Much like the previous Earth-43, Earth-63 is a universe where vampires are real. On Earth-63, which is told through the Elseworlds titles under the DC vs. Vampires umbrella, the queen of the vampires Mary Seward has recently been killed which pushes the vampires into turmoil as they search for a new leader. This void is filled by a member of the superheroic community and instead of maintaining the balance that humanity and vampires had, a war is started. The new vampire community seeks to block out the sun and take the world back from humans and become the dominant race.
The universe has been told through 3 main miniseries and a few tie ins. Supergirl comes in about halfway through DC vs. Vampires (the first series) with a 1-panel cameo in issue 6 before becoming a major player on the side of the humans against the vampiric threat. Supergirl is referred to as the last hope for humanity after Superman got turned very early on in the series. Most of the back half of the first series shows Kara working with the rest of the remaining human heroes to get the sun back and overthrow the new vampire leader. As you can tell by the multiple series that exist in this universe, this is not the end of the story. Supergirl will continue on for the remaining tales told in the universe without ever getting turned and would, at the end of the final issue of DC vs. Vampires: World War V, eliminate most of the remaining vampires.
As with all my Supergirl in the Multiverse posts, this is my own artwork. Supergirl is stood in the center of the artwork with a growing horde of vampires surrounding her. Supergirl is blasting a large heat vision burst off the lefthand side of the page. The top right has a motif of Supergirl’s S symbol with a 63 on top of it.
“Supergirl In Concert!”, as it says on the cover, is not Supergirl singing in a stadium full of adoring fans but instead fighting a handful of Female Furies and a mysterious Twilight person. She is in a stadium though and there are a lot of fans there just not necessarily for her and the concert doesn’t raise the roof so muh as bring it down.
Written by Peter David, with art by Leonard Kirk, inking from Robin Riggs, letters from Patricia Prentice, colors by Gene D’Angelo, and separation by Digital Chameleon. While the cover does read “Supergirl in Concert” the story is titled “Hell Hath No Furies” on the title page. We get pretty immediately into the action where we see a large crowd of Space Girls fans quickly making their way to the exits to get away from the new stars of the show; Supergirl, Twilight, and 5 Female Furies (Artemiz, Stompa, Bernadeth, Mad Harriet, and Lashina specifically). It seems like Supergirl is trying to bring Twilight down for something she did in North Carolina, Twilight trying to track down someone named Jane, and the Furies just there to further stir up trouble.
It’s issues like this that really make Supergirl Surprise interesting because I absolutely remember that Twilight is someone important and plays a fairly large role in the Supergirl series by Peter David as a whole, but when just reading issue #28 I cannot remember what her deal is at all. The Furies on the other hand haven’t forgotten who Twilight is, and snatch her up and boom-tube back to Apokolips with her leaving Supergirl left in the rubble of the Space Girls concert.
A lot of this comic is taken up with scenes of Supergirl fighting the Female Furies and it definitely makes for some great action sequences. Supergirl gets to show off a wide array of her powers and she does a great job of outsmarting her foes too. She takes Stompa out by breaking her ankles, and uses Lashina’s whips (ribbons?) to make her bring lights down on top of her all while delivering a pun “what could be more angelic than helping those who are evil see the light?”. She doesn’t face off directly with Bernadeth, Mad Harriet, or Artemiz here but taking out 2 of Darkseid’s elite by yourself is a pretty impressive feat on it’s own.
I mentioned earlier that Supergirl was left behind while the rest of her dance partners boom tubed away to Apokolips, she didn’t stay put for long though. Somewhere around this time, Supergirl started developing new powers tied to her being a fallen angel (that’s too much to explain here just take my word for it). Powers like fire wings and flame vision and a teleportation power called “Shunting”. She uses this Shunt power to follow the Furies to Apokolips however she is not prepared for the agony that would come with Shunting into such a hellish realm. A really interesting side effect that is presented here is that when not using a boom tube to access Apokolips, earthlings show up much smaller than they normally would. I’m sure I’ll talk about this more whenever Supergirl Surprise lands on Issue 29, but I really like the idea of Apokolips and all it’s residents existing on a larger scale than our main heroes and the size discrepancy is adjusted via boom tube. I’m not sure if this has ever been explored past this story, but it really puts the 4th world characters on a higher level to me.
Ads time! The big one I noticed was the ad for the infamous Superman 64 game. This ad does show that the game also has Playstation and Gameboy ports and I wasn’t familiar with those. Turns out there is a reason for that, only the Nintendo 64 version came out. I’ve never played the game but I’ll probably check it out at some point in my life. There is also a Powerpuff Girls ad, and also an ad for Subway which seemed to have DC toys. The Subway toys are interesting, you get keychains of Superman, Batman, Flash, and Wonder Woman and the 3 boy characters are all just in full form but Wonder Woman is in her invisible jet which feels like a weird choice and makes her keychain stand out. I hope you had a fun time checking out this action packed issue of Supergirl with me, and I look forward to seeing you come back for the next entry of Supergirl Surprise. For the rest of the Supergirl Surprise entries check them out here: https://blogofsupergirl.com/supergirl-surprise/
Earth-57 marks an interesting point in this series because it is the first time we’ve actively skipped a number. Season 1 of Supergirl in the Multiverse covered Earths 0-51 without any skips and January this year featured Earths 52-55. While I did skip around in February and March, those were for specific theming reasons, now that we’re back to going in order (sort of) we come to find that there is not currently a universe in the DC Multiverse with a designation of 56, but we do get an Earth-57. In short, it’s the universe where Superman marries Lois and Lana and Jimmy Olsen marries Supergirl, but it does get a tad more complicated than that.
