowing it down.  Then, zooming in to save the day, Supergirl appears.  She smashes the missile, saving 31st-century Metropolis, and the Legionnaires, being big fans of the heroes in our time, immediately recognize her. Supergirl thinks she's dreaming the whole thing, and the Legionnaires are not entirely sure she's who she says she is.  But eventually she asks to become a member of the Legion, and they accept her.

Story arc 4: Supergirl/Legion - Adult education

Supergirl remains in the 31st century, working with the Legion while at the same time causing them concern, because she continues to believe that she is dreaming everything, including them.  As the Legion continues to face an increasing threat from a mysterious group that seems almost like a mirror version of themselves, several of the members finally take Supergirl to the re-enlarged city of Kandor, which is now on a planet with a red sun.  They finally convince her that the events around her are real, and not a dream, and the Kandorians attempt to keep her there permanently.  However, Cosmic Boy invites her back to the Legion, and she re-joins them.  Together with the Legion, she continues to battle against their counter-parts, who we learn are called "the Wanderers."  The leader turns out to be Lightning Lad's brother, Mekt (who in previous incarnations of LSH used to be called "Lightning Lord").  Meanwhile, Braniac 5 frees Mon-El from the Phantom Zone, which has all been part of Mekt's plan.  Mekt then reveals that the Dominators, an alien race who have threatened earth before (in the 20th century), are out to do so again, and he's trying to stop it.

Story arc 5: Supergirl/Legion - Dominator War

In the third of Supergirl's four story arcs with the Legion, all-out war breaks out between Earth and the Dominators.  Mekt Ranzz, leader of the Wanderers, claims that there is going to be an "A.I." attack in Tokyo, and Supergirl, Ultra Boy, and others are sent to investigate.  A giant robot emerges, which proves to be easily defeated. However, upon destruction, it spews out a massive cloud of nano-particles that contain an A.I. virus. In short order, the entire planet Earth has lost all A.I. and computer power, as the virus takes hold.  Other planets seal off the Earth, refusing to accept transmatter portals for fear of infection by the A.I. virus.  The Dominators invade earth, scattering the Legion and the Wanderers and taking control.  However, the captured Cosmic Boy and Triplicate Girl trick the Dominators into opening a transmatter portal to their homeworld just long enough for Supergirl, Mon-El, and Ultra Boy to fly there and start an attack.  The Legion defeats the Dominators on their world, and Mon-El uses a special device created by Brainy to suck the entire Dominator homeworld into the Phantom Zone (re-trapping himself in the process).  As the clean-up begins, Supergirl finally starts searching for a way to return to her own time. At the same time, Cosmic Boy is visited by people from 1,000 years in his future (the 41st century) who take him forward in time to help them.

Story arc 6: Supergirl/Legion - Quest for Cosmic Boy

Suprgirl's final story arc in the 31st century starts with a bang, as she is elected leader of the Legion and sends three teams in search of the missing Cosmic Boy.  Unfortunately, after about the first 10 pages, we hardly see her again until the end of the arc. It's fairly clear that Tony Bedard, the new writer, had no interest in retaining Supergirl as a major Legion character, and she's not the only Leggionaire to suffer from his neglect in this arc.  Many other important team members are nowhere to be seen in this arc, including Dream Boy, Triplicate Girl, Ultra Boy, Phantom Girl, Light Lass, Element Lad, Karate Kid, Cham, and Colossal Boy. Bedard clearly has favorites, such as Timber Wolf and Atom Girl, and focuses large hunks of the narrative on them.

Bedard also seems to have decided he didn't like Mark Waid's direction in the earlier arcs, and by the end, Brainy's machinations, rather than leading to the discovery of Cosmic Boy, lead to the undoing of almost every major plot consequence of Waid's preceding 30-issue run.  Supergirl is returned to her own time.  Cosmic Boy's name is cleared from the "destruction" of the Dominators.  Mekt Ranzz and the Wanderers are removed as Legion allies.  And the Legion, by befriending prosecutor Tenzil Kem (Matter-Eater Lad), end up on the "good side" of the U.P.  Whether Bedard did this because he disliked Waid's direction on the series, or was ordered to do so by editors who felt that way, the effect was the same. In one fell swoop Bedard erased Waid's entire run on Legion up to that point, and booted Supergirl out of top billing and off the team.  As an added bonus, he erased her memory of her entire time with the Legion, and did not bother to explain how she had gotten to the 31st Century in the first place.

