Last month for Supergirl Surprise I made reference to the H’El on Earth storyline when I covered Issue 24 of this series. And now the random number generator has given us a story right in the middle of the H’El crossover. This comic has Argo flashbacks, H’El giving some major red flags, and a brief trip to Kandor so follow along as we look at “Into Kandor” by Mike Johnson, with Mahmud Asrar doing pencils and inks, Scott Hanna and Marc Deering helping with inking, Dave McCraig colors, and Rob Leigh lettering.
The story opens with a flashback to Argo city where we are introduced to a childhood friend of Kara’s named Tali. Tali seems like she could be a fun character to follow up on and she’s referenced as being Kara’s best friend. The pair are flying Tali’s new aircar through Argo and Kara very nearly annihilates a sky bridge. The pair safely land and we find out that Tali and her family are moving to Kandor. This flashback fades into Kara in her undersea fortress reminicing about her past where H’El appears out of nowhere.
The following pages are full of H’El presenting Kara with an absurd amount of red flags that Kara doesn’t pick up on because she’s blinded by the notion that H’El can actually bring Krypton back to life. The most egregious red flags that I noticed were the panels shown above where H’El refuses to tell Kara the details of his plan because he’s worried if he tells her she wouldn’t agree to follow along, and him shrinking her down into Kandor without warning.
Once we get into Argo we find out that H’El isn’t able to shrink into Kandor the normal way and instead has to astral project. Again, this feels like a red flag. Once in the bottle city, Supergirl quickly finds all the Kandorians in stasis (this was normal for this iteration of the city) and is then met with H’El astral projecting himself into the city but instead of looking how we’ve come to know him, he is apparently seen as how he looked before Krypton was destroyed.
H’El actually says here that he is presenting himself in this form so that Kara would trust him more (RED FLAG). Some Brainiac robots attack, Kara finds Tali in stasis, and the pair make their way to Kandor’s Central Power Station to get what they came here for. In what could have easily been a reference to an omegahedron, H’El tells Kara that the Quantum Crystal that is powering Kandor is what they need to take to see his plan through. Supergirl initially pushes back against this plan because the Kandorians need it to survive, but H’El manipulates/convinces her that the bottle city of Kandor will no longer exist since it will be properly sized on the newly restored Krypton if H’El’s plan works.
Kara is back to full size out of the bottle, H’El is back to his disgusting self and Kandor is without power. H’El starts monologuing because he thinks Kara thinks he looks gross now after seeing his “original” body, but he uses this pity to convince her to carry through with his plan that he hasn’t told her any details about. And then they kiss for some reason.
There is a lot of the New 52 Supergirl series that I didn’t enjoy when reading it, and H’El on Earth is pretty close to the top of parts that I didn’t like. I don’t like H’El and I don’t like him being presented as a romantic interest for Supergirl and I didn’t like Supergirl being on the wrong side of the story for so much of it.
As I mentioned earlier I really liked Tali’s introduction here. I always love seeing Kara’s life on Krypton and pre-explosion Krypton in general. Tali and Kara seem to have a great friendship and with her being one of the in-stasis Kandorians she does potentially still exist in current canon and could show up again with the prominence of Kandor in current Supergirl comics. She has a similar vibe to Thara Ak-Var who filled a similar pre-destruction Kryptonian friend of Kara. She would also come back into Kara’s life through Kandorian shenanigans during the New Krypton saga. Unfortunately we haven’t seen Tali again since this appearance (unless she showed up again later in the H’El arc that I’ve forgotten).
I didn’t notice any particularly interesting ads this time out so I will be signing off here. If you would like to check out the previous Supergirl Surprise entries, check them out on their dedicated page here.
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