This universe has been know by many names, using both 47 and 72 as numerical values and also existing as part of the Dreamworld, to me it is best described as Earth-Prez. Starting with a very short lived series starting in 1972, Prez, we are introduced to a world that, soon after amendment 26 allowed 18 year-olds to vote, has dropped the legal age to run for presidency to the age of 18. The main character we follow in this universe is President Prez Rickards who was know for being adept at fixing clocks, wanting to help bring peace, and being elected as president of the united states when he was just 18. The universe has only come up a few times since the initial Prez series, but in more recent years the “Love Syndicate” has also been included along with Prez and it’s generally seen as a 70s era earth.
In 2015, as part of the DC You initiative, Prez got a reimagining. This series is set in the near future of 2048, and follows the 18 year old Beth Ross. Beth stumbles into the presidency after a viral video of hers leaks and the voting (that takes place on twitter in the year 2048) pushes her to victory as a write in candidate. Beth starts her presidency by going around the world and apologizing to other countries on the behalf of her predecessors and spends most her time as president trying to clean up everyone else’s messes and tries her best to work for those in need and against those in power.
As with all my Supergirl in the Multiverse posts, this is my own artwork. Beth Ross is seated at her presidential desk in the White House Oval Office. Beth has her feet up on her desk while drinking a slushie and looking at her phone. Her desk also has an overflowing wastebin beside it and a stack of paper on top of it. The top right has a motif of the Prez logo with a 47 on top of it.
One of my favorite parts of the CBS/CW Supergirl show was that they seemed to always have a Thanksgiving episode and season 1 is no exception. This episode does seem to hit a lot earlier than I remembered however, just being the 5th in the series, but it is pretty important in the lore since it is the first episode that really explores Helen Slater as Eliza Danvers.
This episode opens with Supergirl in the DEO facing off against a “Lady-Beast” that had broken out of custody. After subduing the beast, we then head back to Kara’s loft where her and Alex discuss that their mother, Eliza, is coming into town for Thanksgiving. The plot of this episode can mostly be broken down to the Kara plot and the Supergirl plot, Kara’s plot focuses on her hosting a Thanksgiving get together at her apartment and the Supergirl plot focuses on Livewire.
Getting into Livewire first; Leslie Willis was a character first introduced in Superman the Animated Series before later showing up in comics and other external media often associated with the Superman family of characters. This version of the character is a radio host for CatCo who has her own show “Leslie Willis in the Morning” and we get to know her soon into the episode where she talks about Supergirl in a rather crude manor. Leslie talks about her distaste for Supergirl’s costume, insinuates that no one wants to be with her, and even suggests she might be a lesbian. Cat Grant, after hearing this broadcast, demotes her from radio host to traffic copter. Unfortunately her first night out in the traffic copter was during a storm. Nearly crashing, Supergirl rushes in to same Leslie and the pilot from an untimely death, but in the process Supergirl and Willis get struck by lightning. This unfortunate accident first puts Leslie in a coma before she awakens to having power over electricity.
Taking a quick detour over to the Kara plot, We’ve already met Eliza who has come into the city for the holiday, but after hearing that her best friend doesn’t have any plans, Kara too invites Winn Schott. Kara also tries to invite James Olsen to the get together but he has already made plans to spend the Holiday out of town with Lucy Lane. Alex is convinced that Eliza will be furious at Kara for taking up the role of Supergirl, and she’s partially right, but Eliza is instead mad at Alex for “allowing” Kara to do so. Thanksgiving turns into Eliza and Alex having a lot of tension between them, Kara trying to help everyone play nice, and Winn unfortunately being caught in the middle of everything just doing his best to be a good guest. It creates a pretty hilarious scene that is tragically interupted by James giving Kara a call right when Winn was about to tell everyone what he was thankful for. Thanksgiving devolves into a shouting match between Alex and Eliza and Winn leaving early without any food.
An emergency at CatCo brings Kara back to the office, where Cat is struggling with some electrical issues that are soon revealed to be Livewire. Cat tells Kara to go fetch Security which gives her a perfect opportunity to change into the girl of steel and start duking it out with Willis. With the help of Hank Henshaw, Supergirl now has a trap she can use in her next face off with Livewire. Teaming up with Cat, and her Livewire trap, Supergirl heads out for a final faceoff with Livewire. Somehow, Kara’s battle cry at the start is “shut up you mean girl” which does nothing to strike fear into her foe, but thankfully Supergirl is still able to save the day even without her trap, instead opting to use water to take out the electrical menace.