As a Legion story arc, this is the worst of volume 5.  As a Supergirl story arc, it's not even worth buying.  Nothing will be explained to you about her presence in the 31st Century; her return home is abrupt, contrived, and clearly done just to get rid of her; and you hardly see Supergirl after the first issue.  The irony is that, after achieving his goal of wiping out as much of Waid's run as possible, Bedard was booted from the series himself.

Story arc 7: Legion of Super-Heroes - Enemy Rising

Jim Shooter, who wrote for the Legion decades ago, returns for two story arcs.  The story arc begins with Phantom Girl, Karate Kid, and Triplicate Girl battling space monsters at a mining outpost in the solar system's Oort cloud.  A second team is sent to Triton, where the same monsters soon attack. Meanwhile, back at Legion H.Q., Lightning Lad argues with politicians and deals with the fact that the Legion's budget has been frozen. Elsewhere, Projectra battles to regain her royalty status, which the U.P. has revoked because the planet over which she was a ruler no longer exists (from back in story arc 1), and Colossal Boy's team in Beijing tangles with and defeats some ruffians from the lower levels of the city.

Finally, the teams all return to Legion H.Q. There, they learn that despite all the alien attacks, only one specimen was captured -- all the rest have self-destructed.  And that one specimen is held by the S.P.s, who refuse to allow Brainy access. Meanwhile, Projectra leaves the court, where she is accosted by tourists, and loses it, attacking them.  Saturn Girl appears before too much damage is done, and manages to calm Projectra down and smooth things over.  While this happens, the Legion sends Invisible Kid into the examination room to spy on the autopsy of the alien, which wakes up and tries to kill everyone.  The Kid takes him down, but is then arrested for spying.  Before the Legion can figure out how to free him, Ultra Boy's world of Rimbor is attacked by the aliens.

On Rimbor, Ultra Boy's team battles the aliens, ultimately defeating them.  As they do this, on Earth, Brainiac and Lightning Lad are tricked by a U.P. official into sending more Legionnaires away, leaving the S.P.s an easy task of serving the Legion with warrants.  Things then go from bad to worse as the S.P.s on Rimbor attack the Legion and try to arrest them, the other team gets captured by pirates, and the Legionnaires at H.Q. are threatened with arrest.  Finally, however, a new Leggionaire named M'rissey solves most of the trouble by engaging a PR firm and lawyers to sue the U.P.  The S.P.s are forced to back off, giving the Legion back their independent status. As this happens, Invisible Kid saves the remaining Legionnaires from the pirates, and everyone transmatters home.

Story arc 8: Legion of Super-Heroes - Enemy Manifest

Jim Shooter remains as the writer of this, the final story arc of the fifth Legion series.  The arc begins with an alert from Earthgov.  A large planet has materialized in the solar system and its gravitational pull is threatening to destroy the orbits of many planets, including earth.  Brainiac 5 is dispatched to assist, along with the two gravity-powered Legionnaires, Light Lass and Star Boy.  Brainiac uses an amplifier to channel the powers of these two characters, and he traps the planet in a gravity well, thereby protecting the solar system.  From there, Earthgov tries to make diplomatic contact, while Brainy starts trying to figure out how to get through the planet's shield.

Meanwhile, the Legionnaires spend their time recovering from their previous missions, healing up, and interacting with each other.  Invisible Kid walks in on Saturn Girl and Ultra Boy about to have a fling.  Projectra and Phantom Girl read old earth comic-books.  And Brainiac 5 tries to find a way to have a more "meaningful" relationship with the spirit of Dream Girl that seemingly lives inside his unconscious mind.  Indeed, Projectra ends up using some Orandian survivors to attack Dream Girl's spirit, and partially succeeds, destroying her precognitive abilities.  Projectra's reason for doing so is that she plans to attack the Legion to get revenge om them for not protecting Orando, and she doesn't want Dream Girl to warn Brainiac.

As the story nears its climax, delegates from the intruder planet arrive, and point an energy capturing device at many items.  Brainiac scans what they are doing, and finally figures out that the alien enemies actually are virtual-space beings for whom the universe is their computer, and what we see in the universe is just their avatars (essentially reversing the normal situation where a human plays a computer game and the avatar is inside the computer).  This means the Legion will have to find some way to attack them in virtual space.  Unvortunately, the intruder delegates "download" the U.P. secretary of state (which kills her).  Meanwhile, the legion adds several members to its reserve roster, and Projectra is nowhere to be found.

