Earth-D is the first of the Multiverse that I’ve covered thus far with a letter designation as opposed to a number, although universes 5 (S), 10 (X), and 26 (C) all had Letter designations before the Crisis obliterated them. Earth-D was a universe envisioned by Marv Wolfman as an intended reboot of the DC Universe with a more racially diverse cast of heroes than what was currently in comics. My understanding is that this universe was Wolfman’s pitch as to what would come after Crisis on Infinite Earths and has been compared to the jump from the Golden Age (JSA and the like) to the Silver Age (JLA and others). However, this radical change to the mainstream continuity was not implemented and it would be another decade and a half before this universe came to be seen in a published comic. Legends of the DC Universe: Crisis on Infinite Earths from 1999. This one-shot special was an additional chapter in the Crisis on Infinite Earths event and told of Barry Allen Flash winding up on this earth and helping it face the coming Crisis sweeping the Multiverse. There are minor differences from the Earth-0 we know but its fairly recognizable and well explored in the 48 pages of the special, one change is the prominent super-team is neither the JSA nor the JLA, but the JAA or the Justice Alliance of America. Aside from this one-shot, the universe has yet to show up again, but a similar universe (also called Earth-D) in the Justice League Infinity miniseries. This appearance does have some fairly major differences from the Earth-D proper and with its adjacent nature to the Timmverse, I am choosing to dub this variation Earth-12-D that I may revisit in the future.
As mentioned above, this universe’s main defining trait is its racially diverse cast. This can be seen in Supergirl and Superman’s darker complexion giving them the appearance of African Americans, although they’re not from Africa or America but rather Krypton. Another major difference is in the relationships of major heroes, Hawkman and Hawkgirl aren’t reincarnated soul-mates but rather siblings and likewise Superman and Supergirl aren’t cousins but a married couple. Superman and Supergirl are from Krypton, but they lived very full lives before the planet’s destruction and were even heroes on the planet, leading them to be the chosen representatives to be saved from the planet’s destruction. Aside from their altered origin and relationship status, they seem very similar to their Earth-0 counterparts in personality, powers, and morality.
As with all my Supergirl in the Multiverse posts, this is my own artwork. Supergirl of Earth-D is standing in the lower left corner with her hands on her hips and looking up. Behind her is the meeting table of the JAA and in the top right corner is a motif of Supergirl’s S symbol with a D on top of it.
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.
After Cyborg accidentally unleashed a techno-virus upon Earth the world and all it’s super heroes. This virus, initially thought to just be the anti-life equation, would later be revealed to be the product of a eldritch being from an adjacent dimension who sought to destroy the universe. All that is just to say this is the zombie universe. The DC answer to Marvel vs. Zombies that came out about a decade after the pop culture zombie craze, and in my opinion it’s one of the best zombie stories I’ve read. The series was told in 3 parts and a couple spin-offs and by the end of it pretty much all the DC universe has been exposed to the virus and there are quite a lot of interesting story moments that show characters in wildly different roles than they take in the normal DC universe as well as intense stakes where characters you don’t expect to fall, fall.
For the most part, many hero’s share their origins with their respective earth-0 counterparts and this Elseworld’s tale seems to present this as a story spinning out from the current day earth-0. Supergirl is a bit different however, not showing up until part 3: War of the Undead Gods, we see that Kara Zor-El wasn’t sent to earth but instead sent to New Genesis. Zor-El, Alura, and Kara all lived in Kandor and when the planet was meeting with destruction Zor-El had a similar idea to his brother but instead of sending his child to live with Earth primitives, he chose to send his child to live with other powerful beings on the planet of the New Gods. Unfortunately for Kara, when she landed on New Genesis it had already fallen to the techno-virus and she soon fell as well and became a fierce foe with both Kryptonian powers and zombie rage. I will also mention that a Supergirl shows up in issue 5 of the original miniseries but because of the origin shown in War of the Undead Gods this could not have been the same Supergirl. More than likely this was an editorial oversight since she just showed up in an wider hero shot, but it could be read as that was the Matrix Supergirl who perhaps fell in the initial zombie attack and that’s why she never showed up again in later stories.
As with all my Supergirl in the Multiverse posts, this is my own artwork. The zombified Supergirl of Earth-55 is reaching towards the viewer witha crazed look on her face. The overall design has rough and aggressive pencil lines throughout. The top right features a motif of the Supergirl S with a 55 on it.
Long time readers may recall my original Supergirl Trading Cards post, and at the end of that post I mentioned that if I got enough new Supergirl trading cards I would do a part 2. Now with an additional 5 cards in my collection I figure now is a great time to show an updated look at my Supergirl card collection. Much like last time I’ll show the cards, talk about where I got them, and mention any other thoughts I have on each card.
Both this and the next card I’ll show are from the DC OverPower Card Game. While OverPower started in 1995, it would be 1996 before DC characters were added to the game. Much like the VS System I talked about last time, I’ve never played this card game and I have no idea how it works. What I do know however is that I found this card in a box full of a bunch of other superhero cards that were all 5 cents each so I can’t imagine they’re particularly popular. The card being called “Telekinetic Shield” is a good reminder that this Supergirl is not Kryptonian and instead a sort of psychic goo being. I don’t recognize the art from anything specific and I would guess it’s original. I don’t see the artist specifically called out but there do seem to be some signatures that read “SAI” and a second one that I’m unable to decipher.
