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Over the past year we have seen a resurgence of Marvel/DC crossovers starting with Deadpool/Batman which released in September of 2025. Since then we’ve had 3 more comics released as well as 4 digital only releases (2 Infinity comics on Marvel’s side, and 2 Go comics on DC’s). All of these stories will be collected later this fall in The Dead of Knight and Other Stories and The Cosmic Kiss Caper and Other Stories. I’ll likely be picking these collections up because I’m a sucker for Marvel/DC crossovers and I’d like to have the digital only comics in print. I won’t be covering all these stories in full today because I think all told it’s like 30 stories and I cannot be bothered. I’ll instead walk everyone through the stories that have Supergirl appearing.

Supergirl is not prominently featured in these specials although there are 2 dedicated stories to the girl of steel as well as one other minor appearance. In addition to these books I’ll also take a look at the Power Girl/Punisher story since it’s sorta close. To start with, Supergirl-7642 (which is the official designation of this new crossover earth) first shows up in the “Catch” story from Deadpool/Batman #1. This is a Krypto and Jeff the Shark story that has Supergirl (very briefly) appearing at the end calling for Krypto while Kate Bishop does the same for Jeff. Catch was written by Kelly Thompson, art by Gurihiru, and letters by Joe Caramagna.

We’ll next hop to the Power Girl/Punisher story, “Blind Date” from writer Gail Simone, artist Belén Ortega, colorist Jordie Belaire, and letterer Lucas Gattoni. The premise of this story is Karen “Power Girl” Starr is on a blind date with Paul “MJ’s ex” Rabin. Frank “The Punisher” Castle is doorman for the hole in the wall restaurant in Suicide Slums where this blind date is taking place. Turns out Frank is here to take out all the bad guys who are there to kill Paul because they think he’s Vandal Savage. Paul realizes he’s in over his head and turns tail and skedaddles leaving just The Punisher and Power Girl alone together. A really cute story that really explores both Power Girl and Punisher effectively with good action and funny moments and even Kim Hu’s favorite, Taskmaster. I really have to give props to the creative team for really delivering a full and fun story in just 5 pages, I think the narration boxes of Punisher’s War Journal and Karen Starr’s Daily Journal play off each other nicely and really help give depth to the story.

Hoping next into Supergirl/Blade, the only dedicated Supergirl DC/Marvel crossover (ever). This was released as a DC Go comic on April 8th, 2026 written by CRC Payne of Wayne Family Adventures fame (and she did a story in Supergirl Next Door), penciled by Mikel Janín, inked by Hugo Petrus, colored by Marcelo Maiolo, and lettered by Pat Brosseau. I am on record for my general distaste for phone comics but I do think comics initially produced in vertical format do generally work better than standard books re-formatted.

The story has Mojo as the villain (ew) and his evil scheme is to game the algorithm by putting together all the currently most popular tropes. This includes a “strong female lead who is perpetually a damsel in distress” (Supergirl), a “stoic male lead who’s struggling against some inner darkness” (Blade), and vampires with a genre of romance. Mojo achieves this by transporting all parties to a movie set and leaving to their own devices. Oh also Supergirl is poisoned by Kryptonite.

The pair easily tackle the vampires, catch onto Mojo’s plan, and successfully tear down the set and ruin Mojo’s day. There’s a good chunk of this story spent introducing Supergirl and Blade both to each other as well as the audience. I also liked Blade biting Supergirl not to do her any harm but to cure her of the Kryptonite poisoning, all done in character so that Mojo doesn’t catch on.

There are a couple cool moments in this story that work great in vertical format, Blade throwing a blade (pun). And some of the sequences do lend themselves to visually draw the eye down which helps the story flow.

All in all Supergirl/Blade was a pretty good read and it’s available on the DC Universe Infinite at the free tier so go check it out. The other 3 vertical format crossover comics are available on their respective apps although not at free level for some reason. It does seem like the current slew of Marvel/DC crossovers are currently available digitally but who knows how long that will last which is whey I plan on getting the collected editions for the print formats of these digital only stories.

Now at last we land on the most recent release, Spider-Man/Superman #1 from August 2026, specifically the 6th story “Remarkable”. This story was written by Stephanie Phillips, art by Phil Noto, and letters by Joe Caramagna. This is a brief 4 page story where Ghost-Spider is hanging out in Metropolis hoping to meet Superman. She instead meets Supergirl who is equally disappointed that the Spider on the Daily Planet wasn’t Spider-Man. This is a pretty cute story where the pair team up against Livewire (who was also trying to get Superman and got Supergirl). I wish this story was longer than 4 pages, but the creative team really delivered a great story in such a tight space.

