Since the Supergirl movie is coming out at the end of this month, I knew I wanted to cover an issue of Woman of Tomorrow for this month’s Supergirl Surprise. For those unaware, Supergirl Surprise is a monthly look at a random Supergirl comic from my collection. Normally all my Supergirl comics are fair game but because I wanted to confirm a WoT issue this month, I instead picked a random issue exclusively from that series. The randomizer landed on Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow chapter 5 “The Lake, the Trees, and the Monster” written by Tom King, art by Bilquis Evely, colors by Mat Lopes, and letters by Clayton Cowles. For the most part the issue takes place on Barenton, a planet with a green sun which causes Supergirl to be powerless. Also there’s dinosaurs. Shenanigans ensue.
Supergirl and Ruthye do not start on Barenton, actually they start hot on the heels of Krem of the Yellow Hills who they’ve been chasing for the past few issues. Instead of finally catching the fiend that murdered Ruthye’s father and poisoning Supergirl’s dog, Krem instead hits the heroines with a Mordru Globe which launches them across the galaxy via magic and whatnot. The Mordru Globe exposition is a good way to set the girls back after catching up to Krem (which lets the story last a few more issues) as well as helping Krem seem even more awful since to use the Mordru Globe, Krem must’ve purposefully slain thousands of innocents.
After being subjected to the globe, the pair find themselves on a wastland of a world and Supergirl is immediately showing that her powers are dwindling before Supergirl looks up and reveals to Ruthye (and the reader) that the sun is green. As we all know, the color of the sun affects Kryptonian’s powers with yellow suns giving them spectacular powers, red suns making them powerless and human, and green suns weakening them. This specific planet, Barenton, was specifically made to weaken Superman and while I’ve always just taken that at face value, I figure now is as good a time as any to actually look into this planet and see if this is a specific reference to an earlier comic.
Turns out Barenton first appeared in a story titled “Superman Under the Green Sun!” from Superman #155. While this story doesn’t specifically name the planet as Barenton, it is generally sited as the green sun planet in reference to this issue of Woman of Tomorrow because of the planet also having a green sun. I will counter that however because, after reading, the facts don’t seem to line up. One of the main things that people seem to draw from this book, often from fans that don’t love Supergirl’s depiction in this story, is the “Superman’s a Bitch” line and that of course comes from this issue. As told here by Kara to Ruthye, when Superman was stranded on this planet with a green sun he only lasted for 45 minutes before being saved by the Justice League. These facts don’t line up with how Superman #155 plays out. Superman was there for days suffering under the green rays of the sun and was blind for most of it but still worked hard to free the planet from slavery which makes Supergirl sleeping for 10 hours a bit less impressive. With this new knowledge, this reference to Superman here feels like it’s just an invented scenario to put Superman down.
In general I do think I prefer the Woman of Tomorrow version of a green sun planet mostly because of the antagonistic threat that’s presented here. Dinosaurs. The Superman story just has him facing off against a benevolent dictator, but the dinosaurs make a much more exciting and thrilling feat for Supergirl and Ruthye to overcome without super powers.
Dinosaurs are just cool in anything, that is an indisputable fact. I played through the original Tomb Raider game a few years ago (as part of the remastered trilogy collection I think) and at one point you’re in some sort of abandoned subterranean city when suddenly you’re assaulted by a velociraptor and of course being a badass babe with 2 pistols there is nothing else to do but shoot down a previously extinct animal. It was just a crazy sequence to experience blind. This issue of Woman of Tomorrow is equally as exciting in regards to dinosaur killing with Ruthye successfully fends off the beasts to protect the otherwise helpless girl of steel and even Supergirl in her weakened state is able to get the hoard of not quite birds away from her and her compatriot.
Eventually the green sun sets, and Supergirl gets her powers back and the pair are back on their way to track down the menace of Krem. I’ve gone into my overall thoughts of the story in a dedicated post to Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow but this issue specifically seems like a lower point in the mini-series that only gets bonus points for having dinosaurs, and the absolutely exquisite Bilquis Evely art. I guess my main issue with this specific story is that there wasn’t much interaction between the 2 leads since Supergirl is rather unconscious for the majority of these 24 pages.
The story is published without any ad breaks which is nice, and after that there’s a 5 page preview of the new (at the time) Batgirls comic which was a lot of fun. The rest of the ad space is filled with advertisements for some of the DC television shows at the time like Doom Patrol, Legend’s of Tomorrow and Batwoman. There’s also an interview with Kelly Sue DeConnick and Phil Jimenez on the last page about Wonder Woman Historia which really got me interested in the book, especially DeConnick saying it’s a “history book for a young Amazon where she learns the history of her people, from the perspective of her people.” As always this month’s entry has been a fun experience and the episodic nature of the Woman of Tomorrow series definitely helps when reading in isolation.
The Daring New Blog of Supergirl 
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