In the end Brainiac 5 discovers a way to have a small team of Legionnaires enter the virtual space of the invaders.  Unprepared for an attack on their own soil, the battle goes badly for them. Then Brainy uses a lock-on to the Invisible Kid to gain control of the entire virtual world, and uses his control to delete the enemy invasion and save the universe.  At the end, he uses the aliens' "copying" device to make Dream Girl a new body, and uploads his memory of her back into it, which essentially resurrects her.  Here, the series ends.

Reflections on Legion series 5

The fifth Legion series, which lasted for about four years, spanning eight story arcs that lasted 50 issues, had three different authors, who set three different tones.

Waid/Kitson - The series began extremely well, with the first 30 issues being written by Mark Waid, drawn by Barry Kitson, and (by Waid's own admission) co-plotted by the two of them.  The characterization was strong, and given the size of the team, Waid and Kitson did a remarkable job of making everyone count.  Perhaps most significantly, these two creators realized that with a huge team, all action all the time would not work, because the characters needed time to develop. Thus, each character had some down time on stage. We see Phantom Girl romancing Karate Kid but being distracted by her own dimension. We see Triplicate Girl dating three male Legionnaires at once.  We watch Projectra go from a spoiled princess to a lost girl mourning her planet and her family. Throughout these first 30 issues, Waid and Kitson establish the humanity of the Legionnaires, while at the same time telling exciting, action-packed stories on a galactic scale.  The whole time I was reading the Waid/Kitson trades, I kept thinking to myself, "This is what the Legion should be."

Tony Bedard - The sixth story arc was written by Tony Bedard, and was the worst of all eight arcs.  Bedard only lasted 6 issues on this title, and it's really no surprise.  Rather than continue with Waid's brilliant stories, Bedard spent his entire 6-issue run doing his damnedest to erase everything Waid had developed. Additionally, he did hardly anything to develop the back-stories of the Legionnaires, with the exception of the Ranzz siblings, and even then, his main focus was Mekt, who is not even a Legion member. He made Supergirl the team leader and then promptly wrote her out of the entire arc, until the final "Epilogue" issue, in which he sent her back home and wiped her memory.  But perhaps Bedard's worst offense of all, was that he flat-out ignored half of the Legion for six issues. Nowhere in his entire arc do Colossal Boy, Phantom Girl, Karate Kid, or Triplicate Girl appear.  Ultra Boy is seen in one panel.  Princess Projectra is completely ignored.  Instead, we get page after page of Mekt Ranzz and Tenzil Kem, neither of whom is even in the Legion.

Jim Shooter - The final year or so of this series was written by Jim Shooter, who at least did a better job with characterization then Bedard, and used more of the characters than Bedard did.  Interestingly, the very first scene of Shooter's run focused on Karate Kid, Phantom Girl, and Triplicate Girl -- three characters who had been very noticeably ignored by Bedard for 6 months.  However, although Shooter used more of the Legionnaires in each story arc than Bedard used, he was not able to achieve the delicate balance of Waid/Kitson, who consistently managed to give an equal amount of spotlight to all 20 or so Legion members.  Like Bedard, Shooter did not bother to explore the back-story of the Legion characters, although unlike Bedard, he did delve deeply into the interpersonal relationships of at least some Legionnaires.  Shooter's also a good deal funnier than the other writers, at least in his first arc, and his levity can be quite enjoyable.  At the very least, it helps make the characters likable.  However, he fails to use the Legion to its full potential the way Waid and Kitson did.

And so, the fifth Legion series, which had such high sustained quality for over two years, fizzled out by the end. After reading the first couple of trades by Waid and Kitson, I found myself wondering why on earth this series would ever have been canceled -- it was so good.  But having gone through the last three story arcs, I can absolutely see why the plug was pulled, and the reins turned back over to Paul Levitz.  I haven't read either of the next two series, so I don't know how they are, but if Levtiz is anything like his old self, they can't help but be better than the mediocrity turned out by Shooter, or the absolute sewage produced by Tony Bedard.

And so, the fifth Legion series drew to a sad close, and DC had no choice but to re-launch this storied but often editorially challenged super-hero team yet again. And not for the last time.

New Comic-book Night - 4/10/13

It's New Comic-book Night once again... and this week, I finally have a new comic to actually buy (most of the comics I buy are digital, so I don't need to buy them on "the night" or go to the comic shop).  Actually, I had expected two comics tonight -- Batgirl 19 and Katana 3, but for some reason, Katana was not published this week.  Either it was delayed, or the poor thing has been canceled already (not an unprecedented move for +DC Comics these days).  On the other hand, I saw a solicit for Katana 6, so my guess is, there was just some sort of delay, or perhaps +DC Comics decided to change the publication week to match JLA and the other JLA-based books like Vibe.

