The Daring New Blog of Supergirl

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  • Supergirl: Bizarrogirl

    The Bizarrogirl arc ran through issues 53-57 of Supergirl (Vol. 5). All 5 issues of this story are written by Sterling Gates and Jamal Igle did penciling for the first 4 issues with Jon Sibal, John Dell, Richard Friend, and Marc Deering providing inks. Bernard Chang took over penciling and inking for issue 57. Blond, Jamie Grant, Jim Delvin, and Nei Ruffino all contributed to colorist duties and Jared K. Fletcher and Travis Lanham handled lettering. While the artist teams feel pretty loaded, the changing between the artists isn’t really noticeable or jarring reading through from what I could tell. Looking at after knowing the artists changed I can tell the differences but it doesn’t take away from the story. The story was released from June to October of 2010 and seems to Supergirl’s fresh start after the events of New Krypton. I haven’t really looked much into solicitations from books that came out before I was actively collecting, but I did notice something when I was doing my research this week and that was the fact that Bizarrogirl seems to have been planned out as a surprise antagonist. Generally comic books are solicited about 2 months in advance so when issue 52 of the series was on the shelves, issues 53 and 54 had already been solicited and when you look at the covers and synopses you see stuff like “[CLASSIFIED]” and “… when she finds out just who this thing is and where it’s from!” and the covers have fairly generic art with only Supergirl shown and Bizarrogirl doesn’t show her face on a cover until issue 55. I can’t speak for people who read this book as it was coming out, but I really like this approach and it helps build the mystery and suspense of who or what crashed in Centennial Park during the events of issue 53.

    As I mentioned before, this story takes place directly after the events of New Krypton (which I have not covered on the blog yet but I will at some point) and deals with a lot of the trauma and emotions Kara is facing after once again losing her home planet. Picking up on a storyline that had been introduced earlier in the run, Kara is living with Lana Lang who has moved to Metropolis and is working at the Daily Planet. Kara tells Lana she wants to put Kara and Supergirl behind her and wants to live as Linda, a normal human girl that isn’t a Superhero. Lana is supportive of her decision to start living life as Linda Lang, but worries about her putting away the cape for good. This worry is furthered when Metropolis is struck with a mysterious threat that has landed in a frozen crater in the middle of the city. Lana urges Kara to go and help face this threat but she refuses and instead goes and hides in her room that she has soundproofed to prevent her superhearing from picking up the sounds of the city. While Kara sits moping, Dr. Light and Gangbuster head out from S.T.A.R. Labs to investigate and are met with a monstrous backwards version of the girl of steel. The issue ends here on a cliffhanger and picks back up in the next issue with Jimmy Olsen on a motorcycle saving a kid on his way to get a photo of the new threat facing the city. Jimmy is able to get the photo and it automatically uploads to the Daily Planet servers before Jimmy is knocked unconscious and taken prisoner by Bizarrogirl. It is this picture that Lana sees at the Planet and she sends it to Kara with the message “A Bizarro with your face is tearing up the financial district”. Kara stil hesitates as she remembers the destruction of New Krypton, but she does eventually suit up and make her way over to encounter the Bizarro shaped threat to the city.

    I have taken the liberty to translate the Kryptonian text shown here for your reference: “Identity confirmed.” “Hello, Kara Zor El.” Nothing too crazy but it is a nice touch that Kara has a secret closet which she also had starting in Action Comics 279 in her room after being adopted by the Danvers. Speaking of references, this closet is full of them! Starting from the bottom left we have a brunette wig which is a classic Linda accessory, and a red headband which is a reference to Supergirl’s pre-Crisis costume. Above that is a Kryptonian Sunstone in a jar next to a small Eiffel Tower and behind that is a picture of what I assume is Kara and Cassie Sandsmark cleaning up after the events of Amazons Attack. There are 2 Daily Planet papers framed: “The Supergirl from Krypton” and “Why the World Doesn’t Need Supergirl” both of which have shown up previously in this title. Her costume and a selection of belts take up the center and behind it you can just barely see a spear that references her time on Themyscira. The right side is mostly obscured by Kara herself, but we can make out her Nightwing helmet that she wore when her and Power Girl were in Candor. A small Superman doll is shown on a middle shelf and unfortunately I can’t quite tell what that small framed object in the top right is. If I had to guess I would say it’s a piece of her ship that crashed to earth or possibly a small piece of New Krypton salvaged from it’s destruction.

