As I have been doing this Supergirl Surprise series I’ve generally found the single issues hold up pretty well on their own. This issue however I was totally lost reading through it. Tempus Fugit, cover dated as May ‘97, has credits that read “David, Frank, Smith, Prentice, D’Angelo & Digital Chameleon with Pittarese” It looks like the order is writer, penciler, inker, colorist, letterer, and finally editor with both D’Angelo and Digital Chameleon on colors. Looking into it, it seems the reason I was so lost reading through this is because this is part 2 of 2 of the Tempus Fugit story.
The story opens with a brief interlude showing the young Wally (who I’m pretty sure ends up being God) asking his grandparents to go out and see a friend – remember this for later – before cutting to what I assume is where the previous issue left off. A double scythe wielding foe named Tempus is obliterating the Danvers’ home while Buzz is sitting looking like an absolute d-bag. We get a reminder here that this is the Matrix Supergirl when she blasts Tempus with a “psi-blast”. Realizing her parents are banged up but otherwise okay, she tells Fred that she’s going to go after Tempus and try to alert Supergirl to the crisis at hand.
From here we get another interlude with Cutter at the Leesburg Tribune, before we see Buzz and Tempus having an argument. In the midst of their argument, they see Wally and an attempted fireball soon gets knocked away by Wally’s baseball bat like it was nothing. Supergirl catches up to Tempus at the hospital and this is the main action sequence of the comic. Around this point some dialogue between Buzz and Tempus reveal that their plan is to push Supergirl over the edge into murdering Tempus. Before this can happen however, Buzz stops her and asks if she wants to continue on the Linda Danvers life or change to be more like Supergirl. This moment of clarity snaps our hero out of it and Buzz gets whisked away. The story then ends with Linda waking up the morning before and it seems Wally has turned back time so that the Danvers’ house wasn’t destroyed, Dick Malverne wasn’t brainwashed to being Tempus (yeah I forgot that too!), and everything is just back to normal.
Peter David is an exceptional writer and this Supergirl series is often regarded as the best for our maid of might and this issue continues this trend. Me being lost as I read through this second part of a 2 part story doesn’t diminish the quality but it was an interesting thing to experience with this series, although I didn’t much care for the Groundhog’s Day starting over ending we got but maybe that’s just me. I’m interested to see how other comics approach the single issue vs larger storyline approach especially miniseries like Cosmic Adventures in the 8th Grade or Superman/Supergirl Maelstrom. The final panel at the end of the issue features a newspaper that while cut off can still read “Gary F Thanks R For Suppor” and it seems like this is meant as a send off since it’s Frank’s last issue doing art on the book. I don’t always like Gary Frank’s art and sometimes it falls a bit into the uncanny valley for me, but I do think there are some pretty exceptional panels in this book and the full page spreads are particularly successful. Linda does spend the first 10 pages of this issue half naked which is a weird outfit to wear to dinner with her parents but you do you.
A couple cool ads this week for the second wave of Amalgam. The first page near the front is in black and white and advertises Lobo the Duck, Thorion of the New Asgods, and The Dark Claw Adventures and the ad page in the back (full color now) showcases Bat-Thing, Spider-Boy Team-Up, and JLX Unleashed. I’m not sure exactly why the front ad is in black and white, perhaps it was part of the marketing or maybe it was a printing error. The colorless ad is on the inside front cover and the ad on the inside back cover is also in black and white so I’m leaning towards either printing error or it was intentional as possibly a cost cutting measure. Looking at some other books in my collection from around this time, it seems like DC books from cover date April and May 1997 have colorless inside covers but it seems isolated to those two months based on the Supergirl and Nightwing books I have (I don’t have any other books from those cover dates). Otherwise I didn’t notice anything notable while reading through this but I really enjoyed this different experience with Supergirl Surprise and I hope to have more surprising adventures through my collection.
