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.
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
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.
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!
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.
The Daring New Blog of Supergirl 