After storming out before, Alex returns to Kara’s apartment to make sure Eliza is still safe with the city-wide blackout. This leads to a pretty great Alex and Eliza scene where Eliza does tell her daughter she’s proud of her, and the pair seem to be on better terms than they were before. Kara, after dealing with Livewire, finds Winn at work the next day and gives him an impressive amount of Thanksgiving leftovers, and Winn reveals that what he is thankful for is Kara. The episode ends with Eliza changing her stance a bit on her approach to mothering, and gives Kara a stern bit of criticism, and then reveals to both the girls that their father, Jeremiah, was also a member of the DEO working with Hank Henshaw.
As I mentioned up top, it’s great to see so much of Helen Slater in this episode. She is of course the first person to bring the Girl of Steel to life when she stared as the titular character in Supergirl (1984) and her as Supergirl’s adoptive mother is a great way to pass the torch. We get a lot of scenes with her in this episode both during the Thanksgiving holiday as well as some flashback scenes where we also get to see more of Dean Cain’s Jeremiah Danvers. I feel like Slater does a wonderful job as these girl’s mother and really shows how hard it can be to be a mother and that parents can sometimes make the wrong decisions. Eliza would continue on in the show and this was a great place for the audience to learn more about her. Getting more backstory about Jeremiah Danvers and his role at the DEO and opening a mystery about Hank Henshaw’s possible role in his untimely death also generates intrigue going further into the season.
Also, since this is Supergirl season 1, we have some great and iconic Cat Grant scenes delivered by Calista Flockhart. Hank Henshaw shows up at CatCo after the Livewire attack and Cat mistakenly refers to him as “Mulder” which is of course a reference to The X Files. Cat learns in this episode that Kara is adopted and this opens the door for Cat to start learning more about Kara’s personal life. There are a couple instances in this episode that point towards Cat knowing that Kara is Supergirl, especially when she sends her away to fetch security after the Livewire attack or when mentioning to Kara that she’d like to talk with Supergirl and if she can go ask the FBI if they can contact her. A plot line later this season does explore Cat thinking that Kara is Supergirl but she is able to be mislead thanks to the Martian Manhunter’s help, although in season 2 it is revealed that Cat knows that Kara is Supergirl.
I’ve been rewatching Supergirl over the past couple weeks after finding a complete series dvd box set and I’ve been having a lot of fun and knew I would have to do a Thanksgiving post for this episode, and perhaps I’ll make it a tradition to do so every year with the show’s other Thanksgiving episodes so you have something to look forward to next year!
Earth-46 is the last of the “New 52” universes introduced alongside the New 52 DC Reboot to get “mapped”. The idea of “mapping” a universe is an in universe term for exploration of a universe and exploration of differences from the prime universe. Batman Gargoyle of Gotham, a story that started in 2023, is created, written, and illustrated by Rafael Grampa. This story shows Batman as the orphaned child of Thomas and Martha Wayne, who takes up the mantle of Batman to protect others from the same fate. This all seems pretty similar to the main DC Universe and the only real difference seems to be that this Batman seems to have a much different array of baddies to go up against like Doctor Geist who seems to be the primary antagonist of the miniseries.
While doing this series I have encountered a handful of universes that are rather under-developed or “unmapped”. Universes like 18, 31, 43, and 44 all have very few appearances, but the have a very clear premise like Wild West, Pirate, Vampire, and Metal Men. Earth-46 on the other hand has a single (currently unfinished) story associated with it, and this story seems to not stray very far from the Earth-0 histories. This leaves me with significantly less to work with when creating a Supergirl representative. While there were a couple characters in the universe I considered pursuing as representatives of the Supergirl role, none of them really fit in my opinion. I also get the feeling that this universe would not have a Superman and as such wouldn’t have a Supergirl, although stories like Batman Red Rain, and Batman Gotham by Gaslight also have that sort of vibe when only looking at the first entry. I set out this year with a specific goal in mind and I plan to follow through, so for this universe I have taken some of Grampa’s design elements in his Batman and applied them to a Supergirl, although as the story advances and expands, I may revisit the universe someday.
As with all my Supergirl in the Multiverse posts, this is my own artwork. Supergirl-46 is flying above a fog ridden city. In her left hand she is stopping an unidentified object crashing in from the top right. She is illuminated from below and a helicopter can be seen behind her. The top right has a motif of Supergirl’s symbol with a 46 on top of it.
Spurred on mostly by a friend texting me “Kara name everyone at the Thanksgiving dinner table please” after reading the most recent issue of Supergirl, I decided to take a look at the whole guest list and share with anyone else who may be confused by some of the invites. While most of the table is filled up with characters that had appeared in the past few issues, there are a couple interesting choices Sophie Campbell made that I’d love to go a bit more in depth on.