Earth-52, from what I can gather, has about one panel of existence. That statement however comes with a pretty big asterisk. Near the end of issue 12 of Doomsday Clock, Doctor Manhattan says something along the lines of “Earth-52 is out there” and while saying this images of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman can be seen. These depictions of the Trinity bear striking resemblance to their New 52 counterparts. From this we can imply that Earth-52 shares some similarities with the New 52 continuity or perhaps Earth-52 is a universe where the New 52 continued on without Rebirth happening. I choose to believe the latter. I do want to note that sometimes Earth-52 is called “the 53rd Earth” (since the local 52 universes are 0-51, that would make 52 the 53rd Earth). The “53rd Earth” usually shows a gorilla version of the Justice League but Earth-52 makes more sense to me being a New 52 expansion, and the gorilla stuff seems like a great choice for Earth-53 (see more on that next week!).
Supergirl in the New 52 era has a bit of a different origin to what we normally see of Supergirl. Instead of landing near Metropolis or even in the United States at all, Kara’s rocket shows up in Siberia. Kara then spends a lot of her early life on Earth not speaking any human languages, not believing Superman is her baby cousin, and generally being very mad. After meeting Siobhan Smythe, who can instantly learn any language, Kara now has someone to communicate with and a later encounter with H’el lets her speak English. Kara eventually comes around to trusting Superman as well and an encounter with the Red Lanterns helps her with her anger issues a bit. Supergirl’s life as shown in the New 52 era ends with her powerless and with Jeremiah and Eliza Danvers from the DEO working to help figure out a solution to getting er powers back.
As with all my Supergirl in the Multiverse posts, this is my own artwork. New 52 era Supergirl is floating in the air with a large metal object held aloft in her hands. There are blue skies and clouds all around an her cape is billowing around her. The top right corner has a motif of Supergirl’s S symbol with a 52 on top of it.
If you’re reading this blog I assume you are at least a bit familiar with my Supergirl in the Multiverse series which has been a weekly feature here (if you’re not familiar check it out here). Today I’m going to go through the series up to this point. What I have begun calling “Season 1” of Supergirl in the Multiverse is actually the entirety of my initial goal for the series. I set out at the beginning of this year to find and catalogue the Supergirl of each of the 52 universes of DC’s “Local Multiverse” or Earths 0 through 51. As I got further through the series I became more and more excited about it and more and more invested in learning about DC’s multiverse. This excitement, as well as the overwhelmingly positive response, has led me to expand the series indefinitely and I’m very excited to see how the series will progress and what new universes I’ll find outside the “New 52” universes. This post will talk about the origins of this series, look at some statistics in regards to the series, some of my favorite stories I read doing research for the series, talk about the response I got from the series, and briefly look at where the series is going.
Supergirl in the Multiverse was a project that I wanted to explore for quite some time now and I even have a very early attempt at the series that I started back in 2023 but didn’t get very far into it. The project was conceptualized as a multi-tiered project. I wanted more practice at drawing backgrounds (which is why all the drawings feature some sort of background), I wanted to have a structured drawing project with clear deadlines (52 universes, 52 weeks in a year, almost seems too good to be true), and I wanted an excuse to read a lot of comics that I otherwise wouldn’t have read. The Multiverse I worked off of for this project was the “New 52” multiverse which was clearly defined (aside from 7 universes) in the Multiversity Guidebook from 2015 which got me thoroughly fascinated with the Multiverse of DC comics, although the Justice League episode “Legends” and some Amalgam comics I took from my dad definitely got me interested in alternate earths as well. As you can see from my initial attempt at this idea, backgrounds weren’t a focus from the beginning and it was more just an attempt at categorizing. I also used Stargirl for the Earth-2 representative instead of Power Girl, a mindset I still support to some extent and I do plan on exploring this more in the future of Supergirl in the Multiverse. You can see here that I also made the Bombshell connection very early on and she’s definitely the first of the “Supergirls” that breaks the mold of the “Supergirl” not being a Kryptonian.
