Supergirl: Bizarrogirl

The Bizarrogirl arc ran through issues 53-57 of Supergirl (Vol. 5). All 5 issues of this story are written by Sterling Gates and Jamal Igle did penciling for the first 4 issues with Jon Sibal, John Dell, Richard Friend, and Marc Deering providing inks. Bernard Chang took over penciling and inking for issue 57. Blond, Jamie Grant, Jim Delvin, and Nei Ruffino all contributed to colorist duties and Jared K. Fletcher and Travis Lanham handled lettering. While the artist teams feel pretty loaded, the changing between the artists isn’t really noticeable or jarring reading through from what I could tell. Looking at after knowing the artists changed I can tell the differences but it doesn’t take away from the story. The story was released from June to October of 2010 and seems to Supergirl’s fresh start after the events of New Krypton. I haven’t really looked much into solicitations from books that came out before I was actively collecting, but I did notice something when I was doing my research this week and that was the fact that Bizarrogirl seems to have been planned out as a surprise antagonist. Generally comic books are solicited about 2 months in advance so when issue 52 of the series was on the shelves, issues 53 and 54 had already been solicited and when you look at the covers and synopses you see stuff like “[CLASSIFIED]” and “… when she finds out just who this thing is and where it’s from!” and the covers have fairly generic art with only Supergirl shown and Bizarrogirl doesn’t show her face on a cover until issue 55. I can’t speak for people who read this book as it was coming out, but I really like this approach and it helps build the mystery and suspense of who or what crashed in Centennial Park during the events of issue 53.

As I mentioned before, this story takes place directly after the events of New Krypton (which I have not covered on the blog yet but I will at some point) and deals with a lot of the trauma and emotions Kara is facing after once again losing her home planet. Picking up on a storyline that had been introduced earlier in the run, Kara is living with Lana Lang who has moved to Metropolis and is working at the Daily Planet. Kara tells Lana she wants to put Kara and Supergirl behind her and wants to live as Linda, a normal human girl that isn’t a Superhero. Lana is supportive of her decision to start living life as Linda Lang, but worries about her putting away the cape for good. This worry is furthered when Metropolis is struck with a mysterious threat that has landed in a frozen crater in the middle of the city. Lana urges Kara to go and help face this threat but she refuses and instead goes and hides in her room that she has soundproofed to prevent her superhearing from picking up the sounds of the city. While Kara sits moping, Dr. Light and Gangbuster head out from S.T.A.R. Labs to investigate and are met with a monstrous backwards version of the girl of steel. The issue ends here on a cliffhanger and picks back up in the next issue with Jimmy Olsen on a motorcycle saving a kid on his way to get a photo of the new threat facing the city. Jimmy is able to get the photo and it automatically uploads to the Daily Planet servers before Jimmy is knocked unconscious and taken prisoner by Bizarrogirl. It is this picture that Lana sees at the Planet and she sends it to Kara with the message “A Bizarro with your face is tearing up the financial district”. Kara stil hesitates as she remembers the destruction of New Krypton, but she does eventually suit up and make her way over to encounter the Bizarro shaped threat to the city.

I have taken the liberty to translate the Kryptonian text shown here for your reference: “Identity confirmed.” “Hello, Kara Zor El.” Nothing too crazy but it is a nice touch that Kara has a secret closet which she also had starting in Action Comics 279 in her room after being adopted by the Danvers. Speaking of references, this closet is full of them! Starting from the bottom left we have a brunette wig which is a classic Linda accessory, and a red headband which is a reference to Supergirl’s pre-Crisis costume. Above that is a Kryptonian Sunstone in a jar next to a small Eiffel Tower and behind that is a picture of what I assume is Kara and Cassie Sandsmark cleaning up after the events of Amazons Attack. There are 2 Daily Planet papers framed: “The Supergirl from Krypton” and “Why the World Doesn’t Need Supergirl” both of which have shown up previously in this title. Her costume and a selection of belts take up the center and behind it you can just barely see a spear that references her time on Themyscira. The right side is mostly obscured by Kara herself, but we can make out her Nightwing helmet that she wore when her and Power Girl were in Candor. A small Superman doll is shown on a middle shelf and unfortunately I can’t quite tell what that small framed object in the top right is. If I had to guess I would say it’s a piece of her ship that crashed to earth or possibly a small piece of New Krypton salvaged from it’s destruction.

ADDENDUM: Thanks to a response from Sterling Gates on Bluesky, I do have confirmation that the framed photo is of Kara and Cassie, however it’s a picture of them catching King Shark not cleaning up from the Amazon’s Attack event as I thought. He has also clarified that the red and white framed item is a small piece of Alura’s uniform that she was shown wearing throughout the New Krypton saga.

Supergirl and Bizarrogirl then have their first fight where we see Bizarrogirl being protective of her ship and gets very nervous when it gets hit with stray debris. It’s at this point we see Bizarrrogirl’s new power Solid Vision which is her own bizarro version of X-Ray Vision that turns whatever she looks at into solid metal which she uses on Supergirl. Thankfully Supergirl had trained with the Flash to learn how to vibrate her molecules to pass through the solid matter that Bizarrogirl had turned her into. With this element of surprise, Supergirl is able to get the upper hand and formulate a plan with Doctor Light to subdue Bizarrogirl. During their fight Supergirl hears of a thread to Bizarroworld, a “Godship”, that is coming to destroy their planet and Bizarrogirl was sent to earth as a refugee to save her. Using her light based powers, Dr. Hoshi uses the light of a K-Class star to depower her the same way a red sun would depower a Kryptonian. After Supergirl hears Dr. Hoshi’s plans for Bizarrogirl she starts to realize maybe she and her have more in common than just a blue skirt. Supergirl takes the currently unconscious Bizarrogirl and zooms back to her downed bizarrorocket and prepares the journey back to Bizarro-World.

