Supergirl in the Multiverse Season 1 recap

If you’re reading this blog I assume you are at least a bit familiar with my Supergirl in the Multiverse series which has been a weekly feature here (if you’re not familiar check it out here). Today I’m going to go through the series up to this point. What I have begun calling “Season 1” of Supergirl in the Multiverse is actually the entirety of my initial goal for the series. I set out at the beginning of this year to find and catalogue the Supergirl of each of the 52 universes of DC’s “Local Multiverse” or Earths 0 through 51. As I got further through the series I became more and more excited about it and more and more invested in learning about DC’s multiverse. This excitement, as well as the overwhelmingly positive response, has led me to expand the series indefinitely and I’m very excited to see how the series will progress and what new universes I’ll find outside the “New 52” universes. This post will talk about the origins of this series, look at some statistics in regards to the series, some of my favorite stories I read doing research for the series, talk about the response I got from the series, and briefly look at where the series is going.

Supergirl in the Multiverse was a project that I wanted to explore for quite some time now and I even have a very early attempt at the series that I started back in 2023 but didn’t get very far into it. The project was conceptualized as a multi-tiered project. I wanted more practice at drawing backgrounds (which is why all the drawings feature some sort of background), I wanted to have a structured drawing project with clear deadlines (52 universes, 52 weeks in a year, almost seems too good to be true), and I wanted an excuse to read a lot of comics that I otherwise wouldn’t have read. The Multiverse I worked off of for this project was the “New 52” multiverse which was clearly defined (aside from 7 universes) in the Multiversity Guidebook from 2015 which got me thoroughly fascinated with the Multiverse of DC comics, although the Justice League episode “Legends” and some Amalgam comics I took from my dad definitely got me interested in alternate earths as well. As you can see from my initial attempt at this idea, backgrounds weren’t a focus from the beginning and it was more just an attempt at categorizing. I also used Stargirl for the Earth-2 representative instead of Power Girl, a mindset I still support to some extent and I do plan on exploring this more in the future of Supergirl in the Multiverse. You can see here that I also made the Bombshell connection very early on and she’s definitely the first of the “Supergirls” that breaks the mold of the “Supergirl” not being a Kryptonian.

With that lets get into some statistics with the Kryptonian vs Non-Kryptonian ratio. Based on the 52 Supergirls I have put together for this series, only 30 of them are Kryponian and even in that group I’m counting Bizarrogirl and Ms. Super-Martian which could be argued aren’t strictly Kryptonian. Just over 40% of the Supergirls are super in some other way. A lot of them are still aliens, being Kree or Krylan, or Zirandian, but there are about a dozen who are earth born that either had miraculous powers thrust upon them, or who are super in their own human way. A lot of the non-Kryptonian Supergirls in this series are fairly reasonable associations like Captain Marvel who is often seen as the Marvel equivalent of Supergirl, or Tesla Strong from the universe representing America’s Best Comics. However, some universes didn’t have a clearly defined representative to portray Supergirl so I had to get a bit more creative. Karel Sorensen from Earth-37 isn’t alien, but she gets super powers in a similar way to Captain Atom or Doctor Manhattan which are both Superman analogues so it felt close enough, but there are also Universes 20 and 40 and 47 which don’t really have any sort of Superman representation so I had to instead find a character in the universe that either represented Superman’s ideals or took the place as that universe’s foremost hero and work backwards from there.

Let’s now segue into the universes that do and don’t have a Superman. For this category I am including Ultraman, Captain Atom, Supreme, Ultiman, and some other very obviously Superman analogues but my count may be skewed from your personal count. For this I’ll mostly be referencing the Multiversity Guidebook images but there might be some disparities for universes that have introduced a Superman since 2015 like Gotham by Gaslight (Earth-19). From my count it’s about 40 universes that have a “Superman” or obvious Superman type character with universes 7, 8, 17, 20, 33, 37, 39, 40, 41, 46, 48, and 51 not having a clear representative, although arguments could be made for 7, 8, and 33 depending on how you count it. Like I said your count may vary. Similarly, most universes also have a Batman although from my count he only got to 37 which was surprising to me because I thought for sure he would outclass Superman but I am happily surprised.

Supergirl is often depicted as blonde, and I would often have “Blonde” as one of my criteria for “Supergirl Representative” when there wasn’t a clear Supergirl. In my series I had 32 blondes, although 3 of my characters had white hair which could count. The others have a wide range of hair colors, 6 with brown hair, 5 with black hair, 3 redheads, and 2 with no hair and I don’t really know how to count Carrot Cutie but probably under blonde or no hair if I had to choose.