Of the stories I covered today, “Blind Date” is probably the best one but for Supergirl stories I think “Remarkable” is my favorite. If you’d like more Marvel/DC crossover content, I did a whole month of Amalgam Supergirls earlier this year as part of Supergirl in the Multiverse (look for the Earth-496), and look forward to another Amalgam month coming next year.

I’m not positive when I came to this conclusion, but for a while now I have held the belief that much like Superman has Lex Luthor and Batman has the Joker, Supergirl’s predominate villain is Reactron. As I’ve done a bit more research leading up to this post, it seems that this place is somewhat unearned and he’s a character that really only has a couple dozen stories and not even all of them are Supergirl stories. My main reasoning for his placement in my mind is that he’s present in a wide range of Supergirl stories. First appearing in the Daring New Adventures of Supergirl series (Issue 8) he would have a handful of appearances in this title, and he would then play a large part in the Supergirl side of things in the New Krypton Saga, before making his way into the Supergirl CBS show in a fairly pivotal episode of Season 1.

As mentioned above, Reactron first appears in Supergirl (Vol. 2) #8 written by Paul Kupperberg, Carmine Infantino and Bob Oksner on art, with Tom Ziuko colors and Ben Oda letters. This story “Stand-Ins for Supergirl” does serve as the first appearance of Reactron but it seems that the New Doom Patrol (the aforementioned Stand-Ins) are already familiar with this radioactive foe. This origin for the character would be seen in the next issue where we learn that Ben Krullen (Reactron) served in Vietnam as a commanding officer to Josh Clay (Tempest). Krullen gained his powers from being exposed at close range to atomic blast tests in the 1950s, and then his powers were activated by a blast from Clay after Krullen decided to fire on a village of civilians. After fighting both the New Doom Patrol and Supergirl, Reactron is defeated and explodes in the upper atmosphere.

Surprisingly, exploding in the upper atmosphere didn’t kill Reactron. It is revealed a few years later that after this happened, he was taken to Belle Reve during the pages of Doom Patrol (Vol. 2) #10 and #11. However by this time Crisis on Infinite Earths had occured and Supergirl was no longer existing so when flashing back to Reactron’s origin (in this story as well as Secret Origin Annual #1) Power Girl has been inserted where Supergirl had been before. Along with booting Supergirl out of the origin, this story features Reactron working alongside Larry “Negative Man” Trainor to return the negative energy form back to him from Negative Woman. He does accomplish this but seems to die afterwards. Also, inexplicably, his name has changed to Martin Krull, although he is clearly meant to be the same character as before.

After this it would be almost 15 years before he would show up again but this time it would be alongside fellow Daring New Adventures alum Blackstarr in Suicide Squad (Vol. 2) issues 6-8. Reactron seems to serve little purpose in this story aside from getting frozen by Killer Frost and later dying. He isn’t named, aside from “Reactron” in this story and mostly serves to just be cannon fodder so its hard to say if he’s Ben or Martin Krull at this point.

He would next show up in Battle for Bludhaven #1. He seems to serve little purpose aside from on again being cannon-fodder alongside the rest of the “Nuclear Legion”. He is presented here in what I can safely call his worst look and once again dies after bringing almost nothing to the table. Before I jump to the real meat and potatoes of Reactron in comics, I’m going to take a quick look at his role in the CBS Supergirl television series.

Reactron (as Ben Krull) only appears in a single episode of Supergirl however this 4th episode of the series is a fairly significant point in Supergirl’s heroic career. Reactron is presented here as an adversary of Superman and he is going after Supergirl because of her relation to the Man of Steel as a way to get him back for what he supposedly did to his family. Ben Krull was an employee of the Bakerline Nuclear Power Station when he was caught in a meltdown that caused the death of his wife. This meltdown, that should’ve killed him, instead gave him immense powers that let him go toe-to-toe with Superman without ever being able to be defeated. His first clash with Supergirl ends with the Maid of Might lying helpless and Superman (called in via Jimmy Olsen’s signal watch) being the one to save the day. Supergirl would later (with the help of Winn and Alex) be able to face Reactron and with a combination of talking him down and using lead to block the radiation, she is eventually able to take him down on her own.