Here we have another OverPower card this one being “Levitation”. If I recall correctly, this may also be a not to the Matrix Supergirl who uses her psychic power to levitate as opposed to flying but I could be remembering that incorrectly. The effect of this card reads “No Universe cards may be played against Supergirl for the remainder of battle.” This got me curious as to what that means. Universe cards sound like they mean business so being immune for the rest of the battle seems pretty good. After looking into it, it does seem like Universe cards are pretty powerful and it seems like both of these cards are Special cards that can be used with their respective hero cards in what I can only assume is this games version of attacking. Once again this card has the same 2 signatures but no specific artist names listed.
Moving from one dead card game to another, we now get what I’m pretty sure is Cir-El’s only official piece of merchandise. Cir-El was the main universe Supergirl for about a year in 2003 which was perfect timing for her to get a card in the Team Superman set of VS System. Comparing this card to the Kara Zor-El Supergirl covered last time, Cir-El seems to come in a bit under in regards to power level which lines up with her being only half Kryptonian as opposed to full blooded. “Daughter of Tomorrow” is a really good moniker for Supergirl that I don’t know if I’ve seen outside of this card but I might start implementing it some in my writing. “The product of an alternate timeline created by the Futuresmiths, Cir-El is the daughter of Superman and Lois Lane.” Really is the best way to describe this version of Supergirl and in such a brief sentence too. The illustrator is listed here as Richard Friend who I’m not familiar with but they did a good job with the card.
This next item maybe doesn’t exactly count as a card, but it fits here better than anywhere else and I’m not sure when else to talk about it. This was included as part of a collection of artworks from a sort of book called “DC Comics: The New 52: The Poster Collection” this little book came with “40 removable posters” which I grabbed both the Supergirl and Nightwing “posters” from. These are sized more like postcards than posters and are on a sort of cardstock. Unlike the other cards covered today, this art is repurposed from the cover to Supergirl (vol. 6) #1 by Mahmud Asrar and Dave McCaig. I talked more about it in my Supergirl in the Multiverse Earth-52 post, but I’ve really grown on the New 52 costume and I think this poster is a great piece for my collection.
Last but not least, although it is the smallest card I have, this little card that came with a Wendy’s toy! I mentioned it in my Action Figure post, but what I didn’t mention was that I actually had this card already when I wrote up my first trading card post. Getting this card actually somewhat inspired me to make the first trading card blog entry, but somehow I forgot to include it. Nevertheless we’re here now and we can talk about this weird relic of specifically National City era Supergirl. If this card didn’t say it was from 2023 I would’ve guessed 2016 or 2017 because that was really the only time in comics where Supergirl operated in National City, although her story in I Saw Ma Hunkle Kissing Santa Claus also mentioned the city. Aside from the somewhat odd inclusion of National City (which is probably the best know home base for the girl of steel thanks to a certain 6 season show) the rest of the information presented here is standard Supergirl information. I do quite like the art (which is also a very 2017 costume for Supergirl) it’s got a nice cartoony pop but it doesn’t say who the artist is.
If you haven’t already, definitely check out my first Trading Card post, that entry had a lot more cards that came with figures as opposed to this more card game heavy entry. Also if you know who the artists are on the OverPower or Wendy’s cards please let me know so I can credit them properly. Finding out that the OverPower cards I have aren’t even the main character card definitely means I have more cards to track down. I also learned about HeroClix recently which is somewhere between trading cards and figures and I know Supergirl has at least a few of those. With all that being said, there is a very strong possibility of a part 3 coming at some point in the future so be on the lookout!
The space faring adventurer by the name of Tommy Tomorrow is a member of the Planeteers in the far off future of 2054. The Planeteers are a peace keeping operation that travels the galaxy helping those in need. Colonel Thomas Tomorrow and his compatriot Captain Brent Wood travel in their spaceship called the Space Ace. Tommy Tomorrow had many adventures as a backup feature in Action Comics starting with Action Comics #149. Tommy Tomorrow has shown up in various forms across different continuities but him being a part of DC ‘s science fiction corner and being a Planeteer is pretty consistent.
I was not able to read the entirety of Tommy Tomorrow’s appearances, but in what I could read (the stories collected in DC Finest: Science Fiction) the only Planeteers shown were Tommy, Brent and their un-named commander. It was implied that the Planeteers were a fairly wide organization and it’s safe to assume there are plenty other Planeteers. My idea for this additional Planeteer, Tori Tomorrow, is someone who looks up to Tommy, possibly a niece or cousin of either Tommy or Brent, who later in life joins the Planeteers and takes up the moniker of Tori Tomorrow after her idol.
As with all my Supergirl in the Multiverse posts, this is my own artwork. Tori Tomorrow is on the left side of the panel with a ray-gun held aloft. The bottom part of the panel has text reading “Join the Planeteers” in front of and behind Tori’s legs. The background features a space scene including space ships (one being the Space Ace). The top right corner has a purple and yellow circle representing the Planeteers with a 54 on top of it.
The Daring New Blog of Supergirl 