    ADDENDUM: Thanks to a response from Sterling Gates on Bluesky, I do have confirmation that the framed photo is of Kara and Cassie, however it’s a picture of them catching King Shark not cleaning up from the Amazon’s Attack event as I thought. He has also clarified that the red and white framed item is a small piece of Alura’s uniform that she was shown wearing throughout the New Krypton saga.

    Supergirl and Bizarrogirl then have their first fight where we see Bizarrogirl being protective of her ship and gets very nervous when it gets hit with stray debris. It’s at this point we see Bizarrrogirl’s new power Solid Vision which is her own bizarro version of X-Ray Vision that turns whatever she looks at into solid metal which she uses on Supergirl. Thankfully Supergirl had trained with the Flash to learn how to vibrate her molecules to pass through the solid matter that Bizarrogirl had turned her into. With this element of surprise, Supergirl is able to get the upper hand and formulate a plan with Doctor Light to subdue Bizarrogirl. During their fight Supergirl hears of a thread to Bizarroworld, a “Godship”, that is coming to destroy their planet and Bizarrogirl was sent to earth as a refugee to save her. Using her light based powers, Dr. Hoshi uses the light of a K-Class star to depower her the same way a red sun would depower a Kryptonian. After Supergirl hears Dr. Hoshi’s plans for Bizarrogirl she starts to realize maybe she and her have more in common than just a blue skirt. Supergirl takes the currently unconscious Bizarrogirl and zooms back to her downed bizarrorocket and prepares the journey back to Bizarro-World.

    The pair arrive at Bizarro-World and Kara is baffled to see that it’s suffered intense destruction and has been nearly blown in half. After landing Bizarrogirl is met with a mob that’s furious at her for abandoning their world when the Godship came. Bizarro Lex Luthor (Him am bald, and bald men am the sexiest) informs the duo of the goings on of the planet while Bizarrogirl has been away before promptly getting eaten by a shout from the Godship. Bizarro No. 1 then joins them and takes them to his Fortress where he gives Supergirl a more specific rundown of the devastation of Htrae and Supergirl decides to fly off to the other side of the planet to take a closer look and confront the Godship head on.

    After finding out the Godship isn’t a ship at all and is in fact a giant alien life form, the girl of steel is promptly shot all the way through the planet back into Bizarro’s fortress. Supergirl, realizing she needs more manpower, works with Bizarro and Bizarrogirl to bring together an army. This army is Bizarro clones of all the citizens of New Krypton. These Bizarro-Kryptonians make a good attempt against the Godship but aren’t able to overpower it. Bizarrogirl now afraid runs from the fight and tries to get her rocket working again to once again leave the planet and run away.

    Supergirl soon finds her and has a nice long talk with her Bizarro reflection about how they’re not so different after all. This sequence not only helps Bizarrogirl return to the fight but also gives Kara a bit of introspection of herself. Kara helps Bizarrogirl see that even if she’s scared, she can still do a lot of good for the rest of her planet, something Lana was trying to tell Kara at the start of the story. Bizarrogirl now back in the fight, works with Supergirl and uses her apparently unique ability of Solid-Vision to finally put a stop to the Godship.

    They’ve saved the planet but Bizarrogirl has now seen to exiling herself because of the life she took while on Earth. Supergirl comes to talk to her and she gives Bizarrogirl some advice that also applies to herself: “[self-punishment] might never end…but if it does end, it will be because you look in a mirror and realized you’ve already punished yourself enough.” With that, Supergirl rockets away and heads back to Earth now with the newfound confidence to get back into the hero game back in Metropolis.