The universe exists as told in both Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #57 (1961) and Superman’s Girlfriends #57 (1965). The Lois Lane story is the later entry but I want to cover it first for reasons we’ll get into later. Lois Lane #57 takes place on Earth-1 (Pre-Crisis Earth-1), and Lois and Lana are babysitting a Super-Tot who they think is their Superman that has been de-aged. They both hypnotize him (as a toddler) in hopes that he’ll marry them once he reverts to his old self. This does happen, but not the way they expected, the Super-tot they were sitting was actually the de-aged Superman of Earth-57 (it wasn’t named as such at the time, but is the canon designation) and through a viewer in the Fortress Lois and Lana witness Superman of Earth-57 marrying both Lois and Lana and Superman of Earth-1 mentioning that on that universe, bigamy (having 2 wives) is legal.
Jimmy Olsen #57 has a slightly less convoluted plot but there are still some hoops to jump through. Jimmy visits Midvale orphanage to write a story (Linda is there although she has been adopted by the Danvers but this isn’t really relevant). Jimmy unknowingly exposes Linda to red-k which makes her forget that she has superpowers (which k still trying to figure out why she never realized she was wearing a wig) and then the pair fall madly in love and get married. Linda eventually remembers that she has super powers and comes up with a plan to slowly reveal to Jimmy her existence as Supergirl (this story takes place just before her existence is revealed to the world) and then also Linda, as Supergirl, would also confess her love to Jimmy. This puts Jimmy in a pickle and also points to the fact that these 2 Earth-57s cannot exist together at once. Jimmy is conflicted because he is stuck between his wife Linda, and Supergirl who is also confessing her love to him. The conflict being that Jimmy can’t be married to both Supergirl and Linda (which wouldn’t be the case if this universe had legalized bigamy. Of course there is a happy ending with Linda revealing to Jimmy that she’s Supergirl and they continue on with their happy married life.
As with all my Supergirl in the Multiverse posts, this is my own artwork. Supergirl is shown bridal carrying Jimmy Olsen with a wedding finger on her hand. Jimmy is holding a camera and the pair are floating in the air. The background shows a skyline including the Daily Planet and the midground has a suburban home with a mailbox that reads “THE OLSENS”. The top right corner has a motif of Supergirl’s symbol with a 57 on top of it.
Supergirl Vol. 8 has been continuing on for the past year now and just this week saw the release of the first collected edition of the series thusfar. Supergirl Vol. 1: Misadventures in Midvale collects the first 6 issues of Supergirl vol. 8. Issues 1-3 had a consistent team of Sophie Campbell providing writing and art, Tamara Bonvillain on colors, and Becca Carey lettering. Issue 4 would have Dave Sharpe filling in for lettering, before Carey took back over. Issues 5 and 6 would see Rosi Kampe, and Paulina Ganucheau helping Campbell with art and issue 5 had colorists Kendall Goode and Marissa Louise fill in for Bonvillain.
As the title suggests, Supergirl: Misadventures in Midvale does in fact cover some misadventures that happed to Supergirl while she was in Midvale. The first 4 issues that are collected here share the title with the collected edition and tell the story of Lesla-Lar causing mischief in Midvale posing as Supergirl until the real Supergirl is able to convince her that there is another way and begins helping her become her own hero.
Lesla first encounters Supergirl on one of Supergirl’s weekly visits to Kandor. Lesla is caught in the crossfire of a crisis and is heroically saved by the girl of steel. This leads Lesla on a path to leave the bottle city, go to Midvale, hypnotize the Danvers, and pose as Supergirl. As Supergirl, Lesla-Lar has been helping the people of Midvale, but she is also creating crises to create events that would let her preform heroic deeds.
As mentioned above, Supergirl is able to get her identity back from Lesla and while there are tussles between the two, Supergirl doesn’t overpower Lesla with a punch but with a hug. Kara realises that Lesla more than anything else just needs a friend, and even after the Kandorian council sentences her to 10 years in a cognitive correctional facility, Kara instead offers to take Lesla under her wing and keep an eye on her for her sentencing.
Lesla does begin her superheroic journey as the hero Luminary in part 4 of Misadventures in Midvale and of course a crises happens but Supergirl and friends are able to take care of it. Issue 5 lets Supergirl take a back seat in the story and instead focuses on the 4 super-pets that are common characters in the series; Krypto, Streaky, Kandy, and Tinytano. This is a relatively isolated story but it does mention the fallout of issue 4 and leaves you with a cliffhanger for issue 6. Issue 6 too is relatively isolated and tells a story of Supergirl encountering Nightflame of the Innerverse. This theme of single issue stories building on a larger narrative is true of all the stories in this collection. Even the 4 issues making up the Misadventures in Midvale story each tell their own story with their own plot and antagonist. You get the Titano issue, the Satan Girl issue, and the issue where Supergirl and the L.L. girls go to a goth bar.