With that lets get into some statistics with the Kryptonian vs Non-Kryptonian ratio. Based on the 52 Supergirls I have put together for this series, only 30 of them are Kryponian and even in that group I’m counting Bizarrogirl and Ms. Super-Martian which could be argued aren’t strictly Kryptonian. Just over 40% of the Supergirls are super in some other way. A lot of them are still aliens, being Kree or Krylan, or Zirandian, but there are about a dozen who are earth born that either had miraculous powers thrust upon them, or who are super in their own human way. A lot of the non-Kryptonian Supergirls in this series are fairly reasonable associations like Captain Marvel who is often seen as the Marvel equivalent of Supergirl, or Tesla Strong from the universe representing America’s Best Comics. However, some universes didn’t have a clearly defined representative to portray Supergirl so I had to get a bit more creative. Karel Sorensen from Earth-37 isn’t alien, but she gets super powers in a similar way to Captain Atom or Doctor Manhattan which are both Superman analogues so it felt close enough, but there are also Universes 20 and 40 and 47 which don’t really have any sort of Superman representation so I had to instead find a character in the universe that either represented Superman’s ideals or took the place as that universe’s foremost hero and work backwards from there.
Let’s now segue into the universes that do and don’t have a Superman. For this category I am including Ultraman, Captain Atom, Supreme, Ultiman, and some other very obviously Superman analogues but my count may be skewed from your personal count. For this I’ll mostly be referencing the Multiversity Guidebook images but there might be some disparities for universes that have introduced a Superman since 2015 like Gotham by Gaslight (Earth-19). From my count it’s about 40 universes that have a “Superman” or obvious Superman type character with universes 7, 8, 17, 20, 33, 37, 39, 40, 41, 46, 48, and 51 not having a clear representative, although arguments could be made for 7, 8, and 33 depending on how you count it. Like I said your count may vary. Similarly, most universes also have a Batman although from my count he only got to 37 which was surprising to me because I thought for sure he would outclass Superman but I am happily surprised.
Supergirl is often depicted as blonde, and I would often have “Blonde” as one of my criteria for “Supergirl Representative” when there wasn’t a clear Supergirl. In my series I had 32 blondes, although 3 of my characters had white hair which could count. The others have a wide range of hair colors, 6 with brown hair, 5 with black hair, 3 redheads, and 2 with no hair and I don’t really know how to count Carrot Cutie but probably under blonde or no hair if I had to choose.
The last statistic I want to cover is the canonical to non-canonical ratio which is something I was constantly keeping track of. When doing my research for this series I would prioritize using in universe characters that weren’t quite in the Supergirl mold over creating OCs whenever possible, that’s why we get characters like Marene Herald from Earth-17, Colleen Franklin from 39, and Pyra from 51. However some universes just didn’t have a good option either from lack of development in the universe (Earth-46 was especially light) or just not having a lot of room for a Supergirl to exist in canon based on how the Superman of that universe came about (see Earth-30) so for those I tried to just take the vibes of the universe and apply them to a Supergirl to the best of my ability. Anyways, the final ratio was 33 to 19 or a 63% of canon Supergirls which feels pretty good to me and I feel like I approached each universe to the best of my ability although Earths 20 and 40 were particularly tricky.
As I mentioned at the top, a big part of doing this series was exploring a lot of comics I otherwise wouldn’t have read. While some of the stories I read were kind of busts, there were a bunch that were really exciting and wonderful comics that I never would’ve read without this project. I started off the year pretty strong reading through the entirety of the Earth One graphic novels, I got an excuse to start reading through my Kelly Thompson Captain Marvel comics. Getting introduced to the Atomic Knights for Earth-17 was a great joy to me and presented some really exciting science fiction tales. Earths 27 and 28 were both newer universes and were presented as Jurassic League and DC Mech respectively which had seemed interesting to me for a while and I’m glad I cot to read them. I also had a wonderful time reading through all of the original appearances of Prez along with the newer Prez, and reading through Jack Kirby’s Kamandi series was spectacular. My favorite stuff however is the comics I read from universes outside of DC comics. Stuff like Tom Strong (Earth-25), Supreme (Earth-35), Savage Dragon (Earth-41), Megaton (Earth-36) and my personal favorite Astro City (Earth-34). I’ve been a DC Girlie almost exclusively for a long time so getting a chance to read stuff outside the norm was really interesting.