    I will readily say I’m not usually a fan of Bizarro stories and generally find them either boring or annoying. This story on the other hand, is not only a wonderful Bizarro story but also one of my favorite Supergirl stories of all time. The way Bizarrogirl is portrayed not as a dumb backwards clone of Supergirl but instead as a imperfect reflection really puts Bizarrogirl on a totally different level as an antagonist for the girl of steel and I think it’s really thanks to the writer. Sterling Gates had been on the title for a while at this point, starting in issue 34, but since then most of the issues he worked on were tie ins to the various chapters of the New Krypton Saga and this seemed to be the first arc that wasn’t tied to a crossover and stood on its own as a purely Supergirl story written by Gates, and his interpretation of Bizarrogirl is a great way to jump into a new status quo for Kara. Sterling Gates is pretty generally regarded as one of the best Supergirl writers and he’s definitely one of my favorites. The continuation of Supergirl post New Krypton is handled quite well in this story and the trauma Kara is going through feels real. Supergirl and Bizarrogirl’s dialogue throughout really helps explore these themes and helps Kara find out more about herself. Another thing I noticed on my most recent read through is sometimes instead of writing out full conversations there would just be little narration boxes that feel like diary entries or thoughts from Kara. We get messages like “It must’ve taken hours. Me charging her, her attacking the beast” and “so we talked once the crisis was over. She started thinking about her actions.” These breaks really help the pacing and make the story feel like it takes place over a period of time and not just a couple days.

    Something that I haven’t covered as part of these issues yet is the background plot with Cat Grant. Cat has been a persistent thorn in Supergirl’s side for a while now and was responsible for the front page article “Why the World Doesn’t Need a Supergirl”. Cat first shows up overhearing Lana on a phone call talking to Kara and would use this connection that she suspects to ask Lana for a favor at the end of the story. This would lead into the next story arc where Supergirl would work with Cat Grant against Toyman. Both the Bizarrogirl and Toyman stories are collected together in the Supergirl:Bizarrogirl TPB as well as Supergirl (Vol. 5) Annual 2. While the seeds of the Toyman story do get planted in these issues, it really feels like a different story which is why I haven’t covered it in this post.

    I think this book is definitely worth reading for any Supergirl fan. As I mentioned above it has been collected as a TPB with printings in 2011 and 2016, and the back issues probably aren’t too hard to get you hands on. The issues are also all on the DC Universe Infinite app with a standard subscription. The story does work as a sort of epilogue to New Krypton, but it stands on its own fairly well and does a good job at explaining what happened without overloading the reader with exposition.

    Thanks for reading along with me! If you’ve got any comments or suggestions for future posts feel free to send an email to daringnewblog@gmail.com and stay tuned for more adventures of the girl of steel.

  • Supergirl in the Multiverse: Earth-28

    As America was celebrating the end of WWII, the country and the Justice Society of America was suddenly attacked by a Parademon. This monster from the skies was barely able to be taken down by the JSA and during the conflict they suffered many casualties. Knowing now that mankind was not alone among the stars and the thought that more terrors may come from above, the world began to shift their ideas towards scientific advancement to be prepared for any further conflicts. It would be decades later before the world, now more equipped, would encounter these monsters again. The world would now be protected by a team of superheroes using mech suits and together they would defeat the threat and become the Justice Squadron.

    Supergirl does not show up in the pages of DC Mech and because of how severely the destruction of Krypton is shown, it doesn’t seem like any Kryptonians aside from Kal could have escaped to Earth. However the story does include a Bizarro character that was made by Lex creating a clone from Superman’s blood. With this in mind, I pulled together an idea based somewhat on the post-Crisis Matrix Supergirl and Lena Luthor II. The Matrix Supergirl was made by the pocket universe Lex and Lena II was the daughter of New Earth’s Lex so that’s the sort of relationship between L3-N4 and Lex. Lex-Corps Supergirl is meant to be a competitor to the Justice Squadron and seen more as Luthor’s own answer to protecting earth from extra-human threats.

    As with all of my Supergirl in the Multiverse posts this is my own artwork. A digital drawing laid out as almost a schematic for Supergirl’s mech suit. The top left reads “LexCorp presents Supergirl project: L3-N4.” On the left hand side there is a small depiction of Lena outside of her mech, a scale drawing of Lena and her mech, and Lena’s Lex-Corp logo that’s on both her suit and her mech. Below this is a text box that gives a short promotional dialogue about who Lena is. Most of the right half of the page is taken up with a drawing of Lena’s green and purple mech suit. The top right has a motif of Lena’s suit symbol with a 28 on top of it.