This episode helps set Supergirl aside from Superman and place her on equal status. Superman himself even tells her (via text) that defeating Reactron was something even he couldn’t do. This appearance of Reactron is, somehow, the only version where he doesn’t die by the end of it and is instead taken to prison. Weirdly enough, in his initial story (DNAoS #9) it is revealed that lead is not a way to defeat him and leads to a devastating chemical reaction so Supergirl using lead to incapacitate him in this episode directly opposes his first comic appearance, but makes for better television.

Supergirl (Vol. 5) is, in my opinion, the series that best places Reactron into Arch-Enemy status. Kelley Pucket first re-introduces Reactron in issue 25 of his run and here we’re met with yet another version of Reactron. This Reactron projects his consciousness across the cosmos and uses the power of stars he extinguishes to convert into radioactive blasts. At least this is what he tells Supergirl during their fight. Later, after Sterling Gates takes over the book (specifically in issue #40) we get the real story of his origin. It turns out Ben Krull was just a normal man dying of radiation poisoning and the power source he was using in his initial tussle with Supergirl was healing him. After he was taken away, General Lane got his hands on him and outfitted him with a Gold Kryptonite heart.

This is where the real meat of Reactron’s stories happen, and as such I won’t be covering every single appearance because the New Krypton Saga is immense and Reactron plays a major role in a lot of the Supergirl side of things. Reactron’s first big move in the New Krypton storyline is faking getting captured by the Krptonians, going to the Artic where the bottle city of Kandor had recently been enlarged, and killing Zor-El, Supergirl’s father and the leader of Kandor. This act pushed Alura into a leadership role making her colder and more agressive and she would task her daughter with tracking down Reactron and returning him to New Krypton.

Most of this first arc of the New Krypton saga has Superwoman and Reactron working together against Supergirl under orders from Sam Lane. The Who Is Superwoman arc ends with Reactron having a near fatal injury although he doesnt die here and is taken into Science Police custody where he doesn’t last long before Codename: Assassin (another of Lane’s lackies) breaks him out and gives him his Reactron gear back. This kicks off the Hunt for Reactron story, I’ll probably cover this in full at some point along with all the other storylines but its more of General Lane telling Reactron what to do and that doing is fighting and or killing Supergirl.

The Hunt for Reactron story also deals heavily with the Nightwing and Flamebird storyline happening parallel and the Nightwing/Flamebird/Supergirl trio of heroes has a nice dynamic and they seem to work effectively against Reactron and are able to capture him so that Kara can take him back to New Krypton to face justice. Unfortunately the trial is cut short by an angry mob of Kryptonians that only wish to kill Krull and while the council tries to escort the prisoner safely away he is supposedly vaporized leaving just a scorch mark. It’s soon revealed that Gor of the military guild has taken him personally into custody without the approval or knowledge of the council.

It is later revealed that Gor was acting under direct orders from Alura to weed out any and all information Reactron had about General Lane and his various anti-Kryptonian plans. Unfortunately, Reactron once again used the same tactic employed at the beginning of the New Krypton saga where he purposfully got captured by the Kryptonians to get safely behind enemy lines. This time however he came much more prepared, as a living bomb. This bomb would obviously be a suicide run for Krull, but it also successfully took out nearly all 100,000 Kryptonians in the process. Supergirl only made it out because Alura in her last act pushed her into a radiation deck and sealed it shut.

So what have we learned about Reactron? I think the craziest part to me was how often the character seemed to die. I think in the stories I went through (which was nearly all of them to the best of my ability) he died 4 or 5 times and had at least 3 names. It’s hard to say exactly how all of this falls into continuity because it really seems like he’s meant to be the same character throughout. The version of the character that exists in the Supergirl (vol 5) comic does seem to have the most consistent through line in the 2ish years he was showing up so it seems reasonable that this is a single distinct reactron and any character before this point is a seprate character. The earlier versions do seem to mostly use the “Atom Bomb Tests in the 50s” origin when telling his origin and the later version has a distinctly different origin. Potentially the Battle for Bludhaven story could also be a part of this 2nd Reactron, although he does die on panel.

It seems that between Crisis on Infinite Earths and Infinite Crisis the character served little purpose other than to be a D-list character that could easily be used if you needed someone to die in a story and wouldn’t really come into prominence until writers like Kelley Puckett and Sterling Gates got a hold of him and positioned him firmly as a Supergirl rival. I do think the character has a lot of potential and him dying obviously hasn’t ever kept him down for long and I think he could really stand up as a great foil to the Girl of Steel.

Reactron has shown up in both the Who’s Who series (issue 19) as well as in the Secret Files series (Superman Secret Files 2009), although neither of which allotted him more than a half page which is particularly funny to me.