For anyone just wanting names for each of these guests I’ll go through them first here, but if you want to know more about each of them keep reading! Starting with all the animals down below, Kandy is the bunny, Krypto is the dog, Streaky is the cat, and Titano (Tinytano now) is the small gorilla. Starting in the bottom left and going clockwise; Siohban Smythe (SIlver Banshee), Conner Kent (Superboy), Lena Luthor, Kara Danvers (Supergirl), Lee Serrano, Leegra (Princess Shark), Eliza Danvers, Jeremiah Danvers, Luna Lustrum, Lesla-Lar (Luminary), Kal-El (Superman), Lois Lane, and finally Cassie Sandsmark (Wonder Girl).
Kandy the Super-Bunny is one of the more recent additions to Supergirl lore. She first appeared in Supergirl (Vol. 8) #1 just a few months back. Kandy is the animal companion to Luminary, sort of Lesla’s version of Streaky the Super-Cat. She is also from Kandor so when she grew to full size and came to earth with Lesla she too gained powers normal to any Kryptonian living under a yellow sun.
Krypto has a much more storied history going all the way back to 1955 in the pages of Adventure Comics #210. Krypto was introduced as the dog companion to Superboy and would serve as Kal-El’s super-pet companion, and showed up alongside the man of steel last summer in the Superman movie from DC Studios. While Krypto has shown up along side Supergirl in numerous stories since her time in Action Comics, he was generally more associated with Superman than with Supergirl. The Woman of Tomorrow mini series showed Supergirl and Krypto as close companions and it seems like the general public links the Super-Dog more with Supergirl than with Superman these days. A few years before Woman of Tomorrow, during the vol. 7 run of Supergirl, Superman has Krypto join Kara in her space faring quest starting with issue 21 and this seems to be the start of the Supergirl/Super-Dog team that we’ve come to know.
Streaky the Super-Cat is one of the oldest character’s shown in this image as his stories go all the way back to Action Comics #261 just a few month’s after Supergirl’s debut. As opposed to Krypto, Streaky has always been paired with the maid of might. He has shown up more recently alongside Power Girl in her most recent ongoing, but with Supergirl’s new title the orange cat is back in Midvale where his stories began. If you’d like to learn more of Streaky’s history I did a whole post about him a few months ago you can read here.
Titano, while looking like an ape in most appearances, is actually a genetically modified chimpanzee that can shoot kryptonite beams from his eyes. He has most often been an antagonist to Superman and has made several appearances both in main DC continuity and in elseworlds titles. Titano, or Tinytano as he is now called, didn’t start his heroic deeds until very recently durring the events of the current Supergirl title. He was shrunken down and dubbed “Tinytano” in issue #3 of the series.
Moving to the cast at the main table we start to see representatives from a wide array of Supergirl stories including our first guest; Siobhan Smythe. Siobhan is the New 52 version of the Silver Banshee and was a major supporting character in Supergirl’s life as she got acclimated to Earth. Silver Banshee as a character first appeared in Action Comics #595, however this was Siobhan McDougal who seems a bit more villainous, whereas Siobhan Smythe generally tries to help Supergirl while keeping her Banshee side more at bay. She has shown up more recently alongside her current boyfriend, Jimmy Olsen, in the most recent Superman titles. Siobhan here clearly represents the New 52 era of Supergirl and we’ll see plenty of other time periods represented coming up.
Superboy, the Kon-El version at least, first appeared in Adventures of Superman #500. Kon is the clone of Superman and Lex Luthor and has been a member of Young Justice and Teen Titans. Him and Supergirl haven’t had many adventures together but I feel like the above panel from the “House of Kent” storyline sums up their relationship fairly well and is their first meeting after Kon’s reintroduction to the main DC Universe after having been taken out during the New 52 relaunch when he was replaced with a similar Superboy. Superboy did have a few adventures with the Linda Danvers/Matrix Supergirl alongside Young Justice, so he could sort of be a representative of that era of Supergirl’s life but that wasn’t really Kara so it probably doesn’t count.
Lena Luthor, or more specifically Lena Luthor II, is the daughter of Lex Luthor and she first appeared (as a baby) in Superman (Vol. 2) #131 before she was soon sent into the future and grew up in the clutches of Brainiac 13 during the events of Superman Y2K. Lena was fairly absent from comics for the next 2 decades until she showed up in Superman (Vol. 6) #7 where she was shown working at Supercorp. She would have some interactions during this time with Supergirl and is now living in Midvale after seeing her father once again be way more evil than she prefers. While she isn’t the same Lena Luthor that showed up in silver age comics (that was Lena Thorul that I talked about here) it does seem like she could represent that period of Supergirl’s life as well as being her current best friend.