  • Smallville S3E22: Covenant or the (not) Supergirl episode

    Smallville S3E22: Covenant or the (not) Supergirl episode

    For this week I wanted to take a look at a Smallville character I lovingly like to call (not) Supergirl. Join me in my synopsis and thoughts about the 22nd episode of Smallville’s 3rd season.

    The episode opens at night in Smallville and we’re introduced to a naked blonde girl walking through the countryside where she obliterates a car before she arrives to the Kent farmhouse and tells Clark; “Hello, Clark. My name is Kara. I’m from Krypton.”

    Being the season finale of Smallville season 3, there’s a lot of plot dealing with Lex Luthor and Lionel Luthor that I won’t be covering too thoroughly and I’ll mostly focus on the Clark/Kara plot line from the episode. Kara tells Clark he shouldn’t interfere with other people, specifically referring to Lex but speaking of humans in general, before she takes Clark and they fly into the air to discuss Clark’s future and what he should be doing with his powers. Of course this being Smallville, Clark is astounded that she can fly but Kara reassures him that he can’t fly “yet” alluding to him later gaining the power of flight as Superman.

    It’s at this point we realize that Kara knows quite a lot about Clark’s alien past, knowing his Kryptonian name – Kal-El – the name of his birth planet – Krypton – and the name of his father – Jor-El. The pair go to the Kawatche caves where Clark notices a new crack in the cave walls where it seems Kara has been the last 14 years since Clark landed along with the meteor shower. Clark, as well as the viewer, at this point does start to feel like this may truly be another Kryptonian. While Clark seems to be on board, Jonathan and Martha are still somewhat skeptical and mention she may just be another run-of-the-mill meteor freak or possibly sent by Professor Swann. Kara then mentions the covenant that Jonathan made with Jor-El at the start of the season, Jonathan would gain Kryptonian powers to be able to return Clark to Smallville with the understanding that Clark would one day have to return to Jor-El. Kara seems to be implying that now is when Jor-El gets Clark back.

    Kara, using her super senses, realizes someone is listening in to their conversation and zooms out to confront the man and the confrontation results in her vaporizing a second car so far in this episode. Jonathan then tries to get to the bottom of things on his own by taking a tea cup Kara used to Chloe Sullivan. Jonathan is hoping Chloe will have a way to track the fingerprints to see just who Kara really is. We then cut to a scene with Clark and Lana as Lana prepares to leave to go to Paris for the Summer. Lana notices Kara out in the field and asks who she is. Clark calls her his cousin from California which is a nod to Supergirl being Superman’s cousin in most iterations. Kara, after Lana leaves, tries to convince Clark to come with her and mentions that everyone on earth with betray and leave him but Clark stands his ground and says his home is in Smallville. The next few scenes show Clark seeing that Lex has a secret room in the mansion studying Clark and Lana talking with Lex before her flight convincing Clark that Kara was right about everyone betraying him.

    As Clark is talking to Kara saying he’s ready to go with her now, Chloe brings the fingerprint results to Jonathan saying they’re “extremely weird”. Jonathan confronts Clark and Kara in the Kawatche caves and informs them, and the audience, that Kara isn’t who she says she is but rather a girl named Lindsey Harrison who was thought dead after a tragic accident the day of the meteor shower. Trapped in the caves for the past 14 years Jor-El had awakened her and given her powers to convince Clark to join him in finally embracing his Kryptonian heritage. At this point Kara (Lindsey) is no longer useful to Jor-El and he vaporizes her and changes his tactic to threatening Jonathan to convince Clark to join his side. Clark does eventually give in and go into the wall and the season ends with Clark on Jor-El’s side, Jonathan injured in the caves, and Martha witnessing a Kryptonian symbol being burned into her field.

