Sometimes you wish the nightmare really was just that and not reality.
What They Say:
As a part of the acclaimed DC Comics – The New 52 event of September 2011, meet Supergirl. She’s got the unpredictable behavior of a teenager, the same powers as Superman – and none of his affection for the people of Earth. Crash landing on a strange new planet, Supergirl must come to grips with Krypton’s destruction with her cousin Superman and learn about her own recent past. But an ingenious new foe wants that same information – and will do anything to get it.
The Review:
With the breadth of characters that exist in the DC Universe, the one that has seemed like they’ve gotten the short end of the stick more than most is Supergirl. After her powerful moments way, way back in the Crisis on Infinite Earths series, she was out of the picture for quite a long time before returning to the mainstream storyline universe. But through a lot of reworking, awkward stories, unusual connections formed and some things forced on the character to fit into events, she was like the puzzle piece that you wanted to have fit in but kept changing and never fit in everywhere. So with some amount of hope, I was feeling like this could be the series that puts Supergirl in the right position to have something good happen for her. Starting fresh and new, not bound to what had come before, she can finally forge her own path. And the opening volume does that fairly well.
The book is a bit of a fast read overall but it covers a whole lot of ground. Her story starts in an awkward way but one that fits as she goes through similar to what Kal-el did all those years ago, crashing on Earth and stepping out of her pod, though this time in Siberia. And also different is that unlike Kal, Kara is in her teens and a full aware and capable person. One that imagines she must be dreaming based on what’s happening around her as a group of armored people are trying to capture her while clicking along in some foreign language. Confused, uncertain and slowly discovering that she has some sort of strange powers that are coming into play as the sun comes up, she does the only thing she can do and thrashes about in confusion.
The book leaps through a lot of things from there at a pretty fast clip when you look at the first seven issues as a whole. Her arrival introduces us to Simon Tycho, a trillionaire who has taken over certain things for many countries once space travel became a different industry due to the arrival of so many superheroes and aliens on the planet. His interest in Supergirl is significant since she has the potential to be under his thumb and full of mysteries that he can make a profit out of, from her clothes to her genetics and the storage modules he’s found in her pod. But the language barrier is problematic, her teenage perception of things is a problem and Tycho has all the tact that you’d expect from a twenty-eight year old trillionaire who always gets his way. And has his own space station, which gets put through the wringer while she’s held there through his discovery of Kryptonite.
For Kara, the language barrier is the biggest problem as she can only infer intent from people, but she largely gets it right with what they want. But she is pretty reactionary, which makes sense since she’s woken up on an alien world and discovered that her home planet is gone, a fact she just can’t bring herself to believe for awhile. Thankfully, the book does give us some time with Superman showing up as he wants answers himself since she’s wearing an outfit with the family crest on it (an outfit she’s shocked she’s wearing for several reasons, much to my amusement). She can’t bring herself to believe what Kal-el tells her since in her mind she just saw him three days ago as a baby back on Krypton. The way they interact works well enough and I like that she viewed his manner of speech as though he learned Kryptonian from a textbook, which he pretty much did. It shows him as alien as everyone else is on the planet to her, but someone with a connection. It’s not the smoothest segment with Superman, especially in how they get separated and he’s kept from following up on things. But it sets the relationship between them at the start in a decent enough way.
With Kara discovering her powers and taking advantage of them, she does get to go on an offworld journey here that gives her and us some answers to what happened on Krypton. While we get a bit on the myth of the Worldkillers that were banned ages ago from being created, it turns out there some experiments went on elsewhere offworld that her father may have been involved in. These genetically souped up beings from different worlds awoke in a similar way to Kara and one of them, Reign, wants Kara to align with them to get answers. And to conquer, as their genetics were twisted to make that a hugely motivating aspect of their personalities. Reign has some decent bits with Kara that would be interesting to see progress, but Kara is the superhero mold based on her upbringing and you know it won’t go far. Similar to the fight with Superman, it has its awkward moments when it shifts back to Earth and Reign and her fellow Worldkillers get on with fighting her in order to get some answers. What the arcs do however is to set up some decent enemies for her of note, with Tycho having the Lex Luthor angle down as well as giving her a group of powerful aliens to go against.
In Summary:
I’ve always liked Supergirl and even have a weird affection for the live action movie from years and years ago. Her role in Crisis was profound and long lasting and her eventual return welcome but turned weirdly complicated far too quickly. With her introduction here in the New 52 universe, we get a character that has a whole lot of potential. It’s a bit awkward at times with some of the setups that go on here with regards to how certain things are being kept at a distance, but it works for me overall. We get her on Earth, we get some back story that can be used again in the future due to her age and we get her trying to adjust to her powers as well. When she starts to figure out how she fits into living on Earth, it’ll expand even more and there’s a chance for some fun human characters to show up and potential for her to connect with other heroes. The opening volume isn’t a knockout but it does a lot of things right and is just good, classic superhero origin story material that’s fun to read. The only thing I wish they had done was take more of a chance with the costume as the additional pages of conceptual designs are really intriguing.
Grade: B