In any case, that means the only new book for me to get on NCN this week was Batgirl.  I haven't read it yet, but I'm already ecstatic, because Gail Simone is back!  This means Batgirl will probably return to the top of my favorite comics list, since it has suffered badly in the 2 months Gail was gone.  Note to DC: Gail Simone is Batgirl. Do not take her off this book, ever again.  If I were running things, whoever fired Gail would have been fired instead.

Along with Batgirl 19, I also picked up two more trade paperbacks involving Supergirl's 3rd incarnation (the second version of Kara Zor-El) -- Supergirl and The Legion of Superheroes.  The two TPBs the comic shop had were "Adult Education" (the second of four trades starring the Girl of Steel in the 31st century) and "Dominator War."

One TPB remains ("Quest for Cosmic Boy") but my comic shop did not have it, so that will have to be ordered at some point.  Following this, there are two more TPBs of this version of the Legion, which I will also have to order, since the comic shop has very little "Legionalia."

What I really wanted to pick up tonight was Supergirl: Identity, which is the third TPB in the third Supergirl series.  Unfortunately, that seems to have sold out not only of my comic shop (and it was there three weeks ago -- ARGH!), but also of everywhere else for some reason.  I'm not sure why there is suddenly a "run" on that particular TPB, but I may have to wait a while before I can continue collecting that series -- or else try to buy the individual comics, which are issues 10-19 of that series.  It's an option (they are not that expensive), but I'm really trying to stick with TPBs this time around (I would have for the Peter David series but there really aren't any TPB versions of that one).

Well, that's it for NCN this week. Next week there should be three or four new titles to pick up (JLA, JL, Supergirl, and possibly Katana).

The Many Faces of Supergirl - Part 1: The Original

Preface

Ever since I read about her exploits in the early 1980s version of the Legion of Super-Heroes, starting with her pivotal role defeating Darkseid in the "Great Darkness Saga" (LSH #294), I have been a fan of Superman's super-powered Kryptonian cousin, Supergirl.  I'm not sure exactly when she rose to the top of my list of favorite superheroes, but for many years, the original Supergirl, as she appeared in the 1970s and 1980s, has been up there, and today, she is without question my favorite character.

Since her first appearance, Supergirl has worn many costumes, and had many incarnations.  She's died and been brought back to life, and she's been "rebooted" and re-envisioned over and over again.  Over the next couple of months, I am going to write a series of articles, starting with this one, called "The Many Faces of Supergirl."  In these articles, I will review the different incarnations of Supergirl, and discuss the good and bad points of each.  I hope these articles will be informative to the reader, and that they will, perhaps, help a few comic-book fans come to appreciate this wonderful, and all-too-frequently under-appreciated, superhero.

Supergirl arrives on earth

Just about everyone knows Superman's origin.  He was born on the planet Krypton, which has a red sun and many times the gravity of Earth, to a scientist named Jor-El.  Jor-El discovers that Krypton is about to be destroyed by a cosmic event (sometimes the planet blows up, sometimes the sun and the planet -- the exact details vary with each re-telling), and he has a baby son he wants to save.  So Jor-El puts his son, Kal-El, into a rocket ship and sends him to our primitive planet.  Here, under our yellow sun and in our atmosphere, a Kryptonian such as Kal-El has astonishing powers, including super-strength, flight, invulnerability, heat vision, x-ray vision, and super-speed.  Kal-El is raised on earth by the Kents, taking the earthly name Clark Kent, but when he grows to adult-hood, he learns how to use his powers, and fights crime and protects the innocent as Superman.

That story was told in the late 1930s, and for two decades, so far as anyone knew, the one and only survivor of the planet Krypton was Kal-El... i.e., Superman.  Then in 1959, DC comics decided to add a second survivor.  In the feature story of Action Comics #252, a fifteen year old blond girl lands on earth in another rocket ship much like the one that brought Kal-El to earth, wearing a dress that looks an awful lot like Superman's costume, and having all his powers. She claims to be Kryptonian, and to be his cousin on top of that.

Supergirl's 1st appearance.

In Action Comics #252, the young woman tells her story as a flashback.  When Krypton exploded, her city, Argo City, survived intact, having been thrown out from the planet as a single chunk of rock.  The girl's father, Jor-El's brother Zor-El (also a scientist) quickly helped create a force-field around the planet to protect it.  Argo City thus survived the destruction of Krypton, and the people of Argo lived there for many years.  Zor-El and his wife Alura had a daughter, Kara, and she grew to the age of 15, never knowing any world but her home city of Argo.  Then when she was fifteen, a swarm of giant meteors destroyed the city.  To save her, Zor-El, like his brother before him, created a rocket, clothed Kara in a suit that would help Superman recognize her, and sent her to Earth to be with the only other surviving member of their race.