I covered a lot of stories here but didn’t go very in depth with any of them, if there’s any of these that you’d like to hear me dive deeper into, let me know. The Reactron episode of the Supergirl show (Reactron’s only story where he’s not dead by the end) was covered by a recently started podcast called Stronger Together (specifically this episode). Snowy and Nic are taking a retrospective look at the series and are currently about halfway through the first season and I urge anyone who enjoys this blog to also check them out.

Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow has become quite the runaway success in recent years but it all started back in 2021 with a 8 Issue mini-series. There is a certain fondness I have for Woman of Tomorrow that I think I will always have, much the same way I have for the Rebirth era of DC Comics. DC Rebirth was a publishing initiative by DC in 2016 as a line-wide reset or refresh (perhaps you could call it a rebirth) and it was the genesis of my personal new comics collecting journey. Unfortunately it wouldn’t last and around 2018 I had to take a break from new comics collecting and it was in 2021 when I was able to make my way back and the 2 books that I restarted my pull box with were Nightwing and Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow.

This brings us to the first version of Woman of Tomorrow its first release as single issues. The series had 8 issues and in the initial run from June 2021 to February 2022, each of the books had an A cover drawn by Bilquis Evely and the B cover had a rotating cast of artists contributing. The first issue also had a C cover which was a blank cover with a blue gradient. My personal collection includes all the A covers although some of the variants do look quite nice (like Amy Reeder on issue 5 and Rose Besch on issue 4) so I might track those down at some point.

It would be later in 2022 when a collected edition of the series was released and while I did end up getting that first paperback version, I do remember hesitating for a while. This is because I really wanted to get the book as a hardcover instead and there was a lot of consideration I put into the French (I think) translation that came out around the same time by Urban Comics. This collection would use the cover to Issue 4 while the American release would use the cover to issue 1. I can only speak for the version of the comic that I own, although both the TPB and HC versions from 2022 are listed to have 224 pages so it’s likely they have the same content which is, full reprints of all 8 issues, a brief cover gallery, and 3 sketch pages from Evely. It seems there was also a Target exclusive version that used a different cover by Mitch Gerads.

Before getting back to looking at these in order, I do want to take a brief look at Urban Comics’ other releases of Woman of Tomorrow. All 3 of these seem to have the same release date of April 17th 2026 (according to League of Comic Geeks). Both of the Édition augmentée (Deluxe Edition I’m guessing) versions are 280 pages and probably match the content that we will see in the Deluxe Editions that we got state-side and will be exploring later. The Édition augmentée has 2 covers, one that matches the American HC Deluxe Edition and one that is based on the poster to the Supergirl (2026) movie. The last version is called Édition Noir & Blanc HC (Black & White) and at 216 pages I would guess this is just a reprint of the 8 issues in black and white.

From what I can tell, these are the only foreign releases of the story, although I’m sure it’s possible that the DC releases were probably released in other countries I’m just not an expert on such things. The title would lay fairly dormant for over 2 years at this point (aside from a limited SDCC 2023 release) until making a comeback in a big way in 2024. This month would show the release of a new printing of issue 1, the series being re-released as a DC Go comic, and what I had been waiting for a Deluxe Hardcover of the book. From what I can gather, the 2024 reprint is the exact same as the 2021 printing. This hardcover is exactly what I would want out of a collected edition of the book, slightly oversized, nice slipcover (with a bit of gold foil), and plenty of extras (over 50 pages!). These extras include the standard cover gallery, over 30 pages of sketches, and the original unused script to issue 6 of the book.

The DC Go version of the book, in my opinion, is a bad way to experience the story. The art is arguably the best feature of the book and the combination of Evely’s linework and Lopes’s colors really lends itself to being experienced as sweeping pages and illustrations, hence the benefit of the oversized nature of the HC. DC Go is the built in web-comic feature of the DC Universe Infinite app which prioritizes and optimizes reading comics on your phone, which works against the sweeping illustrations and expansive visuals that are a crucial part of Woman of Tomorrow. I do think I am somewhat biased against DC Go comics sort of in the “Why would you watch a film on your telephone” David Lynch quote, but there are panels that are cropped down to fit better and it bothers me personally. The DC Go version is available in the DC Universe app at the Free level subscription and was initially released between December of 2024 and February of 2025.

