Supergirl is making a pretty impressive push this year in comics with her new ongoing series as well as some one shots and specials and original graphic novels all releasing in buildup to her new movie set to come out in June later this year. DC’s Supergirl Next Door that came out just a couple days ago is one of these specials and it falls in with the rest of DC’s quarterly (I think) holiday anthologies. Supergirl also appeared in the last anthology I Saw Ma Hunkel Kissing Santa Claus as well as the one from last Summer, Kal-El-Fornia Love. I’m going to go over all three of these Supergirl stories today starting with the most recent and working backwards.
A Dream of Different Stars is the lead story in 2026’s Supergirl Next Door and can somewhat be seen as the cover story but the cover, by Amy Reeder, and the story don’t really match so I wouldn’t necessarily say they’re related. This story was written by CRC Payne, art by Paulina Ganucheau, color by Kendall Goode, and letters by Lucas Gattoni. This is a cute 10 page story from the point of view of Linda Danver’s next door neighbor named Allen. Allen is shown to be a fairly unpopular kid, even referring to himself as “invisible”, but this doesn’t stop his new neighbor Linda from dropping in on him to look at the stars together.
At this point we find out Linda has been sneaking up onto Allen’s roof for some time now since it has a better view of the stars. This seems to be a tradition for the pair and we see a few other nights of the pair looking at the stars and chatting late into the night. Linda begins telling Allen of dreams she has of a different night sky and different stars and it’s a memory of Linda’s birth parents and her dad telling her the names of the stars and constellations. Linda tells Allen of some of the constellations like Flamebird and Nightwing before we go into a brief montage of Allen working on a project in his room.
Allen shows Linda what he’s been working on and we see that it is a homemade planetarium that lights up his room with the stars Linda dreams about. As I mentioned above, this is a very cute story and does a great job at showing Supergirl’s history with Krypton without getting too heavy with it. It shows her with a sadness about her but still shows her having a good life and making friends. This is part of the Valentine’s Day special and this is told as a Valentine’s Day story (Allen presents the planetarium on Valentine’s Day), but Linda and Allen’s relationship reads as purely platonic to me and it felt rather refreshing. The anthology as a whole did a good job at showing many different types of love not necessarily romantic and it led to some surprising team ups that wouldn’t seem like immediate choices for a Valentine’s Day special so I would absolutely recommend picking it up.
Moving on to I Saw Ma Hunkel Kissing Santa Claus, and the story Holiday Woes. Featured above is the variant cover to the book by Ryan Sook, and the Supergirl story is written by Ash Padilla, pencils by Anthony Marques, inks by J.Bone, Colors by Nick Filardi, and letters by Steve Wands. This story has Kara being invited to the Kent farm in Smallville for Christmas where Clark has set up his cousin on a blind date with Pete Ross’s son. A lot of this 10 page story is Kara worrying about her super-heroic responsibilities in National City, but we’re soon introduced to Kara’s blind date (or are we?)
This “Ambush date”, as Lois puts it, doesn’t do much talking and mostly let’s Kara lead the conversation, but we do find out he’s something of a computer scientist. Their conversation gets interupted by Supergirl having to rush off to save the day no less than 3 times, but her not-quite-date sticks around and continues to listen to her vent. Kara talks about feeling like the whole world is on her shoulders and she doesn’t have time to devote to herself and figuring out who she is when she’s not “working” when her companion gives her some great advice about having friends and family that are helping her out and that even if other people don’t look like they’re unbothered might have the same struggles she’s having.
After this her date seems to disappear, and Kara catches back up to Lois and Clark who found Jonathan Ross, her blind date, and Kara realizes the person she had been talking to was not the ambush date at all. Kara tells Jonathan she’s not in the mood for a date and would rather spend time with her family. At this point we find out that the person Kara had been talking to was none other than Brainiac 5 from the Legion of Super-Heroes! This long time love interest of Supergirl is probably my number 1 pick for a boyfriend for Supergirl so I got really excited with this final panel reveal. On a whole, I didn’t really care for this story and this Supergirl didn’t particularly feel in line with the current era of Supergirl so it felt a bit disjointed and the only real enjoyment I got out of it was the inclusion of the future green boy.
“Something in the Water” was the Supergirl story from Kal-El-Fornia Love and it was written by George Mann, drawn by Travis Mercer, with colors by Andrew Dalhouse, and letters by Michael McCalister. Supergirl teaming up with Constantine was an absolutely bonkers concept that I was excited for from the time it got announced and I have to say that the team delivered on the story.
On the beach, Supergirl witnesses a sea monster attack which leads to a particularly stunning costume change sequence and then our hero promptly gets taken out by the sea monster. Supergirl, now beaten and tossed back onto the beach, is approached by everyone’s favorite smoking magician, John Constantine.
John introduces himself as a “sorcerer, nonsmoker, legendary lover of women. And only one of those things isn’t true” he of course says this while smoking so everyone can figure out the lie. Constantine at least has the decency to replace Supergirl’s ice cream that she dropped before letting her know she’s up against an extra dimensional demon monster that they have to take out together.
Even with a handful of British colloquialisms preventing Supergirl from having any idea of what her partner is saying, the pair are able to work together and save the beach and get the monster back to where it belongs. The pair go off to celebrate their win with hot dogs and finish off what is my favorite of these 3 stories. This story feels really well written that tells a fun and exciting tale while portraying both heroes quite successfully in my opinion. This is the most action packed of the 3 stories, but I don’t think that’s why I preferred it. I think most my enjoyment came from the absurd team-up and how the pair were handled throughout. There’s also a panel at the end of Supergirl eating a hot dog that really resonates with me.
Before giving my final thoughts, I did want to discuss these stories in continuity. The most recent of these stories, “A Dream of Different Stars”, takes place immediately after Linda “Supergirl” Danvers gets adopted and I can absolutely see this story existing as part of the current Supergirl ongoing title, the only thing that feels a bit off is the fact that Linda doesn’t mask her blonde hair at all. It does also fit in with the silver age stories where she didn’t openly use her powers at first since we only see Supergirl in costume as part of a flashback/dream sequence from Linda. The team up with John Constantine doesn’t mention any specific cities or co-stars that would interfere with current continuity and it seems to be Supergirl taking a day off to go to the beach which could easily work within continuity. “Holiday Woes” is truly the outlier here with the mention of National City. National City is of course the home base for the girl of steel in the CBS/CW television series, but in comics she only operated in the city for about a year and a half, so when stories or external media (like the card I mentioned in Supergirl Trading Cards Part 2) mention it as her base of operations I feel a bit disconnected. The characterization of Kara in that story also didn’t quite seem to fit more recent depictions of Supergirl and once again kind of felt more like the tv show as opposed to the comic. With all that, I can whole heartedly recommend both “Something in the Water” and “A Dream of Different Stars”, while “Holiday Woes” didn’t do much for me aside from the Brainiac 5 reveal and a much more successful story (in my opinion) about Supergirl not being particularly in the holiday spirit can be read in Sophie Campbell’s Supergirl #8 also from last month. Let me know your thoughts on these stories and if you want me to cover more of these anthology comics, there are a handful more where Supergirl shows up and I’d love to read them.
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