And so, Kara Zor-El arrived on earth at the age of fifteen, and in doing so, gained all the Kryptonian-derived powers that Superman had -- she could fly, bend steel, race airplanes through the sky, boil water with her gaze, and see through walls.  Because she was young, and he couldn't take care of a teenager, Superman placed Kara into an orphanage in the nearby town of Midvale, under the secret identity of Linda Lee.

Over the next ten years, Supergirl made many guest appearances in Action Comics.  At first, Superman employed her as a secret weapon -- the crooks might be ready for one Superman, but they had no way of knowing there were effectively two of him to fight (since she had all the powers Superman did).  Eventually, as Linda Lee, Kara was adopted by a middle-aged couple, Fred and Edna Danvers.  This couple decided to take a teenager into their home, rather than a baby, because they saw how vulnerable she was, and how much she needed a home.  Over time, Linda came to love them in return, and they helped her adjust to life on earth.  She eventually took the name Linda Danvers as her secret identity, which she kept until the day she died (see below).

Supergirl in Adventure Comics

By 1969, Supergirl had been in print for 10 years, but had not ever had her own full-length comic-book, one devoted just to her own adventures.  DC changed all that with Adventure Comics #381.  That month, and for several years following, Supergirl headlined Adventure Comics, much as Superman headlined Action Comics.  It was time for the Girl of Steel to fly solo, and she enjoyed many issues as lead character on this title.

The first full-length feature starring Supergirl

As with many comics in this time period (at the tail end of what would later be called the "Silver Age"), Supergirl's adventures in this series are not what one could describe as sophisticated.  The stories are perhaps best described by a modern reader as campy, perhaps corny or even silly.  This is not really a knock against Supergirl or her stories -- that's the way Silver Age comics were written.  Good and evil are black-and-white; the heroes always win; they usually win in a single issue; whatever the villain's plot, no innocents are usually harmed; blood, gore, death, grievous injury are never portrayed. As a typical example, in one issue of Adventure Comics, Kara, in her secret ID of Linda Danvers, signs up for a college course on Supergirl.  The class is taught in an auditorium-sized lecture hall to a packed house of students, all taking a class about their favorite local hero.

Supergirl enjoyed an impressive run in Adventure Comics, headlining the title for 43 issues (until #424).  Indeed, this run in the early 1970s would be the longest run Supergirl would have in this incarnation, and in fact the longest any version of Supergirl would have until the turn of the century.

I don't have most of those issues (just #381 and #393), so I can't really say for certain, but based on the fact that the very month after Supergirl stopped appearing in Adventure Comics, she got her own title, I suspect that this run was highly successful, and that it produced enough sales that +DC Comics must have thought Supergirl should be given her own title.  If that's what they thought, they were sadly mistaken.  It would later turn out that this 43-issue run of Adventure Comics was the only time the original Supergirl successfully headlined anything, in any medium, not just comics.

The first Supergirl series - a flop

Presumably based on the success of Adventure Comics (above), in late 1972, +DC Comics decided to give Kara Zor-El her own title, called, of course, Supergirl.  This title is now known as "volume 1" of Supergirl.

Issue #1 of Supergirl's first series

Unfortunately, the series was not very successful.    Written by Cary Bates, Supergirl (volume 1) ran for less than a year, and was canceled by issue #10.  Again, I don't have these titles (they were printed before I was old enough to read, and 10 years before I became a Supergirl fan), but the quick move to cancellation of the title was probably caused by a lack of sales.  This began an unfortunate pattern throughout the 1970s until the mid-1980s, which was that Supergirl worked great as a guest star or back-up character, could even headline something with another name (such as Adventure Comics), but DC couldn't sell products that just had her name on them.  This pattern ultimately cost Supergirl her life.

The second Supergirl series - another flop

Throughout the 1970s, Supergirl continued to appear regularly in many titles as a backup character, a guest-star, even a temporary headliner.  She would appear frequently alongside her cousin in the pages of titles like Action Comics.  She guest-starred often with the Legion of Super-Heroes.  And she appeared regularly in the title Superman Family.  As usual, Supergirl was quite popular with the fans when she appeared in these titles, and so, eventually, +DC Comics decided to give her another chance at a series.  In late 1982, almost exactly 10 years after the last time she was given a series, Supergirl again debuted in her own title, this time called The Daring New Adventures of Supergirl (aka. Supergirl volume 2).  This title was written by longtime Superman Family scribe Paul Kupperberg, and drawn by Carmine Infantino.