2025 didn’t see quite as many new things for WoT as most the focus in DC was based around that Summer’s Superman movie. However right at the end of the year we did get a reprint of issue 1 using the same cover as the Deluxe HC (as a Walmart Exclusive) and an exclusive version of the collected edition as one of the DC Universe Infinite Ultra Tier exclusives. I’ve been a subscriber of the DC universe app since 2018 and signed onto the Ultra tier subscription pretty soon after it was announced and have been very happy with it and one of the reasons is that every year when you renew, they send you an exclusive Deluxe Edition TP of one of their stories. So far the releases have been Superman: Doomsday, The Batman who Laughs, Superman: Birthright, and most recently Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow. I actually only just got my copy of this book because for some reason the email to claim my free Ultra Tier book didn’t make it to my inbox when I renewed my subscription and I figured it was just because they stopped the promotion. It wasn’t until just a couple weeks ago when I started looking into the releases of WoT that I realized this book existed and quickly looked into how to get my hands on it. I have to say that the DC Universe Infinite customer service team was great to work with and they immediately sorted out my issue and got a book in the mail for me. For all intents and purposes this is the exact same content as the Deluxe HC from the year before although with an added little blurb thanking you for subscribing to the DC Universe app. This is a paperback instead of HC so it does loose some points but being free as opposed to $50 does offer some benefit.

As we move into this year we see probably the widest release of the book, specifically of issue 1 of the book. Part of me thought about calling this post “The Many Releases of Woman of Tomorrow #1” but there’s a bit of clunkiness to putting a number at the end, and including the collected editions and how their bonus content differs was something that was important to me. We start off the year with a new version of the collected edition, this time as part of DC’s Compact Comics. DC Compact Comics is a brilliant way to put out collections, at $10 each and reprinting full stories it’s a fantastic deal and great for new readers. I do not personally own this version of WoT, although at 216 pages I would guess it’s just reprinting the comics and at most may include a variant cover gallery. The book uses the same cover as the Deluxe HC, although sans gold foil this time, and would see an additional retailer exclusive (Books-A-Million and Indigo) which would instead use the Gary Frank cover that was used as a variant to issue #1. I won’t go out of my way to add this book to my collection, but if I ever see it on sale I’ll probably grab it.

Between April and June I think there were 5 new printings of Woman of Tomorrow #1. Superman Day saw a free version of the book re-released with a new cover that matches the Ultra Tier TP from last year. There were also foil versions and blank versions at higher dollar amounts released the same day. Superman Day also saw a new version of the HC with a new cover that matches issue 8 of the series. David Nakayama would also release a new cover of the book with foil and virgin variants for Unknown Comics. To coincide with the release of Supergirl (2026) there were free give-aways of issue 1 for people who went to see the movie on opening day. There are 2 versions of this, one for Odeon Cinemas which has the movie poster as the cover, and one from AMC which sports a brand new cover by Bilquis Evely based on the movie (this is the one I have). This is the exact same printing as the Superman Day re-print even including the preview to Tom King’s Wonder Woman comic.

There was a SDCC release of the comic just a couple days ago with a Lesli “Lerix” Li cover, but it is the WIP Edition that came out earlier this month. I think the release of this over-sized black and white re-release of the comic is in some ways the straw that broke the camels back in terms of me making this post. The WIP line from DC is a relatively new phenomenon by the company and WoT is the only one I have but I’m not particularly impressed. The book being oversized is an understatement. this comic re-print is like 3-4x the size of a standard comic, and while this does help highlight some of the sweeping imagery in a nice way, the lack of colors really hurts this book. The coloring work by Mat Lopes is crucial to the beauty of the book and when allowing over-sized pages, it feels like a disservice to the artists to not include coloring as well. This is not an all bad comic, the page stock is very nice and the artwork is still brilliant, and we even get a handful of sketch pages which look brilliant in oversize format, I just think a colorless re-print really robs some enjoyment out of the comic without giving too much back to benefit the reader.

As I’ve gone through this I’ve come to realize there are about 3 ways the book gets collected, the standard TP format with the cover gallery and a couple pages of extras totaling 224 pages. We also have the bare-bones reprint seen with Compact Comics that comes to 216 pages. Lastly we have the deluxe format which has 264 pages. If you’re looking to add this book to your collection, I would absolutely recommend the Deluxe HC, it’s a beautiful re-print and the extras help make up for the increased price point. That being said, the price point is quite steep at $50 so if you’re just trying to get your hands on the book to read, the Compact Comics edition might be your best bet. I would say the worst way to experience the book is through the DC Go re-format for all the reasons I gave above. As I mentioned at the top, there is a certain love I have for this book that helps me enjoy it despite its flaws and I do really enjoy my collection of Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow and I hope you enjoyed checking it out with me.