The pair arrive at Bizarro-World and Kara is baffled to see that it’s suffered intense destruction and has been nearly blown in half. After landing Bizarrogirl is met with a mob that’s furious at her for abandoning their world when the Godship came. Bizarro Lex Luthor (Him am bald, and bald men am the sexiest) informs the duo of the goings on of the planet while Bizarrogirl has been away before promptly getting eaten by a shout from the Godship. Bizarro No. 1 then joins them and takes them to his Fortress where he gives Supergirl a more specific rundown of the devastation of Htrae and Supergirl decides to fly off to the other side of the planet to take a closer look and confront the Godship head on.

After finding out the Godship isn’t a ship at all and is in fact a giant alien life form, the girl of steel is promptly shot all the way through the planet back into Bizarro’s fortress. Supergirl, realizing she needs more manpower, works with Bizarro and Bizarrogirl to bring together an army. This army is Bizarro clones of all the citizens of New Krypton. These Bizarro-Kryptonians make a good attempt against the Godship but aren’t able to overpower it. Bizarrogirl now afraid runs from the fight and tries to get her rocket working again to once again leave the planet and run away.

Supergirl soon finds her and has a nice long talk with her Bizarro reflection about how they’re not so different after all. This sequence not only helps Bizarrogirl return to the fight but also gives Kara a bit of introspection of herself. Kara helps Bizarrogirl see that even if she’s scared, she can still do a lot of good for the rest of her planet, something Lana was trying to tell Kara at the start of the story. Bizarrogirl now back in the fight, works with Supergirl and uses her apparently unique ability of Solid-Vision to finally put a stop to the Godship.

They’ve saved the planet but Bizarrogirl has now seen to exiling herself because of the life she took while on Earth. Supergirl comes to talk to her and she gives Bizarrogirl some advice that also applies to herself: “[self-punishment] might never end…but if it does end, it will be because you look in a mirror and realized you’ve already punished yourself enough.” With that, Supergirl rockets away and heads back to Earth now with the newfound confidence to get back into the hero game back in Metropolis.

I will readily say I’m not usually a fan of Bizarro stories and generally find them either boring or annoying. This story on the other hand, is not only a wonderful Bizarro story but also one of my favorite Supergirl stories of all time. The way Bizarrogirl is portrayed not as a dumb backwards clone of Supergirl but instead as a imperfect reflection really puts Bizarrogirl on a totally different level as an antagonist for the girl of steel and I think it’s really thanks to the writer. Sterling Gates had been on the title for a while at this point, starting in issue 34, but since then most of the issues he worked on were tie ins to the various chapters of the New Krypton Saga and this seemed to be the first arc that wasn’t tied to a crossover and stood on its own as a purely Supergirl story written by Gates, and his interpretation of Bizarrogirl is a great way to jump into a new status quo for Kara. Sterling Gates is pretty generally regarded as one of the best Supergirl writers and he’s definitely one of my favorites. The continuation of Supergirl post New Krypton is handled quite well in this story and the trauma Kara is going through feels real. Supergirl and Bizarrogirl’s dialogue throughout really helps explore these themes and helps Kara find out more about herself. Another thing I noticed on my most recent read through is sometimes instead of writing out full conversations there would just be little narration boxes that feel like diary entries or thoughts from Kara. We get messages like “It must’ve taken hours. Me charging her, her attacking the beast” and “so we talked once the crisis was over. She started thinking about her actions.” These breaks really help the pacing and make the story feel like it takes place over a period of time and not just a couple days.

Something that I haven’t covered as part of these issues yet is the background plot with Cat Grant. Cat has been a persistent thorn in Supergirl’s side for a while now and was responsible for the front page article “Why the World Doesn’t Need a Supergirl”. Cat first shows up overhearing Lana on a phone call talking to Kara and would use this connection that she suspects to ask Lana for a favor at the end of the story. This would lead into the next story arc where Supergirl would work with Cat Grant against Toyman. Both the Bizarrogirl and Toyman stories are collected together in the Supergirl:Bizarrogirl TPB as well as Supergirl (Vol. 5) Annual 2. While the seeds of the Toyman story do get planted in these issues, it really feels like a different story which is why I haven’t covered it in this post.

I think this book is definitely worth reading for any Supergirl fan. As I mentioned above it has been collected as a TPB with printings in 2011 and 2016, and the back issues probably aren’t too hard to get you hands on. The issues are also all on the DC Universe Infinite app with a standard subscription. The story does work as a sort of epilogue to New Krypton, but it stands on its own fairly well and does a good job at explaining what happened without overloading the reader with exposition.

Thanks for reading along with me! If you’ve got any comments or suggestions for future posts feel free to send an email to daringnewblog@gmail.com and stay tuned for more adventures of the girl of steel.