The last statistic I want to cover is the canonical to non-canonical ratio which is something I was constantly keeping track of. When doing my research for this series I would prioritize using in universe characters that weren’t quite in the Supergirl mold over creating OCs whenever possible, that’s why we get characters like Marene Herald from Earth-17, Colleen Franklin from 39, and Pyra from 51. However some universes just didn’t have a good option either from lack of development in the universe (Earth-46 was especially light) or just not having a lot of room for a Supergirl to exist in canon based on how the Superman of that universe came about (see Earth-30) so for those I tried to just take the vibes of the universe and apply them to a Supergirl to the best of my ability. Anyways, the final ratio was 33 to 19 or a 63% of canon Supergirls which feels pretty good to me and I feel like I approached each universe to the best of my ability although Earths 20 and 40 were particularly tricky.

As I mentioned at the top, a big part of doing this series was exploring a lot of comics I otherwise wouldn’t have read. While some of the stories I read were kind of busts, there were a bunch that were really exciting and wonderful comics that I never would’ve read without this project. I started off the year pretty strong reading through the entirety of the Earth One graphic novels, I got an excuse to start reading through my Kelly Thompson Captain Marvel comics. Getting introduced to the Atomic Knights for Earth-17 was a great joy to me and presented some really exciting science fiction tales. Earths 27 and 28 were both newer universes and were presented as Jurassic League and DC Mech respectively which had seemed interesting to me for a while and I’m glad I cot to read them. I also had a wonderful time reading through all of the original appearances of Prez along with the newer Prez, and reading through Jack Kirby’s Kamandi series was spectacular. My favorite stuff however is the comics I read from universes outside of DC comics. Stuff like Tom Strong (Earth-25), Supreme (Earth-35), Savage Dragon (Earth-41), Megaton (Earth-36) and my personal favorite Astro City (Earth-34). I’ve been a DC Girlie almost exclusively for a long time so getting a chance to read stuff outside the norm was really interesting.

After finishing Earth-51, I took to asking a handful of people who have been following the series what their top 5 Supergirls were and the results were surprising. I expected a lot of the same answers over and over again with maybe slight variation, but everyone I asked gave me drastically different results, no single Supergirl getting more than 2 votes between the 8 people I asked. Another surprising result from when I asked was that a couple people not only responded with their favorite artwork, but also that the backstories of the characters influenced their choices. I will reveal the handful of Supergirls from my survey that got 2 votes, but I wanted to give my personal top 5 as well. 5. Earth-31 Captain Steel-Skin, 4. Earth-49 Injustice Supergirl, 3. Earth-17 Marene Herald, 2. Earth-26 Carrot Cutie, and my favorite and most successful in my opinion at 1. Earth-45 Super-Reign. From my survey it seems like Earths 1, 6, 8, 12, 17, 18, 31, 37, 45, and 49 were slightly more popular than the rest. That being said, my survey resulted in 30 separate entries making peoples top pick which is over half the lineup and it brings me a lot of joy that my art is so well liked and enjoyed by so many people. I would love to hear more people’s favorite entries and see what really resonates with you so I can try to appeal to more people as the series advances.

Speaking of, now that Supergirl in the Multiverse has traveled through all of the local multiverse, where do we go now? Well, as Doctor Manhatten said at the end of Doomsday Clock, “Earth 52 is out there. I look beyond now…” In short, I am only just getting started and am thoroughly exited for more to come as I look to a more infinite multiverse. A couple adjustments I am putting in now that I’m not beholden to the Multiversity Guidebook, I will jump around a little between numbers and wont go strictly in numerical order. This is for a few reasons, mostly because there aren’t clearly defined universes for all numerical values, Earth-57 for instance, as of right now it doesn’t exist (although if I’m mistaken feel free to correct me and I’ll add it to my list). I also want to do some theme months this next year, and if it goes good I might continue doing similar theme months in future seasons, February, to honor Black History Month will have a series of black Supergirls, June will similarly have queer Supergirls for Pride Month. March is set aside for the Amalgam universe, this is put in March because I have 5 separate Amalgam Supergirls (2 canon, 3 OCs) I want to draw and March had 5 Mondays. May will also be set aside for DC Super Hero Girls to count down to the upcoming DC Super Hero Girls: High School Reunion graphic novel coming out in early June. If you are interested in seeing the full list, it is shown in the images above. With that, I end this recap and hope you stick around for Season 2 starting on Monday with Earth-52.