In a surprising sequence of events, the knowledge of this universe to inclusion into Supergirl in the Multiverse was quite accelerated. For those unaware, this project is fairly well planned in advance and often does not get changed from my initial plans. Season 1 of Supergirl in the Multiverse was clearly defined by the Multiversity Guidebook and somewhere near the end of season 1, I publicly showed my list for the entirety of what universes would be showing up in season 2. However, Earth-332 was not on my radar at all until I was working my way through Supergirl in the Silver Age Omnibus Volume 2 a few months back and instantly fell in love with the story told in Action Comics 332 and 333. So much so I nearly immediately wrote a blog post about it (How Superwoman trained Superboy) and this was just 2 months ago. So if I’m so ahead of my game and have my lists planned out months ahead of time how did it happen that I was able to slot Earth-332 in in the middle of an ongoing year? The short answer is that when I made my list I only accounted for 3 July entries not 4 (an error that can be seen in my list screenshots that I showed in my Season 1 Recap) and when realizing that I had a free week I immediately filled it with one of my new favorites.
I did cover the stories that this universe includes in the aforementioned How Superwoman trained Superboy post, so please check out that post for a more thorough dive into the world. To briefly recap however, this universe explored a universe where Kara Zor-El and Kal-El switched places. Kara was the baby born on Krypton, and rocketed away soon after her birth and moment’s before the planet’s destruction. Whereas Kal was born later on the miraculously saved Argo City that survived the destruction of Krypton by Jor-El’s invention of a protective bubble over the city. In addition to that change, it was also not just Kara that rocketed away when the planet exploded, but the whole Zor-El family who made it to earth and integrated into a small farming town called Smallville as the Zorelles. Carole would grow up to become the hero Superwoman, while working as a private investigator with Jimmy Olsen as her day job. She would later encounter a rocket that originated from the city of Argo containing her cousin Kal-El, who Carole would place in Midvale Orphanage and he would become Superwoman’s secret weapon, Superboy.
As with all my Supergirl in the Multiverse posts, this is my own artwork. Carole Zorelle is walking out the door of her Private investigation practice while ripping her shirt open to reveal she is Superwoman. The door behind her reads “Private Investigators Carole Zorelle James Olsen”. The top right corner has a motif of Superwoman’s S symbol with a 332 on it.
There is a certain mindset around most of DC’s 2010s era known as the New 52 and it’s not a particularly good mindset. The Supergirl series is one of the major points of contention among fans for why the New 52 initiative was a bad move. Personally I don’t like to make broad generalizations like “every dc comic published between August of 2011 and May of 2016 is awful” and I feel that some of the stories in the New 52 are quite good, even some of the Supergirl stories. Unfortunately, however, Supergirl (Vol. 6) #24 is not so great.
“Death Becomes Her” is presented by Michael Alan Nelson (writer), Diogenes Neves’ (pencils), Marc Deering (inks), Guy Major (colors), and Taylor Esposito (letters). This is part of the time period after Supergirl gets Kryptonite poisoned by H’El and it takes her a really long time to get back to normal. To put it in perspective, H’El on Earth ended in issue 17 of this series which puts Kara at her 7th issue of being sick and not having a solution on how to fix it. This, compounded with the first 13 issues of the series where Kara is only speaking Kryptonian, really makes it feel like this version of the Girl of Steel is having trouble getting started.
This specific issue has Kara, for most of the issue, trapped in a computer simulation on the planet I’Noxia where she is able to witness a dreamstate giving her her hearts desires. Sort of like a Black Mercy if you’re familiar. We also have the running plot of Zor-El (Kara’s not-dead dad) being the Cyborg Superman in New 52 continuity. Although at this specific point he has put his daughter’s consciousness into the aforementioned simulation so that he can re-use her skin cells to regenerate his own body so that he’s not a cyborg monster with amnesia. Please try to keep up, it will only get more confusing.
Also Brainiac is here.
Zor-El, when he is the Cyborg, has no memory of his life before he became the metal monster aside from knowing he is a Kryptonian. So when he was presented with a machine that can take a Kryptonian’s body and science it into re-making his old body he jumps immediately on the solution when seeing Supergirl fly past. Unbeknownst to him at the time, he has just rendered his own daughter without a body. He immediately regrets this decision (probably because of the sideburns situation) and tries to reverse it.
However, Supergirl is trying to break out of the not-Black Mercy and Brainiac is trying to explode the planet or something. A lot of splash pages ensue, and eventually Zor-El is able to go back to No-Memories-Robot-Man, Brainiac is shooed away, and Supergirl has her body back and pops even had the generosity to expunge all the Kryptonite while he was fiddling with it.