The first issue of Supergirl's second series

Unfortunately, the pattern I can only call, at this point, "the curse of Supergirl" once again occurred, and this series flopped. For once, I have every issue of this title, so I can venture some guesses as to why.

I collected this series as it was being published, and although it was a long time ago, I recall that my impression of it was mixed.  I never was a fan of Infantino's art, and that always harms one's enjoyment of a series.  But for me the story is always paramount, and here I had (and still have) mixed feelings about this title.  On the one hand, Paul Kupperberg's characterization of Kara is perhaps the best ever written (to this day).  He portrays her as strong, confident, reasonably cheerful, and generally well-adjusted to Earth (at the age of 19).  It is his personality of Supergirl that I fell in love with in the early 80s.  Additionally, the supporting characters (Joanie, Mrs. Berkowitz, Dr. Metzner, etc.) are excellent and given plenty of "air time" to flesh out the stories.

On the other hand, the plots of this title leave a lot to be desired. Most of the villains are, to put it bluntly, silly, and some of the things he has Supergirl do, like flying from California to Chicago in 10 seconds, are simply ridiculous -- she'd have to fly over 620,000 miles per hour in the atmosphere to get there. That's Mach 815, folks. I won't even get into the silliness of having Supergirl fly from "the center of the universe" back to Earth in 1 day (a trip that would traverse, presuming you could even find such a point in space, billions of light years, meaning that Supergirl can travel something like a trillion times the speed of light).  I doubt I did these calculations in 1982, but I do know that I thought the stories were far lower in quality than, say, the work Paul Levitz was doing over in LSH.

I really can't say, for sure, exactly what caused Supergirl volume 2 to crater, but clearly the stories and the art had something to do with it.  Unfortunately, Kupperberg was writing classic Silver Age material, stuff that would have worked just fine in the late 1960s, for a more sophisticated Bronze Age comic audience, and perhaps that is why Paul's stories couldn't get any traction.  Similarly, Infantino was part of the "old guard," and with artists like George Perez, Kieth Giffen, John Byrne, and Paul Smith coming to prominence at the same time, Infantino's flat, angular art was no longer satisfying to the fans.

I will say, the creative team certainly tried. They even gave Supergirl her first new costume in years, and had a special issue commemorating her 25th anniversary in print.  But none of these things seemed capable of boosting sales enough to keep the series going.

Supergirl's 25th anniversary

In the end,because most fans would have summed this title up by saying "the series wasn't very good," this second Supergirl series was canceled.  In addition, although fans didn't know it yet, this also put the Supergirl character on the chopping block for the next big thing from +DC Comics .  After just under two years, this second Supergirl title was once again canceled due to lack of sales, on issue #23.

Supergirl - the movie

Following the popularity of the Superman movies, +DC Comics and the Salkinds (who produced Superman I, II, and III), decided to try and capitalize on the franchise by creating a movie about Supergirl.  The movie starred a pretty young blond named Helen Slater, and included some big-name stars, such as Peter O'Toole.  Given the cast and the production team, one would expect good things from such a movie, and I went to the theater eagerly with my friend +Stuart Johnson the week it came out.  By now, after a couple of years collecting her title and reading about her in LSH, Supergirl was probably my favorite female comic-book character (although there were lots of male characters, like Batman, whom I still liked better).

Unfortunately, the Supergirl movie was a disaster.  The only two good things that can be said about it are (1) that Jerry Goldsmith's score was excellent, making the music sound enough like John Williams' Superman score to recall it, while still making it sound somehow "feminine"; and (2) that Helen Slater perfectly looked the part of Supergirl, and played her creditably well.  The rest of the movie, however, was a train wreck.  Apparently they could not get Christopher Reeve to reprise his role as Superman, so that character never appeared (except in a poster hanging on the wall of Linda's school).  Supergirl starts out in Argo City, but the nature of that city is never explained.  When she arrives on Earth, she explains to her new friends that she is Superman's cousin, but the audience is not told how Kara even knows who he is.  She magically speaks English, and knows human traditions without having to be taught.  But worse than all that, the villains and their goals are just silly.  Once again we have a plot like something out of the campy 1960s Batman TV show.