After finishing Earth-51, I took to asking a handful of people who have been following the series what their top 5 Supergirls were and the results were surprising. I expected a lot of the same answers over and over again with maybe slight variation, but everyone I asked gave me drastically different results, no single Supergirl getting more than 2 votes between the 8 people I asked. Another surprising result from when I asked was that a couple people not only responded with their favorite artwork, but also that the backstories of the characters influenced their choices. I will reveal the handful of Supergirls from my survey that got 2 votes, but I wanted to give my personal top 5 as well. 5. Earth-31 Captain Steel-Skin, 4. Earth-49 Injustice Supergirl, 3. Earth-17 Marene Herald, 2. Earth-26 Carrot Cutie, and my favorite and most successful in my opinion at 1. Earth-45 Super-Reign. From my survey it seems like Earths 1, 6, 8, 12, 17, 18, 31, 37, 45, and 49 were slightly more popular than the rest. That being said, my survey resulted in 30 separate entries making peoples top pick which is over half the lineup and it brings me a lot of joy that my art is so well liked and enjoyed by so many people. I would love to hear more people’s favorite entries and see what really resonates with you so I can try to appeal to more people as the series advances.
Speaking of, now that Supergirl in the Multiverse has traveled through all of the local multiverse, where do we go now? Well, as Doctor Manhatten said at the end of Doomsday Clock, “Earth 52 is out there. I look beyond now…” In short, I am only just getting started and am thoroughly exited for more to come as I look to a more infinite multiverse. A couple adjustments I am putting in now that I’m not beholden to the Multiversity Guidebook, I will jump around a little between numbers and wont go strictly in numerical order. This is for a few reasons, mostly because there aren’t clearly defined universes for all numerical values, Earth-57 for instance, as of right now it doesn’t exist (although if I’m mistaken feel free to correct me and I’ll add it to my list). I also want to do some theme months this next year, and if it goes good I might continue doing similar theme months in future seasons, February, to honor Black History Month will have a series of black Supergirls, June will similarly have queer Supergirls for Pride Month. March is set aside for the Amalgam universe, this is put in March because I have 5 separate Amalgam Supergirls (2 canon, 3 OCs) I want to draw and March had 5 Mondays. May will also be set aside for DC Super Hero Girls to count down to the upcoming DC Super Hero Girls: High School Reunion graphic novel coming out in early June. If you are interested in seeing the full list, it is shown in the images above. With that, I end this recap and hope you stick around for Season 2 starting on Monday with Earth-52.
Earth A.D. or Earth After Destruction. Earth-51 shows us a world devastated by a great disaster which left the human race on the verge of extinction. The remaining human population has regressed to more animalistic lifestyle, and animal life has evolved to become the dominate race. Tribes of tigers, gorillas, dolphins, and many other animals all now rule the planet keeping humans as either pets or slaves. It seems the last hope for human kind is Kamandi, the last boy on earth.
At some point during Kamandi’s travels he encounters an alien life form initially existing as a ball of fire. This being eventually takes a humanoid form based on Kamandi’s but chosen by herself. She takes the form that you see above and is named by Dr. Canus as Pretty Pyra due to her pyrokinetic powers. We later find out she comes from a planet called Zirandus where all the residents are beings of pure energy.
As with all my Supergirl in the Multiverse posts, this is my own artwork. Pyra is shown standing on top of her spaceship. She is expelling a fire blast. The background shows devastated skyscrapers and war machines. The top right corner has a white circle representing Pyra with a 51 on top of it.
While I have been kicking around the idea of doing a blog post about Black Flame (she showed up in the Superman Family Super Extras post a couple months ago) it was the March 2026 solicitations that got me to actually sit down and explore this character. For anyone who hasn’t been reading the most recent Supergirl ongoing title (first off go do that it’s wonderful) you may have realized that Sophie Campbell has been pulling in a lot of references and characters to Supergirl’s Pre-Crisis era. Characters like Lesla-Lar, Satan Girl, and Nightflame all come from this era of Supergirl stories and Black Flame is no different.
Black Flame only has a handful of appearances since her debut in 1963, 5 total if you count the Super Extra from Superman Family #174, her appearance in the young readers DC Super Friends #19, and what seems to be a 2 panel cameo in Krypton Chronicles #2. This means that Black Flame showing up as a starring foe for the girl of steel really only happened twice, in Action Comics #304 and Adventure Comics #400, and of those two she only got 1 cover appearance and it’s only her bottom half.
