Author: Kara Lovett

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.

In more recent years and most notably in the Supergirl CBS/CW television show, the general consensus of the Supergirl and Superman relationship is that Supergirl is technically older than Superman. Due to shenanigans in her trip to earth from Krypton proper or Argo (depending on the exact continuity) Kara Zor-El was trapped in suspended animation while Kal-El grew up on Earth and became Superman. With this idea in mind, I’ve been fascinated by the idea of a story where Kara did land on earth before Kal and how that would effect their relationship and the heroic community as a whole. It does seem like we will have some amount of this story told in the upcoming Supergirl: Survive Elseworlds tale, but I was quite surprised to find a story like this had already been told back in the 60s by Leo Dorfman and Jim Mooney across 2 issues of Action Comics in stories titled “How Superwoman Trained Superboy!” and “The Duel Between Superwoman and Superboy!”

Action Comics #332 begins this imaginary tale in what is essentially a story of Jor-El’s family and Zor-El’s family switching places. The first few pages of this issue play out similarly to the origins of Superman and Supergirl that we’ve all come to know aside from the pair swapping places. We see Zor-El as a resident of Kryptonopolis and he is pleading with the science council to take action in regards to the coming destruction of the planet and Jor-El is instead telling his brother about the dome he plns to install over his home city of Argo. It is also shown that Kara had already been born before the destruction of Krypton but Jor-El had yet to meet Lara or even think of having a son named Kal-El. We get a handful of scenes on Krypton where we see the El brothers in swapped positions but it’s during the destruction of the planet where we start seeing some more prominent differences.

When Zor-El is loading his young child into the rocket to save her, he remembers an enlarging ray he had invented which he turns on the rocket which enlarges it to allow for himself and Allura to also be rocketed to safety. Zor-El and his family land in the outskirts of Smallville and begin their lives as the Zorelle’s living as farmers in the small town and would secretly use their powers to help their fellow citizens until suddenly they stumbled upon a chunk of gold Kryptonite.

The Gold-K of course took away the powers of Zor-El and Allura, but thankfully their young daughter was safely away and didn’t lose her powers. Kara, using the alias Carole, would grow up with human parents and in her teen years would patrol Smallville as Supergirl just like Superman of our world did when he was Superboy. Carole would later move to Metropolis after her parents died of old age and would take on the mantle of Superwoman while working as a private investigator.

Around this time we would see Jor-El’s Argo City facing the same fate of Kryptonite poisoning and we see Jor-El send his teenage son, Kal-El, off to earth to safety. Kal lands on earth in a scene that mirrors the origin of Supergirl we saw in Action 252 with the roles of Supergirl and Superman swapped with Superboy and Superwoman.

Superwoman takes Kal to Midvale Orphanage where he adopts a blond wig and the name Cal Ellis. We get a few scenes of Cal at Midvale Orphanage and we see him interact with Dick Wilson (who would later be Dick Malverne) in both a swimming scene, as well as a scene that mirrors one from Action 256, where Cal has forgotten to write a paper and Dick sees that his paper is undone, but Cal super-speed writes his paper and Dick asks him about it and the same excuse of “completed paper in drawer” was used.

We get a few scenes of Superboy being clumsy and misusing his powers before an experiment goes wrong and he exposes himself to Gold-K, or so Superwoman thinks. Before the issue ends, Superboy throws the supposed Gold-K into the sky and reveals that it was all a ploy to get Superwoman off his back.

Issue 333 opens with a bit of a recap and we also get a few more scenes of Superboy acting up before the fake Gold-K scene. We then cut to the Orphanage and Cal trying to get adopted and he ruins 2 other orphans chances of getting adopted before he is taken in by a scientist named Dr Kean. Dr. Kean has a penthouse laboratory which Cal quickly puts to use as Superboy who is putting together a device to free the Phantom Zone criminals.

At this point, Superwoman tells Superboy about a pair of Zoners named Van-Dal, the worst juvenile delinquent on Krypton, and his mother Tir-An. Superboy know having knowledge of these fiends only makes him more eager to get them to earth to help him rid Superwoman from his life. Superwoman returns to her office where she tells Jimmy Olsen of a plan to take care of Superboy once and for all. It is at this point that Carole reveals to her associate that she is in fact the hero Superwoman. Superboy gets his machine working and frees the Zoners who quickly get to work on putting together a potion that would remove their weakness to Kryptonite. While Superboy initially refuses to drink the concoction, after seeing Van-Dal drink it he finally agrees.

To drink the potion he has to turn off his Protecto-Belt and when he does so, Tir-An takes off her mask and reveals she was Superwoman the whole time and it was all a ploy to de-activate his belt and remove his powers temporarily with Red-Kryptonite that was in the cup with the Kryptonite cure. The Red-K didn’t affect Van-Dal because he too was a disguise, this time with Jimmy Olsen under the mask.

It’s at this point the plot gets a bit confusing, at least to me. Superboy is powerless under the effects of the Red-K, so Jimmy punches him out. Then suddenly, even though the effects of the Red-K should still be in effect, Superboy gets his powers back, but they keep going on and off and eventually he is subjected to Gold-K which permanently removes his powers. And to really put a bummer ending on this story, Superwoman hypnotizes the now powerless Kal-El into forgetting everything and she drips him off at an orphanage as a full amnesiac.

I did really enjoy this story and I felt like it really explored how the Silver Age Superman and Supergirl switching places could have played out. There are a lot of references to other stories that I mentioned here, especially the stuff with Dick Malverne that I really enjoyed. They felt like little Easter eggs of Supergirl stories from her previous years in action comics. I will say I wish they would’ve explored Lex Luthor a bit more, he’s shown briefly as a non-villainous friend of Carole and I would’ve loved to see how that would affect Lena, since she and her parents wouldn’t have had to change their name after Lex’s turn to evil deeds. This also confirms that Lex Luthor was only ever a villain because of the actions of Clark “Superboy” Kent and I think that’s fascinating. Also Superwoman placing Cal into Midvale Orphanage felt like readers finally getting justice for Kal doing the same thing to Linda all those years before. Unlike the last story I covered from Supergirl’s action comics back-ups (The Survival Zone Saga), I really think 2 issues is perfectly fine to tell this imaginary story and I wasn’t really itching for more. This wasn’t exactly what I was after in regards to a Kara landing on earth before Kal, but it was a pretty enjoyable story that made Kal-El a pretty bad person all told.