Before Zor-El gives himself amnesia again, he is able to request his assistant, Delacore, to impart some caring words to his daughter with the caveat that she cannot know he is the Cyborg. Delacore quite sucessfully does so in a nice bit of dialogue right at the end before Kara runs into some sort of giant space sword/man thing that is apparently part of the next crossover event called “Krypton Returns”.
While I wasn’t particularly fond of the story, I do think the cover is quite striking. One of my favorite parts of the New 52 Supergirl is it introducing me to Mahmud Asrar’s art which I’ve come to greatly appreciate and while he didn’t stay on interior art for very long, he did do quite a lot of the covers including this silhouette style cover giving the book some great shelf appeal.
The only notable ads I saw this time out were 2 ads for novels which feels like something I’ve not seen in a comic before so shout out to Steelheart by Brandon Sanderson and The Eye of Minds by James Dashner. There is also the running feature that I’ve never been particularly interested in called Channel 52. This feature was in all the New 52 comics and was a 2 page strip that served to catch readers up on the other DC titles at the time, this one talked about Wonder Woman becoming the new God of War.
Hope you enjoyed! If you’d like to check out my other Supergirl Surprise entries, you can view them here.
Long term fans of this series might be surprised by the additional Earth-33 entry here as there was also an Earth-33 last August. To most fans, Earth-33 represents the “Real-World”, although that only came to prominence in the New 52 and before the events of Flashpoint there was a different Earth-33. This version only had a couple appearances in the backup feature in Countdown to Adventure and we don’t get much of a look at this universe while Forerunner is there but it does seem to have a magical vibe to it similar to the New-52 Earth-13.
What we do get to see in our brief look at the world, is a techno-magical city with different factions based on the classic Earth-0 heroes like the Star faction, home to sorcerers like Starman and Stargirl, Bat-Mage being the prominent figure of the Bat faction, and of course the Super-faction which is home to Kal El master of Kryptonian Magic. These heroes, along with others, form the League of Shamans and their ranks seem to expand past their core members, we see at least 2 Superman (or Superboy) figures as well as what is generally referred to as Supergirl. While Kal El is named here and he does mention “Kryptonian Magic” it is uncertain Supergirl’s relation to him and whether or not they are from another planet called Krypton or if “Kryptonian Magic” just refers to a certain type of magic of Terran origin.
As with all my Supergirl in the Multiverse posts, this is my own artwork. Supergirl of Earth-33 is stood in the foreground and her outstretched right hand is firing off blue Kryptonian symbols. Behind her is the magical city shown in the Earth-33 appearance.
Supergirl has a long history, going back nearly 70 years and while a lot of things about her have stayed the same – arriving after Kal, being a younger hero, coming to earth as a teenager – there’s also been a lot of variance over the years and I’d like to break that down and explore exactly how Kara came to earth and when things happened around that. I’ll be giving specific number values to events when it’s relevant and mentioned in story. The major life points I want to note are: Kara Zor-El’s birth, Kal-El’s Birth, Kara’s age at time of Krypton’s destruction, and Supergirl starting her heroic career, although some other events will be explored too. At the end of this post I will be focusing on current continuity and how everything fits together (to the best of my ability) but before we make our way to the present, let’s look at how the girl of steel got to where she is now.
What is probably the most well know origin of Supergirl doesn’t come from the comics, but instead from the CBS/CW Supergirl television show that started in 2015. This series explored what I will be referring to as a stasis-type origin. Her origin is told fairly clearly in the pilot (Supergirl S01E01) as well as in most of the show’s opening narrations. Most importantly for today however, is that we’re given clear numerical values for all the events in Supergirl’s life. Both Kal and Kara leave Krypton at the same time right before its destruction and while Kal is a baby (let’s call him 1 year old), Kara is 13, which put’s Kal’s birth at 1 BKE (Before Krypton’s Explosion) and Kara at 13 BKE. While Kal would make his way to earth on time, Kara would instead be trapped in stasis in the Phantom Zone for 24 years making her arrival on earth 24 AKE (After Krypton’s Explosion). to update, Kara is 12 years older than Kal, but by the year 24 AKE, Kal has grown to be 25 on earth and has embarked on his heroic career, while Kara is still 13. Kara would stay in secret for the next 12 years before making her debut as Supergirl at age 25 in the year 36 AKE, which would make Kal in his late 30s-early 40s as the show progresses.