Action Comics #304, specifically the backup titled “The Maid of Menace” was written by Leo Dorfman with art by Jim Mooney. This is a pretty solid 13-page story with a lot packed into it. The opening splash gives us a great look at Black Flame tormenting Supergirl in the climactic scene of the story, as splash pages often did, before jumping back a little bit so the reader can figure out how Supergirl got into that situation. Black Flame herself has a black and red suit with a black and red cape and a black mask. She is referred to as “more cunning than Lesla-Lar,” and “more evil than Luthor” so you know she’s bad news.
The story proper starts with Linda and Dick Malverne on a beach date and Dick is currently burying Linda in sand preventing her from sneaking off to do her super duties. While things seem fine at first, Supergirl soon notices a super powered being helping a gambling ship escape the coast guard before escaping off to the future. Later, Linda sees a news broadcast about Comet, the Super-Horse, destroying Monument Park and she rushes to the scene.
Comet has been affected by Black Flame’s Brain Command Ring to do these evil deeds and once the park is destroyed as much as Black Flame desires she lets Comet go. Black Flame leads Supergirl back to her headquarters to let Supergirl know her secret villain origin via a Mento-Dome that she has.
We find out that Black Flame is not only a terrorizing pirate queen from the year 4,000, she is also the far future descendant of our very own Supergirl! Apparently some of her henchmen revolted against her so she’s hiding out in the past and using her new-found free-time to menace her 1963 grandma. Supergirl is now at a stalemate, she can’t change history to try to make her descendant less evil, and she can’t fight Black Flame head on because she fears this menace telling the world of her and Superman’s secret identities.
Back home, Supergirl tells her adoptive mother, Edna Danvers, about her predicament and she suggests Supergirl go to the future and see if she can find out more about this Black Flame. Supergirl does so and realizes that the year 4,000 has no record of any pirate queen so she comes back to the present and asks her telepathic horse to get another idea of who this villainess might be. Comet points her towards the bottle city of Kandor where the Census Chief mentions a Kandorian by the name of Zora Vi-Lar who matches the description and was a friend of Lesla’s. Unfortunately Zora is still showing as working away in Kandor so it seems that’s a dead end as well.
Supergirl faces off against Black Flame once again with a clever plan to use Gold Kryptonite to remove her powers and cause her future descendant to be powerless. Unfortunately this doesn’t seem to work and now our hero is powerless and Black Flame is still at full strength. Instead of taking Supergirl out or causing more evil deeds, the fiend reveals that she is Zora Vi-Lar and explains how she left Kandor and grew to full size. Zora now thinking she has the upper hand tricks Supergirl into a quicksand pit where she presumably meets her demise.
This is of course all part of Supergirl’s clever plan! The Gold Kryptonite was a ruse and she still has her powers and is now easily able to overpower Black Flame and get her back into Kandorian custody. The plan itself is absurdly convoluted and has a bit of that “if you were paying attention you can solve the mystery too” vibe but it relays heavily of just not thinking too much about the specifics. Black Flame of course ends the tale saying “you outwitted me this time but I’ll even the score some day! Just wait!”
And that day came a few years later in Adventure comics #400 from 1970 in a story titled “Return of the Black Flame” by Mike Sekowsky who provided both story and pencils with Jack Abel inking. Black Flame seems to have a pretty similar costume to her previous appearance although it seems more purple than black this time around, Supergirl on the other hand has an entirely new costume that she still hasn’t treated to be invulnerable yet. Supergirl is working on said costume when she hears a news report urging the girl of steel to go to an address to help someone in trouble. While she is streaking away, the reader gets to meet the foes of the story, Black Flame, Toymaster, the Inventor, and L. Finn. While we have seen Black Flame before, the others are all new and never show up again after this story.
We then get an explanation of how Black Flame escaped custody and then tracked down her 3 companions in the Phantom Zone. Supergirl has now arrived at the address and is ready to answer the call for help but is met with robots and Kryptonite rope when she realizes she’s fallen into a trap.