    Covenant was the 22nd episode of Smallville’s 3rd season and aired May 5th, 2004. Teleplay by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, story by Todd Slavkin and Darren Swimmer and directed by Greg Beeman. I think it’s also important to note Jeph Loeb is credited as “Consulting Producer”. Loeb worked on a lot of Smallville so it’s no surprise to see his name here but I do think it’s important to note that just a couple months before this episode aired, Superman/Batman #8 was released. Jeph Loeb wrote a lot of the Superman/Batman series but issue #8 and the next few issues after reintroduce the character of Kara Zor-El. The Kara in this episode doesn’t really share much with her comic contemporary, but the opening sequence of this episode does share some similarities with Kara’s first steps on earth from Superman/Batman #8. Kara being naked and destroying that car both seem very similar to the comic counterpart. If you’d like to learn more about the reintroduction of Kara Zor-El in the pages of Superman/Batman as well as the animated movie based on it, I wrote about both in a blog post a few weeks back (read it here).

    Kara, aside from being naked in her first scene, only wears this white skirt and tank top combo throughout the episode. I’m not positive where these clothes come from because it doesn’t really seem like Martha Kent’s style and I also feel like this episode takes place over a few days but she’s only seen in this outfit which seems like a weird choice but I guess maybe Kryptonians don’t change clothes as often as the rest of us. Speaking of, the white flowing fabrics do seem somewhat reminiscent of the Kryptonian wear from the Superman movies from the 70s and 80s and somewhat like what the Argo citizens wear in the 1984 Supergirl movie. I don’t necessarily think this is a reference and probably just the creative minds behind the episode, and Jor-El, trying to portray this character as pure or angelic to help convince the viewers, and Clark, that she can be trusted.

    Adrianne Palicki plays Kara/Lindsey Harrison in this episode and I think she does great with the character as she was written. I personally don’t think this character makes for the best Supergirl, but it does build on some of the early Smallville specific mythology of Superman that had been shown in the series thus far. I’m not super familiar with Palicki’s other work but I would like to note she was tied to 2 other DC shows, neither of which made it past a pilot: Aquaman (2006) and Wonder Woman (2011). While I like the mythology of Smallville with the Kawatche caves and the like and I do feel that this character fits into that nicely, I much prefer the Supergirl character that gets introduced later in season 7 of this show.

    As a whole I think the episode is pretty solid and an enjoyable watch, however it doesn’t really seem to have the high stakes that season finales normally go for. Part of this boils down to the Lex and Lionel conflicts being one of the major focuses of the season and taking up a lot of the episode runtime, and many of the cliffhanger and high stakes scenes are saved until a montage in the last few minutes of the episode that show 3 main characters in possibly fatal scenarios, Lionel Luthor in prison, and Clark completely under Jor-El’s control. When I was initially considering covering this episode for the blog I remembered it as a middle of the season episode and was baffled when I opened up my season 3 box set and saw it was the finale. If Kara had been introduced a few episodes prior or even if some of the plots and elements of the episode were split into 2 it would’ve given the character a bit more time to shine and we possibly could’ve gotten some more interactions with her and Clark as she shows him more Kryptonian powers and possibly tell him more about Krypton itself. As it stands however, Kara seems much less like a character that interacts with the cast and more like a tool and voice piece used by Jor-El to manipulate Clark away from Smallville into being Kal-El who will rule the planet.

    Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this post and have any ideas for more stories to cover in the future feel free to email me at blogofsupergirl@gmail.com

  • Supergirl in the Multiverse: Earth-27

    A fitting companion to last week’s Funny Animal Universe, we fly over to Earth-27, home to the anthropomorphic dinosaur heroes called The Jurassic League. The Jurassic League is fairly new, appearing in a self titled miniseries back in 2022 and also showing up briefly as the focus of a Booster Gold story in Batman the Brave and The Bold. Earth-27’s main branch from Earth-0 seems to be the evolution of some of the dinosaurs and the introduction of metagenes in some of these anthropomorphically evolved beasts. However, Earth-27 still has humans, at least a prehistoric version, as well as dinosaurs that have not yet evolved like their League contemporaries. While being mostly unmapped, the team has joined together to face of the Apokalips threat that is Darklyoseid and his Legion of Doomsauria. The leader of the Jurassic League is the Kryptonian brachiosaur that was hatched and raised on earth by humans, Supersaur.