There have been a lot of superhero movies over the years, and far more of them have been bad than good.  Among this morass of creative sewage, the Supergirl movie sadly bears the distinction of being just about the absolute worst superhero film ever made.  And therefore, unsurprisingly, just like the first two comic-book series bearing her name, the Supergirl movie was a complete flop.

The death of Supergirl

Our story has now reached the middle of the 1980s, and probably the single most significant comic-book series ever printed by +DC Comics -- the Crisis on Infinite Earths.  This was a story in which DC decided to "clean up" its nearly 50-year-long continuity.  Before the Crisis series, there were "infinite" alternative realities.  Whenever a story happened that DC didn't like or wanted to "edit," they would declare it had happened on "Earth-17" or something, and wipe it out of their continuity.  But then the writers would go back and farm that content, and eventually characters started crossing over from one Earth into another, and the stories became very messy.  As part of the Crisis, the editorial decision was made to "reboot" most characters, and to kill off some of the most important characters in the DC universe.  Among the characters +DC Comics decided to execute, the most prominent, and the one they thought would most shock the readers, was Supergirl.

And so, in the now-famous (or infamous) Crisis #7, as all the supeheroes from a dozen different earths battle against the negative-energy monsters of the "anti-earth" universe -- monsters powerful enough to hurt even Kryptonians -- Supergirl meets her untimely demise.  The event was, at least, done well. Penned by Marv Wolfman and drawn by George Perez, two of DC's best creative minds at the time, Supergirl hears the Anti-Monitor, the most powerful uber-villain ever to grace the pages of any DC comic, killing Superman.  She knows if he can kill Superman, the Anti-Monitor could kill her too, but she doesn't hesitate, because, as Wolfman narrates, "Supergirl is a hero."  She flies to Superman's side and starts pounding the Jim-dandy out of the Anti-Monitor. In fact, she gets him onto the ropes, almost has him beaten. But then she turns and yells at the other heroes to get Superman out of there. And in that moment, when her back is turned, the Anti-Monitor strikes with a killing blow, and slays her.

The death of Supergirl is one of the better-done death scenes in the history of comics.  Her death is meaningful and heroic, rather than simply tragic.  She dies as she lived -- a hero, a young woman who sacrificed her own safety time and time again to help others, usually people she didn't even know, from a planet that was utterly alien to her.  Make no mistake about it -- I hated that they killed her off.  But I've never been able to find any fault with how they did it.  Supergirl's death scene was worthy of her in a way few comic-book death scenes are (sadly, they are usually blatant sales ploys).  And so after 26 years and hundreds of stories, including two short-lived comic series and a movie, the tale of Kara Zor-El, the original Supergirl, came to an end.

Why Supergirl was killed

At this point in the story, we have come to the end of the first chapter of the Supergirl saga.  This character, the original Supergirl, Kara Zor-El of Argo City, daughter of Zor-El and Alura, niece of Jor-El, cousin of Kal-El/Superman, who first appeared in Action Comics #252, made her final appearance in Crisis #7.  Before concluding, it's valuable to ask ourselves just exactly why she was killed. What made the creative team on Crisis decide to kill her off, and why did the editorial staff at +DC Comics agree to it?

There are really two factors that contributed to the death of Supergirl: all the flops with her name on them, and her Kryptonian origins.   Of these two, I maintain that it was the repeated nose-dives taken by anything with Kara's name on it that really did her in.  If she'd been a popular character who out-sold Superman and Batman combined, +DC Comics would have kept her around. But because her titles (and even movie) always flopped, that lack of success made her vulnerable to the second (much more arbitrary) argument about her Kryptonian heritage.  Let's look at these two arguments separately.

As we've seen above, since 1972, anything with the name "Supergirl" in the title turned out to be a lead balloon in terms of sales.  The original Supergirl series sold so poorly that they canceled it after 10 issues, and never let her headline anything again for nearly 10 years.  Then, when DC gave her a second chance, the second Supergirl series flopped in just a few months longer (after 23 issues).  Kara now had two strikes against her. The third strike came the same year in which her second title was canceled, in the form of the Supergirl movie.  Here was a title created by the same people who made block-buster successes out of Superman, and they couldn't give away tickets to Supergirl.  Two comic series and a movie with Supergirl's name on them, and three straight bombs. The conclusion DC comics reached seems to have been that Supergirl isn't very well liked by the fans. After all, if people liked her, these things would have sold.

The flops, and the conclusion that Supergirl was unpopular, left her vulnerable a few months later when Marv Wolfman suggested killing her off.  Surely the editors at DC must have said to each other, "Well, she's not that popular anyway, since anything with her name on it bombs, so it's probably safe to kill her off." Indeed, I bet DC thought they had in her the perfect kill-off character -- one so "big" and important to the DC Universe that no fan would ever believe they could kill her, yet unpopular enough that they didn't have to worry about a huge fan backlash when she died.