The cast of the series for the most part is Supergirl and girls with the initials L.L. which has been a common theme with Superman and his supporting characters like Lois Lane, Lex Luthor, and Lana Lang (even Supergirl was named Linda Lee for a while). Supergirl’s crew also has Luthor, although Lena is much less villainous than her dad, Lesla-Lar, and a new character introduced Luna Lustrum. Aside from Kara’s ever growing fleet of L.L. girls, Jeremiah and Eliza Danvers are also present living in Kara’s childhood home in Midvale. The aforementioned Super-Pets are also all over the series, Krypto the Superdog (needs no introduction), Streaky the Supercat (not Kryptonian but very super in his own way), Kandy the Superbunny (Lesla’s pet bunny who grew and got powers along with Lesla when coming to Midvale), and Tinytano (Titano the giant monkey with Kryptonite eye beams but now he’s tiny.
This series is great and it continues to be wonderful past the issues collected here but this is a wonderful start. This series is also a great entry point for new Supergirl readers and Sophie Campbell does a great job of sprinkling in bits and pieces of Supergirl’s long running (nearly 70 years!) history all while building up a new history and status quo for the maid of might. Campbell definitely shows a firm grasp on Supergirl’s history and if you’re familiar with that it reads as fun Easter eggs, (issue 6 is particularly full of references) but this story doesn’t rely on knowing all of Supergirl’s history and can be enjoyed just the same by readers new to the character.
As a collected edition, this is fairly bare bones. For the most part the six issues are just reprinted without changes. I did notice that the “to be continued” blurbs from each issue did get removed but some of the editor notes that mentioned “see last issue” were still intact which feels counterintuitive to me. Before each issue you get both the Sophie Campbell cover as well as the Artgerm cover each presented without any cover dress so you can appreciate the art all by itself. In the back we get a handful of pages of cover galley and a few sketch pages from Sophie Campbell. The advertisement for other Supergirl trades is the same as the set from the Universe End trade and I think it’s a great set to show readers a wide array of Supergirl stories. The story is fun when it needs to be and heavy when it needs to be, there’s action, there’s dialogue, and there’s a fully formed supporting cast, this truly is a Supergirl story for everyone.
If you haven’t read any of this series yet you absolutely should. I’ve read a lot of Supergirl stories and Campbell writes some of the best Supergirl stories that I’ve ever read and I continue to enjoy the title every month. Here’s to many more stories yet to come.
The Amalgam Universe was born from the cross dimensional being known as Access during the pages of Marvel vs. DC back in 1996. This birthed a total of 24 one-shot comics spread across 2 waves that showed stories of characters that were amalgamations of characters from the DC and Marvel universes. The Amalgam universe has several numeric designations such as 1996, 962, 9602, and 496 as well as just being referred to as the Amalgamverse. My coverage of this universe will feature 5 entries for Supergirl in the Multiverse and my initial plan was to use some of these alternative number designations for each. However, to make categorizing them easier I will just be using what seems to be the most likely DC designation of 496.
As mentioned above, the Amalgam universe would take a character from the DC universe and one from the Marvel (sometimes more than 2 characters would merge). There are 2 canonical Amalgam characters that fit the Supergirl role, and the second of which is Mary Marvel Girl. Mary Marvel Girl is simultaneously the most in canon Supergirl in the Amalgam Universe while also being the least justified. First off, to allow Mary Marvel Girl to count, you first have to allow Mary Marvel counting as a Supergirl, which we did back with Earth-5. In addition to this, Mary Marvel Girl is also just one of many forms that Dial HUSK takes in her two appearances (X-Patrol and Exciting X-Patrol) and Dial HUSK is obviously meant to be an amalgamation of Dial H for Hero and the mutant Husk. Once we get past agreeing that this is technically a Supergirl, we are met with the only Supergirl who appears in an issue of the Amalgam line of books but even still she only shows up for 4 panels at the end of X-Patrol. In these panels we are met with a character who is of course an amalgamation of Mary Marvel and Marvel Girl. Her personality seems mostly derived from the cheerful kiddish nature of Mary Marvel, while also possessing “the wisdom of Minerva” as well as probably the rest of Mary Marvel’s pantheon of goddesses. Her powers mostly present as telekinetic and are visualized as pink lightning. Otherwise we never see this character again and don’t learn more about her.
As with all my Supergirl in the Multiverse posts, this is my own artwork. Mary Marvel Girl stands in the center of the panel with her right arm outstretched towards the viewer and her left hand against her head. There are traces of pink energy exploding out from either hand. The background is an ambiguous green space and the top right corner has a motif of Mary Marvel Girl’s symbol with a 496 on top of it.
The Daring New Blog of Supergirl 