The Daring New Blog of Supergirl

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  • 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!

  • Supergirl in the Multiverse: Earth-26

    Earth-26, sometimes referred to as Earth-C is home to the funny animal characters that make up the Zoo Crew. Led by Captain Carrot, the Zoo Crew are citizens of a world without humans and fully inhabited by anthropomorphic animals. The 6 members of the zoo crew were all affected by a fragment of a meteor that landed on the planet along with Superman when he broke through the dimensional barrier. These meteor fragments were affected by being in proximity to Superman when he burst through from pre-crisis Earth-1 and when landing near the 6 members of the Zoo Crew they each gained miraculous powers. These events and the specific origins of each Crew member are told in the pages of Captain Carrot and his amazing Zoo Crew #1 as well as the preview comic included in copies of New Teen Titans (Vol. 1) #16. These meteors and the somewhat accidental nature of their powers reminds me a lot of X-Kryptonite that gives Streaky his powers (read about Streaky here)which is quite fitting since the Zoo Crew are also animals.

    Captain Carrot is the most prominent hero of the universe and the self-proclaimed leader of the Zoo Crew. His powers seem similar to Superman’s but he can’t fly and doesn’t have any of the wacky vision powers. But he can jump extremely far and has heightened strength and speed. Rodney (Captain Carrot) Rabbit doesn’t have a female sidekick in comics as of right now, but that hasn’t stopped me in any of the earlier Supergirl in the Multiverse posts. My idea for Carrot Cutie (the Supergirl of Earth-26) was to give Roger Rabbit a niece named Rachel Rabbit. Rachel, one day while visiting her uncle, gets a craving for a snack and accidentally eats one of Roger’s Cosmic Carrots transforming her into the brand new hero Carrot Cutie!

    As with all my Supergirl in the Multiverse posts, this is my own artwork. For this post I mad a brief comic strip that explains Carrot Cutie’s origin. Three panels on the left have a brief dialogue between Rachel and Rodney as Rachel is looking for a snack until she is distracted by the carrots in Rodney’s windowsill. On the right, Rachel has now transformed into Carrot Cutie with a costume similar to Captain Carrot’s and in the background is Rodney’s artist studio where he works on his comic Just’a Lotta Animals. A motif in the top right features the Captain Carrot symbol with a 26 on top of it.

  • Satan Girl, A Full History

    Satan Girl, A Full History

    Solicitations for upcoming issues of the new Supergirl ongoing title mention a character called Satan Girl, but who is she? In this post I’m going to go over all the character’s appearances and discuss what might happen when she shows back up in Supergirl’s life. Looking at her lists of appearances can be somewhat deceiving because she shows up in Adventure Comics 313, 409, and 500. However, the appearances in issues 409 and 500 are just reprints of her story from Adventure Comics 313 from 1963. She wouldn’t show up again in a new story until the pages of Legionnaires 17 from 1994 during the events of Zero Hour.

    Adventure Comics #313 is the first appearance of Satan Girl and it was released in 1963. The issue as originally printed contains 2 stories, The Condemned Legionnaires and Father’s Day on Planet Krypton. Since Satan Girl only shows up in the first story that’s all we’ll talk about today. The Condemned Legionnaires was written by Edmond Hamilton, with art by Curt Swan, Sheldon Moldoff, and George Klein, and lettering by Milt Snapinn. The story is a Legion of Super-Heroes story and as such takes place in the 30th century. The story begins with a brief montage of all the female Legionnaires contracting some strange Crimson Virus that seems uncurable. Because of this strange disease and the uncertainty of how deadly it is to other citizens of Earth, the unaffected male Legionnaires send all their female teammates to the Quarantine Planet. Before the remaining members of the team have time to act on finding a cure they are met with a strange visitor in black and purple who claims to be more powerful than all the girl members of the team combined.

    This girl is Satan Girl! A powerful being who can fly under her own power without the use of a flight-ring or flying-belt and also has superb strength, speed, and invulnerability. Se also has heat vision and can survive the vacuum of space without a space suit. Not only is she immensely powerful, she reveals that she caused the outbreak of the mysterious Crimson Virus. Before the Legion can apprehend this devilish fiend, she destroys their rocket and flies away leaving the Legion of Super-Boys to turn to the only hero that would be powerful enough to stand up to this new mystery foe; Supergirl. Supergirl, having just arrived to her visit to the 30th century, urges the Legion to follow her to the Quarantine Planet so they can tackle the threat of the Crimson Virus and Satan Girl.

    It is here that Supergirl and Satan Girl confront one another for the first time and Supergirl notices that her foe wears a lead-lined mask to conceal her identity from anyone with x-ray vision. While her power set matches her with beings of both Krypton and Daxam, having a lead-lined mask confirms to Supergirl that this foe must be from Krypton since lead is fatal to Daxamites. The 2 girls have a brief tussle and Supergirl tries using her heat vision to melt the lead mask of her foe to find out the identity of this mystery Kryptonian. Satan Girl seeing through this plan quickly maneuvers away from the girl of steel and escapes. However, Supergirl has a new plan involving a certain radioactive green rock. Supergirl, now Kryptonite in hand (in a protective lead box of course), tracks Satan Girl to an asteroid hideout when Supergirl ambushes her with the Kryptonite when she is dumbfounded to see had no affect on her adversary. Satan Girl is easily able to flee from Supergirl to continue carrying out her nefarious deeds.