In contrast to this more widely known origin, we can instead take a look back to Action Comics #252 which was Supergirl’s comics debut and uses what I will be calling Argo-Type origin. Kal was born right before the destruction of the planet and we can keep him at 1 BKE, but instead of Kara being born on Krypton, we see her born on Argo City. The inclusion of Argo here will add a new item to the timeline which will be Argo’s Destruction. While it is not clearly defined exactly how long Argo survived after the destruction of Krypton, we can make some inferences based on elements we do know. Superman was an established hero by the time Kara is rocketed from Argo and I think it is reasonable to assume Kal would begin his Superman career around the age of 22 (22 AKE), this would allow for Clark to attend and graduate journalism school before beginning both his career at the Planet and his career in blue tights. Allura and Zor-El are seen viewing Kal’s heroic career through a super-telescope before Kara leaves the planet and I think about 3 years of being Superman before Kara arrives on earth is a reasonable timeframe. The added fact of Kara being 15 when she lands on earth lets us fill in some of these events. Kara is born at 10 AKE, which allows for a decade of Zor-El living safely on Argo, ample time to meet and marry Allura. Kara will leave Argo and arrive on earth in 25 AKE.
This specific origin does have a couple other events I want to mention, namely the secret weapon aspects. The silver age Supergirl began her career as Superman’s secret weapon and wouldn’t be properly revealed to the world until later on. In real world time this was about 3 years later, but comics time doesn’t always work the same way. Again this is my personal speculation, but 1 year of secret adventures and learning her powers makes sense, which would put Supergirl’s reveal to the world (and her adoption by the Danvers) at 26 AKE. This allows for Linda to live with the Danvers for 2 full years before going off to college and the career world which seems like a perfectly reasonable timeframe to allow for the type of bond the Danvers family unit seems to have. This Supergirl also notably dies during the events of Crisis on Infinite Earths. This is also after having attended no less than 3 colleges and 5 career endeavors so to give her time to have a full life, I think it’s reasonable to have her being about 28 at the time of her death (38 AKE). This is also young enough that her death is tragic, and puts Superman at 38, which puts him at a reasonable age for the events of Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow to play out.
I’m going to rapid fire through a few additional origins and how they differ from the established Stasis-Type and Argo-Type origins we’ve already discussed. In Superman the Animated series we get a Stasis-Type origin with Kara In-Ze (not a Kryptonian) being cryogenically frozen for decades after the destruction of Krypton and is the only survivor when Superman finally answers the planet’s distress signal. Kara is about 15 in this iteration. Smallville too had a Stasis-Type, with Kara’s ship landing in the meteor shower along with Kal, however her pod got knocked into a reservoir triggering the ships stasis safety mechanism until Clark finds her about 19 years later. The 1984 movie is an Argo-Type origin with Kara only ever knowing life on Argo and she seems to be around 16-17. Cosmic Adventures in the 8th Grade shows us a 13 year-old Kara with an Argo-Type origin but has Argo as a moon of Krypton not a city, and Argo is still a perfectly functional and livable location here (just in a pocket dimension). This is not an exhaustive list but I hope it showcases haw much variety can exist in Supergirl’s origin compared to Superman’s “Rocketed to Earth as a baby and raised by 2 humble farmers” origin.
To explore the current continuity Supergirl’s timeline of life, there are 2 main sources I’ll be looking at, The New History of the DC Universe and the 3rd story from the Summer of Supergirl Special. Both these stories are written by Mark Waid and the latter is more of an extension of the origin told in New History. The basic premise of DC’s current continuity (everything since Doomsday Clock) is that everything is canon. Everything being canon makes things a tad messy but I think we can make it make sense. To start off, current continuity uses the Stasis-Type origin, most recently told in issue 6 of Woman of Tomorrow. We see Kara in class on Krypton when the planet’s destruction begins and her living on Argo for a time before it too perishes. I will be making some inferences on Supergirl’s age throughout this section so bear with me. Supergirl is in a classroom at school when the planet’s destruction begins, she does seem older, but I’m going to put her at age 12, I feel like this lines up with other versions of Supergirl that use stasis-type origins. Also I can’t imagine Kryptonians teaching Binomial Coagulations before their equivalent of middle school. The next stop on our timeline is Argo’s destruction. I’m putting this at 4 AKE, giving the Argoians 4 years of life, and putting Kara at age 16 when she’s rocketed away, again this seems to line up with most versions of the character. At this point Kara is stuck in stasis, I think it is reasonable to insert the pre-Flashpoint origin here. As seen in the Supergirl storyline from Superman/Batman, Kara is in stasis inside a large Kryptonite asteroid that hits earth’s atmosphere well into Superman’s heroic career and this asteroid could very well be the last bits of Argo following Kara to earth and the 4 year difference in leaving Krypton could account for Kara’s much later arrival. Based on post crisis continuity, Superman is about 29 when we start following his adventures in Superman (Vol. 2) #1 (thanks to Mike Bailey of baileyplanet.org for this number) and it’s safe to say an amount of time passes between that point and when Kara arrives, he died, got married, and met his daughter from the future in that time, so let’s call Kal 32 when Supergirl arrives on Earth, or 32 AKE. With Kara 16, it puts Kal 16 years her elder which seems plausible based on their relationship.
