Supergirl Adventures #21

Supergirl Adventures #21 is the 21st issue of the Superman Adventures comic which was a 66 issues series that tied into the Superman animated series that aired on the WB in the late 90s. This issue has its cover dress altered to read “Supergirl Adventures” as opposed to the normal “Superman Adventures” title logo that appears on the other issues in the series. The 5th issue of the series did a similar thing with Livewire taking over the cover dress.

This story is titled “The Last Daughter of Argo” and was written by Evan Dorkin and Sarah Dyer with art by Bret Blevins, Terry Austin, Lee Loughridge, and Kevin Cunningham. This issue is oversized at 52 pages and while telling a continuous story it can easily be split into 2 parts. The first half of the issue explores Kara’s origin that was shown in the episode “Little Girl Lost” of the aforementioned Superman animated series but goes into further detail. The start of this story shows Kara In-Ze (who would later become Supergirl) as a young child on the planet of Argo. Her parents, Kala and Zor In-Ze, are scientists on the planet. As Zor goes off to Argo City he leaves Kara and Kala at an observatory. While Zor is gone Kara receives a video call from her friend Pala who lives on Krypton, a neighboring planet to Argo. This line goes dead and as Kara goes to tell her mother they witness the explosion of Krypton. Even though it was Krypton that exploded, not Argo, the destruction still hit the planet and causes mass destruction all over the planet. Kala, Kara, and a few other Argoans that were in the observatory stayed safe from the destruction but a new crisis arose. The explosion of Krypton knocked Argo out of orbit. Now as Argo drifts further and further away from Rao, their sun, the atmosphere becomes colder and the planet uninhabitable. To save the remaining survivors, Kala has everyone go into stasis pods in hopes of a distress signal reaching someone. At this point the story overlaps a bit with the episode of the animated series. Kara is shown waking up in STAR Labs, getting settled in with the Kent’s in Smallville, and even briefly touches on Kara’s tussle with Intergang.

The second half of this story is original and has Kara watching over metropolis while Superman is out in space with the Justice League. While Superman is away, Supergirl does the usual saving cats from trees superheroing, when she hears of a bomb threat and the terrorist calling out for Superman. Supergirl soon rushes to the scene and is met by Kanto from Apokolips who tries to stop her with a Kryptonite knife. Supergirl, being from Argo not Krypton, isn’t affected by Kryptonite and easily takes care of the threat. We then cut to Apokolips and the displeasure of Darkseid. Granny Goodness and Kanto then go to the Phantom Zone to find a new threat to take out Superman and Supergirl and find Zod. Sending Zod to earth, he soon finds former foes of Superman Jax-Ur and Mala and the 3 join together and go off to take out Supergirl. After a few fights where Supergirl is overpowered by the triple threat, she once again uses her Kryptonite immunity to take out the Phantom Zone villains. This plan almost works but General Zod is also Argoan and has the same immunity. Kara rushes away to the Fortress of Solitude and, after another fight with Zod, uses her wits and a Phantom Zone projector to send all 3 villains back where they belong.

This is a jam packed issue that has a lot of action and allows this Supergirl to really shine in her own story. The story is written with Kara writing diary entries to give the reader a bit more insight into what it’s like for Kara to live as a refugee from Argo on a planet that is centuries behind what she was familiar with. The story also explores the trauma and fear Kara has of cold and ice because of what Argo went through in the 4 years between Krypton’s destruction and being put into stasis. A lot of the elements of this story would later be used for other iterations of Supergirl. Kara being alive for the destruction of Krypton and being in stasis as Kal grew up on earth was something that was added to the Supergirl origin in the 21st century and has since become the norm for the heroine. The idea of another planet in the same system as Krypton being destroyed as well would be explored in season 2 of the CBS/CW Supergirl show when we’re shown Daxam having similar destruction happen.

I would definitely recommend reading this story and it’s become fairly easy to get a hold of as it’s been included in 3 different collected editions. In 2015 DC began collecting the series in a handful of trades and this issue is in the 3rd volume. A compendium collection of the series is set to come out in July this year that collects the first 29 issues of the series including this story. Lastly, the issue is also collected in a compilation book called Supergirl Adventures Girl of Steel, which also collects 3 other Supergirl centric stories from the Superman Adventures and Justice League Unlimited comics from the late 90s and early 2000s.

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