    Being unsure where Satan Girl has run off to, Supergirl decides to regroup with the Legion (boys AND girls this time) and takes the whole team to a mysterious planet only she knows about to regroup and come up with a new plan of attack. Supergirl, now thinking Satan Girl is an android due to her immunity to Kryptonite, concocts a gas gun that can immobilize androids when next they meet. Their next meeting comes much sooner that expected though as Satan Girl shows up on this secluded planet that only Supergirl knows about. Supergirl tries the anti-android gun and Satan Girl (literally) laughs it off exclaiming “You’d be amazed if you knew who I really am!” The natives of the planet, seeing Supergirl and the Legion in trouble, then gang up on Satan Girl distracting her long enough for the team to make an escape to a second secret planet know only to the maid of might.

    Unfortunately for the saviors of the 30th century, they are once again quickly tracked down by their newfound foe who quickly downs Supergirl with armfuls of Kryptonite. In her weakened state, Supergirl tells Lightning Lad to gather the Legion of Super-Pets to help take down this impossible foe. With the combined strengths of 4 super-powered animals, they are finally able to subdue Satan Girl who is finally unmasked and revealed to be none other than… Supergirl!?

    Satan Girl then reveals her origin and her plans. Apparently, when Supergirl landed in the 30th century this time she came out of the time barrier right next to some Red Kryptonite which created a copy of Supergirl. This copy, knowing she only had 48 hours of life before the Red K wore off, thought up a plan to live on forever involving expelling the Red K onto the female Legionnaires. Wearing a lead costume had the added benefit of protecting her from the dangerous rays of Green Kryptonite along with protecting her identity which helped her out of a couple jams in this story. However, all her plans were for naught as she ended up merging back with Supergirl at the end of the 48 hours.

    And it’s here where the story ends, a surprisingly unceremonious end to this duplicate girl of steel who wanted nothing more than to live. She did of course try to kill many people to secure her life but it seems odd that the story seems to end without any sort of farewell to the character.

    Satan Girl wouldn’t appear again in a new story until 1994 in Legionnaires #17. Written by Mark Waid, art by Chris Gardner, Dennis Cramer, and Tom McCraw, and letters by Pat Brosseau. This story History Lesson functions as the start of the conclusion arc of the Legion story End of an Era which was their tie in to the Zero Hour Event. This story dealt a lot with weird time travel shenanigans and multiple copies of Legionnaires and all around a confusing issue to read in isolation. However, since we’re not doing a full breakdown of the issue and just here for Satan Girl, we can skip right to page 14.

    Satan Girl bursts onto the scene leading a Legion of Supervillains who then attack this combined Legion mostly as a distraction while Glorith and Mordru capture the elder Rokk Krinn who, in his unstable condition, was attacking the Legion at the start of the issue.

    Unfortunately, due to the nature of the set up of this story, Satan Girl serves little purpose aside from being a callback to a past Legion story. In what basically amounts to a cameo appearance, Satan Girl has no lines and briefly fights a few members of the team before ultimately vanishing away. There is an almost reference to Satan Girl’s true identity when Inferno says “She’s the most powerful — a duplicate of –” before getting punched. Obviously a reference to Satan Girl who is of course a duplicate of Supergirl and fought a previous incarnation of Inferno when he was still going by Sun Boy.

    And now we come to Satan Girl’s first new appearance in 30 years, Supergirl #3. This book comes out next week (July 9th, 2025) and features Satan girl prominently featured as a dark half of our heroic protagonist. While Satan Girl herself hasn’t shown up more than the 2 times before this, Supergirl fighting a dark version of herself has come up quite frequently. When facing off against Nightflame in Adventure Comics #421, the dark sorceress has Supergirl face off against a darker less heroic version of herself in Nightflame’s home land of Innerverse. The most direct retelling of the tragic tale of Satan Girl comes from the pages of Supergirl (Vol. 5) #5 which I covered as part of my Supergirl vs. Supergirl post. This story also involves Supergirl being split in two and the dark half wanting to live and the two halves merging back together at the end.

    Satan Girl is truly a tragic tale more than anything else. This duplicate of Supergirl entered life knowing she only had 48 hours and she tried everything she could to continue living. Unfortunately this Maiden of Fright was unable to see her plan come to fruition and suffered for it. In Sophie Campbell’s book that’s set to come out I’d like to see more of this exploration and maybe finally get some follow up where Supergirl tries to save Satan Girl and not just let her disappear into nothingness for another 30 years. Red Kryptonite is the version with the most unpredictable outcomes, but I think with the presence of Lesla-Lar’s superior scientific mind she may find a way to tune Red K to always give her the outcome she desires.

    Thanks for reading! I hope you all are looking forward to the ongoing adventures of Supergirl as much as I am, and I hope you enjoyed my look at the dark duplicate that is Satan Girl. Fell free to email me at blogofsupergirl@gmail.com for any questions, corrections, or suggestions and stay tuned for plenty more posts from The Daring New Blog of Supergirl!