I’m only 13 comics into this series where I pull a random comic from my collection, but in the over 400 books that I could’ve pulled from, this might’ve been the best one. Right in the heart of the New Krypton Saga with Sterling Gates writing and Jamal Igle pencils, this is a great one-and-done story that has a lot of heart and sets up what could very well be a new status quo for the girl of steel. As I mentioned, we’ve got Gates writing, and Igle pencils, Jon Sibal provides inks, Pete Pantazis colors, and Jared K Fletcher letters the book. The issue is set up as a letter that Kara is writing to her recently deceased father as she prepares for her Guilding Day ceremony.
The opening shot of this book does a really cool sequence where the cover of the book flows right into the story and we zoom out from it and realize it’s a picture on Kara’s desk in her New Kryptonian home. Her desk also shows a closer look at a picture of Kara and Cassie Sandsmark that I initially couldn’t identify when I covered the Bizarrogirl storyline a few months ago. That picture was shown in Supergirl’s closet at her place with Lana Lang along with a number of other ephemera. Kara’s desk here also features a small stuffed animal of what seems to be a Kryptonian Rondor but much cuter of course. I could be entirely wrong about this and maybe it’s supposed to instead be a reference to Lar-On. After asking Sterling Gates about it, it seems it’s not meant to be anything specific aside from being a small toy of a monster with fangs and teeth. She also has a hologram of herself when she was younger with her father, probably from before Krypton’s destruction, as well as a daily planet mug that is full of 8 zillion pens.
We get a great look at Kryptonian life in this comic and it’s a really interesting new direction for Supergirl that helps set her aside from her Earth-raised cousin. We get a very brief flashback to Kara’s Cresting ceremony, which she refers to as the last ceremony that happened before Brainiac took Kandor. In the next few sequences we also get Kara talking about how she hears her mother crying every night at the same time in the other room before cutting to the next morning where we see Alura the leader of New Krypton. In public Alura is focused and firm, with her feelings burried in her scientific upbringing, instead of grief she uses her energy to build New Krypton back up into the world it once was and build it even better.
A lot of this comic features Kara touring the various guilds of New Krypton that she initially views as punishment from her mother but it’s later revealed that this was meant to be a gift not a punishment. Alura has sent her daughter all over the planet meeting with the guilds and learning the ways each function so that she can choose for herself what guild would fit best for her. This gives a really great look at Krypton and how the Kryptonian society differs from Earth society. There are 6 guilds represented throughout the book and we see each of them although some are more prominent than others. The Labor Guild, Religious Guild, Science Guild each only get brief mentions, whereas the Military and Artist Guilds each have a full scene dedicated to them.
The Military Guild, which during this time has Kal-El in a commanding role, is helping Kara investigate the living quarters where she has deduced Superwoman lived while she was on New Krypton. Kal-El and his team sweep the room looking for any clues to the further plans of Superwoman while she was there and eventually all they can find is a single hair in a comb that does little more than prove that the room was in fact inhabited by Lucy “Superwoman” Lane. During this scene, Kal and Kara have a discussion where Kal mentions to Kara that he thinks it’s best for her to stay on New Krypton and not return to earth. There is also a gun shown early on in this scene with some Kryptonian text on it that I of course had to translate. It reads “Red Shard Kal El” which makes sense since it’s Kal’s gun shown and he is the leader of the Red Shard military group.
The Artist Guild scene was interesting to me not really for any of the story that was shown there, but because of the character Zal-Tel. To me this character feels like he should’ve been, and possibly initially was supposed to be, Zaltar from the Supergirl 1984 movie. It’s possible the name was changed to more fall in line with the standard Kryptonian naming scheme, although I don’t know why it wasn’t just Zal-Tar instead. Zaltar, in the movie, was also an artist and the characterization seems similar too. Possibly the creative team wanted to distance themselves from the Supergirl movie, or possibly editorial didn’t want the connection to be there.
At the end of the issue, even though she said earlier that she could never see herself wearing that much black, Kara chooses the Science Guild for her lifestyle and career on New Krypton. Kara chooses this path to help better understand her mother and how she thinks. This was a really fantastic read that really set up what could’ve been a bold new direction for Supergirl. Y’know if New Krypton didn’t explode like a year later.
While this book did have ads, none of them really stood out to me. What I did notice however, was a 5 page preview for Adventure Comics at the back of the book. Adventure Comics was the new home for Superboy (Kon) stories after he came back from the dead. In this preview Superboy saves a girl from a collapsing bridge and I’m almost positive this girl is later revealed to be the daughter of Lena Luthor. This is of course a different Lena than the pre-crisis Lena Thorul-Colby, but it is once again the sister to Lex Luthor. In the post crisis world however, this Lena was not his biologiccal sister, but instead the daughter of the family that adopted Lex after the untimely death of his parents. This Lena would be who Lex named his daughter after, before soon after bartering her away to Brainiac during Y2K. If you liked this, you might like the rest of my Supergirl Surprise series and you can find all the entries here.
The Daring New Blog of Supergirl 
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