I’ll skip talking about Supergirl herself because I figure you probably have a good idea about who she is. Next up is Lee Serrano who was probably my favorite to see here. Lee is a non-binary character introduced in Supergirl (vol. 7) #19, (I talked about it during pride month in this post) who is representing the Rebirth era of DC comics, although they really haven’t shown up much aside from the one story.
Princess Shark is another very recent addition to Supergirl’s mythos. She showed up in the debut issue of the current series but we only just find out more about her history in this very issue so you should go and read that if you haven’t already!
While the Danvers have been an important part of Supergirl’s life for quite a while, them being named “Jeremiah” and “Eliza” is a much more recent update. Jeremiah and Eliza Danvers are the names of Supergirl’s adoptive parents as shown in the CBS/CW show and in comics they first appeared as such in Superman/Wonder Woman #29 and are shown as scientists working at STAR Labs. They have been fairly regular members of the cast in the most recent Supergirl title.
Luna Lustrum is the newest character at this table having only just made her debut a few months ago in issue 4 of this series. Not much is known of her at this point however she is able to read auras of people and she seems friendly with the whole cast of main characters so I imagine she’ll stick around for a while.
Much like Supergirl herself, I feel like I don’t need to tell you who Superman and Lois Lane are they’ve been around in comics for nearly 90 years and have been staples of pop culture for nearly as long. I do think it’s weird that Superman showed up as Superman not Clark Kent here, especially seeing that he came with Lois Lane. It’s possible this is because of Lex doing that thing in Action Comics 1050 where he made it so that if anyone found out that Clark Kent was Superman they could suffer severe brain damage. This was done mostly as a plot point to make Superman have a secret identity again and hasn’t really been brought up since but if this is the reason we got Superman and not Clark I would give Sophie major props for her attention to continuity. I also like the fact that Clark, Lois, and Conner are all in Midvale for Thanksgiving, which seems to imply that Jon (their son who grew up in a volcano) is in charge of watching Otho and Osul (their children who grew up on a slave planet) and that fact is just hilarious to me. In all actuality all three of them probably are safely away in Smallville having a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner with Ma and Pa Kent.
Cassie Sandsmark, much like Lee Serrano, was a character I was overjoyed to see show up here. Cassie was Supergirl’s best friend in the pre-Flashpoint era of DC, and the pair had quite a few adventures together. Cassie is of course the second (or third if you count Diana) person to hold the title of Wonder Girl and she first showed up in Wonder Woman (Vol. 2) #105. Supergirl’s pre-Flashpoint origin has her living and training on Themyscira for a while soon after landing on earth which is most likely where the pair met. Their relationship seems to have become almost nonexistent since the New 52 reboot, so her being here is a great step to making the pair close friends once again. This friendship between Kara and Cassie (as well as Kara’s relationship with Stephanie Brown) is the main basis for my short lived Blonde Justice comic strip (that you can read in full on this page).
Thanksgiving was a pretty common occurrence on the Supergirl TV show and most seasons had a full episode dedicated to the holiday so I’m glad to see that tradition continue here. This issue was a great low stakes story that showed a lot of Supergirl’s history while letting all the cast get a great chance to sit back, relax, and have a wonderful day together. I hope this post gave you some good information about these characters and I hope you’ve been picking up and enjoying the Supergirl comic because I know I have. See you next time!
Earth-45 is a world without heroes, or at least it was. Clark Kent, Lois Lane, and Jimmy Olsen worked together to build a machine that can turn thoughts into real tangible things. They wanted to use this machine to create a hero for their world. Unfortunately soon after creating the machine their funding ran out and they sought out sponsors. Unfortunately Overcorp gained control over their machine and worked together to give people what they wanted; a brutal powerful antihero named Super-Doomsday. This brutal monster would work with Overcorp to eliminate crime and the result was the world pushed into a corporate dictatorship with Overcorp and their monster in charge.
Once again we are met with a universe without a Supergirl. My idea for this universe’s girl of steel is a successor to Super-Doomsday. Overcorp, after the raging success of their first hero, go about and create a follow-up, Super-Reign. Super-Reign is just as brutal and menacing and helps further push Overcorp into leaders of the world. While Super-Doomsday is of course a combination of Superman and his foe Doomsday, Super-Reign is likewise an amalgamation of Supergirl and one of her more brutal foes; Reign the Worldkiller.
As with all my Supergirl in the Multiverse posts, this is my own artwork. Super-Reign stands tall hoisting a large sword over her shoulder. There is a decimated landscape full of rubble and fog all around her. The top right features a motif of the Overcorp symbol with a 45 on top of it.
The Daring New Blog of Supergirl 