At this point, Kara chooses to live in Midvale orphanage to live among people her own age and not around her cousin who is twice as old as her and all his similarly aged friends. Kara would soon be adopted by the Danvers and she would continue her adventures in Midvale and Stanhope as we saw in the Pre-Crisis storytelling. Supergirl dying in crisis is also in canon, and Darkseid is responsible for her resurrection. This does fudge up the timeline a bit and it makes this endeavor much trickier, but I’m going to give it my best shot. I think, in current continuity, her death makes sense to happen after her Stanhope days but before she went to Vandyre University or any of her careers. I am putting her death at age 19 (35 AKE) and I am assuming she stayed dead for 7 years.
Screenshot
This 5 year gap helps account for Jon Kent. Jon was born about 12 years ago (10 years before the volcano incident and let’s say he’s been an adult for about 2 years since coming back) I like to think Clark is about 47 in current continuity, making current continuity around 47 AKE and Jon being born in 35 AKE, the same year Kara died. Kara coming back 7 years later but being 19 still upon her return allows her to pursue those other universities and careers (and a brief stint as a Red Lantern) and this all happening while Jon is alive helps explain why he’s so knowledgeable about her life in the Summer of Supergirl special.
Woman of Tomorrow clearly lists Kara as being 21, and the current Supergirl ongoing title confirms that being in continuity and in the current past. Supergirl is over the age of 21 now, but still able to be peers with Lena Luthor II who is mentioned as being under the age of 21 so Kara cannot be much older, but she does have some amount of responsibility at least in regard to Lesla and the bottle city. I think it is reasonable to assume she’s about 24 currently (in 45 AKE) which lines up with the 5 years that have passed since coming back to life.
As I mentioned above, a lot of these numbers are purely speculation but hopefully my reasoning makes sense for anyone reading. For your reference, and my own, I’ve put together a timeline graphic based on the numbers discussed above. This timeline is also of course subject to change at any given moment when any future writer wants to fiddle with continuity and that’s perfectly fine. In my opinion, I would much rather have an Argo-Type origin and it makes the timelines a whole lot easier to work, but it seems like Stasis-Type is what DC wants to go with. Surprisingly though, the new Supergirl movie has Kara being born on Argo 8 years after Krypton’s explosion so maybe there’s hope for the Argo-Type origin in the future.
Home to a fleet of original characters first hitting the Twitter landscape in 2022 is the Fodderverse of Eath-309. The Fodderverse is a universe of superhero OCs from the creator @makemineamalgam on Twitter and Bluesky that first started making their way onto the internet in late 2022. While some of the characters share similarities with Marvel and DC heroes, they all have their own distinctive flair. The universe is home to characters like The Goof, Ace, Chief Bravery, Avian, Kook and Captain Splendid, all of which were created by @makemineamalgam via kitbashing various action figure parts together into new creations. The universe is constantly growing and characters continue getting more and more story told.
For Supergirl in the Multiverse, we have a character called Hourglass, who the creator referred to as “basically Supergirl with a hint of Stan Lee era Thor”. Kali is from the planet Chronos and was rocketed to earth by her father (and the ruler of the planet) Father Time to serve as an ambassador on her 18th birthday. Kali would adopt the human identity of Kali Lauper while working for Robert Raveneau at MidasTech, and would continue her super-heroic duties as the hero named Hourglass. Hourglass has a fairly standard power-set of Super Strength, Super Speed, and Flight but she also has accesses to limited time manipulation powers that she’s still getting a handle on. Similar to Hourman or Ben Tennyson, her powers have a 1 hour limit before she is forced to revert back to her civilian form. She is included as part of Supergirl in the Multiverse’s Pride Month celebration because she is canonically bisexual showcasing attraction to both male and female characters in the Fodderverse.
As with all my Supergirl in the Multiverse posts, this is my own artwork. Hourglass is shown being launched out of an upper floor window of MidasTech and she is reaching towards an hourglass in the foreground. Shards of glass are flying out all around her and the outside lawn and connecting streets around MidasTech can be seen below her. A motif of an hourglass with a 309 on top of it can be seen in the top right corner.
The Daring New Blog of Supergirl 