The quartet of fiends then sets up Supergirl in a bowling alley and they all take turns hurling Kryptonite bowling balls at the maid of might. This bowling sequence continues until Supergirl is able to break free from her Kryptonite bonds and clobbers the whole evil crew. Supergirl would’ve won the day here if not for L. Finn who is apparently a Leprechaun with magic.
The next trap set for Supergirl is just as convoluted as Supergirl’s plan from the previous story. They have strung up Supergirl atop a pile of gold Kryptonite dust which apparently will take away her powers but not immediately, and also there is a giant crossbow that will shoot a Kryptonite arrow at Supergirl that is presumably set on a timer. Thinking they’ve won the evil-doers leave the room which allows Supergirl to figure out a way out of this trap.
The Toymaster has foolishly left his toy remote within reach of Supergirl and she was able to use the toys to free her and then ambush the villains. Now captured, Supergirl takes the fiends off to the Phantom Zone.
Before going into my final thoughts, I did want to briefly mention the 3 other comics where she appeared. Superman Family 174 showed her as part of a Supergirl Villains Quiz and the artwork here is reused and flipped from the splash page of Action 304, it doesn’t add anything to the character and only references her first appearance. While most sources list Zora Vi-Lar as a supporting character in Krypton Chronicles #2, it seems like she only shows up for a couple panels. I’ve not been able to get a hold of this comic to read either physically or digitally but the Comic Box Commentary blog post of the series (read here) goes into depth about the whole series and it seems like character only exists as a reference. It is notable that this appearance also seems to neglect the Adventure Comics story since she is still shown as part of Kandor as opposed to being in the Phantom Zone where she was left after Adventure 400. Lastly we get to DC Super Friends #19. Black Flame has more to do here although she is little more than a Kryptonian villain in training working under Headmaster Mind and alongside The Ant, Black Alice, and newcomers Clown Boy and Mind-Grabber Boy who are the main protagonists of the issue.
From these stories I feel like Black Flame really hasn’t gotten a chance to shine. Her first story was a pretty good introduction and set up a possible new Kryptonian foe to replace Lesla-Lar who got disintegrated a few issues prior. Unfortunately the follow-up story where she claims to have “won the final battle” on the cover doesn’t really measure up. Part of this could be because of her powers being removed in her first story limiting her super powered potential, but I think it could’ve been interesting to see her as a foe for Nightwing and Flamebird in Kandor or she could invent weapons and tools like she did with her Brain Command Ring she used against Comet. Instead she finds 3 non Kryptonian Phantom Zone residents that are really no match for Supergirl in her one and only follow-up story.
A couple interesting things I’d like to note that I enjoyed are Zora’s friendship with Lesla-Lar and the inclusion of Gold-K in both stories. Zora Vi-Lar, in her first appearance, is said to be a “brilliant scientist who was a friend of Lesla-Lar” I feel like this friendship is something that could be explored when she shows back up in a couple months since Lesla has become such an integral part of the current Supergirl comic. I do also want to note that Black Flames costume does show some resemblance to Lesla’s red and black attire that she wore when she came back to fight Supergirl in Action Comics 297 (before getting disintegrated). Gold K, specifically powdered Gold K, appears in both Action 304 and Adventure 400 which is an interesting coincidence because of how brutal Gold K is to Kryptonians. For those unaware, Gold Kryptonite permanently removes the powers of Kryptonians. Interestingly however, it seems that in powdered form the effect is slowed – as shown in Adventure 400 – or totally ineffective to full size Kryptonians, but can be used against reduced size Kandorians – as shown in Action 304.
What is the most interesting to me about this character however, is the fake origin that Black Flame gives to Supergirl. Kryptonian descendant of Supergirl that becomes a pirate queen in the year 4000 is just a super interesting concept to me and I want to hear more about that version of the Black Flame. From what we’ve seen so far, it seems that her reappearance will be heavily tied to Kandor so we may have to wait for some other Supergirl villain to come around and be a pirate queen from the year 4000. I’ll leave off by saying that so far I’ve not been very impressed by Black Flame stories but I do really enjoy her conceptually and I’m excited to see her in new and interesting storylines.
The Daring New Blog of Supergirl 