But there was also another reason -- the very aspects that gave her powers, that made Kara into Supergirl, had become a problem for DC.  The editorial thinking at the time had shifted.  Rather than having a Superman "family" (Supergirl, Superboy, Superman, Krypto the Wonder Dog, and so forth), DC decided that Superman must be the one and only survivor, the true last son of Krypton (and no last daughters). DC often stated that Superman was the "most powerful" of all heroes in the DC Universe, but this was not true after 1959, because Supergirl was identical to him in power in every single way.  Superman and Supergirl were tied as equally powerful, and DC didn't want that status to continue.  There was no (believable) way for them to make her weaker than Superman, so they needed to get rid of her -- to erase her from the universe.

The Crisis proved to be the perfect venue at the perfect time.  DC wanted Superman to be the last and only survivor of Krypton, so they needed to get rid of Supergirl.  The Crisis writer wanted to kill her off. And as an added bonus, the conclusion of the Crisis was a time-traveling event that ended up rebooting the entire continuity, and letting DC re-tell every single origin.  Not only did Supergirl die in the Crisis, but by the time it was over, in the DC universe, she had never existed.

DC must have thought this was the perfect solution. They killed off an important but (as far as they knew) unpopular character, one that had been troublesome for their continuity for years, and then erased her from the continuity, and made the (at the time "permanent") editorial decision that there would never, ever, be any other survivors of Krypton besides Superman. Thus, not only was she gone, but she would never be brought back to the DC Universe.

Aftermath and reader backlash

DC's "perfect solution" turned out not to be so perfect, however.  In a turn of events that completely shocked +DC Comics and caused a backlash that went on for almost 20 years, of all the characters DC killed or erased during their Crisis event, the one who received the largest groundswell of support and the loudest protest of anger was the one DC had thought was the most unpopular: Supergirl.  To be sure, lots of people were unhappy with the death of Barry Allen, and his replacement as the Flash by Wally West.  And plenty of folks were displeased with the disappearance of whole alternate realities from the DC continuity.  But the backlash against all these things paled in comparison to the vitriolic response to not just the death of Supergirl, but her complete and (at the time) permanent erasure from the continuity.  From almost the moment Crisis #7 was published, and for two decades thereafter, DC kept hearing from a large, determined group of fans in letters, at conventions, and eventually by e-mail: Bring back Kara.

To say that this backlash surprised the editors at DC is probably a wild understatement.  I'm guessing they were flabbergasted.  Surely they looked at each other in confusion and said, "Where were all these Supergirl fans when her comics were being published? Where were they when the movie came out?"  Unfortunately, DC had made the understandable, but gargantuan, mistake of equating the sales of products titled "Supergirl" with the popularity of the character.  It's a reasonable conclusion to draw -- that her books and movie tanked because people didn't like her.  After all, the constant among all of them is the character - Supergirl.

What DC missed, however, was the other constant -- that the quality of the products they were putting out under Supergirl's name was inferior.  The Supergirl comics were below average compared to other titles being published at the time (see, for comparison, Supergirl vol, 2, no. 1-5, and LSH #290-294, which were published more or less concurrently).  Similarly, by any standard, the Supergirl movie was vastly inferior to the first two Superman movies, and somewhat inferior to the third.  Thus, the one constant that was driving all things Supergirl to flop wasn't Kara -- it was the fact that the products weren't any good. (And I say this as one of the character Supergirl's biggest fans).  I mean think about it. I adored Supergirl (and I had the hots for Helen Slater on top of it) , and I could barely bring myself to sit in the theater for the entire movie.

In the end, it was DC's abuse of Supergirl that finally did her in.  By slapping her name on garbage and seeing that it didn't sell, DC got the mistaken impression that Supergirl didn't have very many fans, that it would be relatively "safe" to kill her off. Oh, sure, they knew some fans would get angry and complain. But they had no idea of the scale with which the backlash would occur. When it did, they were caught rather flat-footed.

And so the cry went up: "Bring back Kara!"  Every week, in their letter office. Every time they went to comic conventions. Every time the fans had any chance to say it, they said it loudly and clearly. We loved Supergirl, and we wanted her back.

For several years, DC resisted. Then, finally, in the 1990s, they tried to have their cake and eat it too. The strangest and most convoluted chapter of the Supergirl story was about to begin.

Next Article - Part 2  >>