Supergirl Surprise 3: Supergirl Vol. 6 #4

Welcome back to another installment of Supergirl Surprise! This infrequent series is where I randomly select a single Supergirl issue from my collection and briefly go over the story and my thoughts. This time out we’re looking at Supergirl (Vol. 6) issue #4. The story is titled Escape and was written by Michael Green and Mike Johnson, Mahmud Asrar and Dave McCaig provided art, and we have Rob Leigh on letters. This book has a cover date of February 2012 and sits very early in Supergirl reintroduction during the New 52 era.

Picking up right where the book left off in issue 3, our hero has been captured by Tycho aboard his space station and is currently being held prisoner thanks to the use of Kryptonite found by Tycho’s men along with Kara’s spaceship. One of Tycho’s men, Jacobs, seeing now that his boss isn’t who he thought breaks Supergirl out of her containment and attempts to get her to safety but in their daring escape Tycho has Jacobs killed.

Now furious and slowly regaining her powers, Kara quickly retrieves her suit and begins to, literally, knock some heads. just when Supergirl is powered and ready to take out Tycho, he pulls out a red crystal retrieved from Kara’s pod. She immediately recognizes it as a Kryptonian Sunstone, used to store data and Kara suspects it’s a message from her father. Out of options and unable to directly attack her foe without risk of damaging the Sunstone, Supergirl uses some of her skills that Tycho seems unaware of.

Using a combination of X-ray and Heat vision, Supergirl blasts a hole through the station to the central core. This both allows enough distraction for Supergirl to retrieve the Sunstone and for Tycho’s multi-billion dollar space station to get destroyed.

I do like the inclusion of this note mentioning the crew’s safety as it shows Supergirl having compassion for humans even so new to the planet. She of course has no kindness for the billionaire that tried to dissect her moments ago.

The issue ends with a tease for stories to come. Tycho has miraculously survived the destruction of the station by being merged with The Brain, a gelatinous creature that Tycho had fighting Supergirl in the previous issue. Not only has Tycho survived, but one of his employees has some of Supergirl’s blood on it from when she was in a weakened state giving Tycho everything he was after.

I’m not a huge fan of everything done with the girl of steel during the New 52, but I do like their approach in making her a drastically separate character from Superman and giving her some brand new villains to fight. A villain like Tycho isn’t anything groundbreaking but it is nice to see an evil billionaire scientist that’s strictly a Supergirl villain and not just Lex Luthor or someone related to the bald baddie. New 52 remains a bit of a blind spot for me in regards to Supergirl lore but I have made an effort in recent weeks to read through the title and the beginnings of Kara seeing human life as important both in Jacobs and the rest of Tycho’s crew. One of my main beefs with this story is Supergirl not knowing any human languages. This is an interesting concept for sure but it does seem to take a while for her to be able to communicate with anyone else in her book.

That’s all for the comic breakdown, but I did see this ad for a Phantom Menace LEGO set in the back and that’s particularly exciting. I’m a huge LEGO fan and a pretty firm supporter of Episode I. That will be all for this time out though. Stay on the look out for more Supergirl Surprise entries and feel free to write in with any comments or suggestions at daringnewblog@gmail.com!