    With the relative freshness of this world, we are left without a Supergirl counterpart at this point but because of Supersaur’s similarities to the Earth-0 Superman, a potential for a young female companion is perfectly reasonable. Perhaps a chunk of Krypton-27 survived, a city named Aaargho, and as Aaargho begins to die off a scientist spots Earth through a super telescope and sees another Kryptonian dinosaur and decides that while maybe Aaargho might not live, his young hatchling daughter can. Earth is now home to a new hero! The young Supersaur-girl!

    As with all my Supergirl in the Multiverse posts this is my own art. A drawing that depicts Supersaur-girl (a blue anthropomorphic brachiosaurus wearing a red fur skirt) flying through a dense wooded jungle. A motif of the Supersaur symbol is in the top right with a number 27 on top of it.

  • Supergirl Surprise 3: Supergirl Vol. 6 #4

    Welcome back to another installment of Supergirl Surprise! This infrequent series is where I randomly select a single Supergirl issue from my collection and briefly go over the story and my thoughts. This time out we’re looking at Supergirl (Vol. 6) issue #4. The story is titled Escape and was written by Michael Green and Mike Johnson, Mahmud Asrar and Dave McCaig provided art, and we have Rob Leigh on letters. This book has a cover date of February 2012 and sits very early in Supergirl reintroduction during the New 52 era.

    Picking up right where the book left off in issue 3, our hero has been captured by Tycho aboard his space station and is currently being held prisoner thanks to the use of Kryptonite found by Tycho’s men along with Kara’s spaceship. One of Tycho’s men, Jacobs, seeing now that his boss isn’t who he thought breaks Supergirl out of her containment and attempts to get her to safety but in their daring escape Tycho has Jacobs killed.

    Now furious and slowly regaining her powers, Kara quickly retrieves her suit and begins to, literally, knock some heads. just when Supergirl is powered and ready to take out Tycho, he pulls out a red crystal retrieved from Kara’s pod. She immediately recognizes it as a Kryptonian Sunstone, used to store data and Kara suspects it’s a message from her father. Out of options and unable to directly attack her foe without risk of damaging the Sunstone, Supergirl uses some of her skills that Tycho seems unaware of.

    Using a combination of X-ray and Heat vision, Supergirl blasts a hole through the station to the central core. This both allows enough distraction for Supergirl to retrieve the Sunstone and for Tycho’s multi-billion dollar space station to get destroyed.

    I do like the inclusion of this note mentioning the crew’s safety as it shows Supergirl having compassion for humans even so new to the planet. She of course has no kindness for the billionaire that tried to dissect her moments ago.

    The issue ends with a tease for stories to come. Tycho has miraculously survived the destruction of the station by being merged with The Brain, a gelatinous creature that Tycho had fighting Supergirl in the previous issue. Not only has Tycho survived, but one of his employees has some of Supergirl’s blood on it from when she was in a weakened state giving Tycho everything he was after.

    I’m not a huge fan of everything done with the girl of steel during the New 52, but I do like their approach in making her a drastically separate character from Superman and giving her some brand new villains to fight. A villain like Tycho isn’t anything groundbreaking but it is nice to see an evil billionaire scientist that’s strictly a Supergirl villain and not just Lex Luthor or someone related to the bald baddie. New 52 remains a bit of a blind spot for me in regards to Supergirl lore but I have made an effort in recent weeks to read through the title and the beginnings of Kara seeing human life as important both in Jacobs and the rest of Tycho’s crew. One of my main beefs with this story is Supergirl not knowing any human languages. This is an interesting concept for sure but it does seem to take a while for her to be able to communicate with anyone else in her book.

    That’s all for the comic breakdown, but I did see this ad for a Phantom Menace LEGO set in the back and that’s particularly exciting. I’m a huge LEGO fan and a pretty firm supporter of Episode I. That will be all for this time out though. Stay on the look out for more Supergirl Surprise entries and feel free to write in with any comments or suggestions at daringnewblog@gmail.com!