The Daring new Blog of Supergirl

A surprisingly common trope in Supergirl comics is our titular hero battling herself. Sometimes it’s an imposter dressed as Supergirl, sometimes it’s a clone, and sometimes it’s a Supergirl from another universe. This is not a definitive list of every time Supergirl has faced off against herself, but I did go through my personal collection and found over a dozen examples of this peculiar face off. Because of the surprisingly large quantity of these covers, I’m splitting this post into 2 parts. I’m going to start with a book that has not come out yet but will hit shelves next week, Supergirl (Vol. 8) #2. Since the book hasn’t come out yet and we’re still very early on in this new title, there’s not a good way to determine what kind of fake this Supergirl is but if you stick around til the end I’ll give some predictions after we go through all the other stories in part one of my list. It is, however, important to note that this cover is an homage to another book on my list, Super DC Giant S-24.

Super DC Giant S-24 is the oldest book I’ve pulled that fits the Supergirl vs. Supergirl theme and it very well might be the first instance of this trope at all. Super DC Giant S-24 is a compilation book from June 1971 that collects Supergirl stories from 4 issues of Action Comics when Supergirl had a backup feature. The collected issues are 295-298 from the end of 1962. This is a storyline that featured Lena Thorul dressing as Supergirl for a costume party, Lesla-Lar once again enlarging herself to get super powers, and Lex Luthor gaining powers to help Supergirl fight the Phantom Zone villains. While Lena does wear a Supergirl costume in this story, she never fights Supergirl (unless you count them competing for the affection of Dick Malverne). And when Lesla-Lar comes to terrorize earth she doesn’t don a Supergirl costume and instead wears a brand new black and red outfit. So the cover may not be totally reflective of the inside story but it is rather striking.

Next on our list we go to a couple issues of Superman Family. Issue 203 is from the Fall of 1980. The Supergirls on the cover of this issue have different costumes, helping tell them apart, but we’re still met with the question of who is the real Supergirl? In the story titled “The Supergirl from Earth” we are introduced to Ellie Leeds, a young girl who fell into a coma the same day Kara Zor-El came to earth in her rocket. One day, years later Linda (Supergirl) Danvers is returning to Midvale for a much needed vacation and is met with someone else claiming to be Supergirl and wearing the same Supergirl costume Kara wore when she first arrived on earth. This mystery Supergirl is revealed to be Ellie Leeds who witnessed Kara crash to earth and was exposed to X-Kryptonite giving her the miraculous powers of Supergirl. Thankfully the story ends with the X-Kryptonite being destroyed so we no longer have to worry about an extra Supergirl flying around.

As we continue movie forward, Superman Family #215 from early 1982 has a cover featuring the Supergirl of the Future attacking our maiden of might. Throughout the story it is revealed that this is a Supergirl from the 5020th century that has come to the past to assist in the capture of one of her villains (also from the future) named Tal Belok and his 20th century companion Toxus. The antagonistic nature of this future girl of steel that is shown on the cover is only due to confusion and the pair quickly work together. However, by the end of the story after the villains are subdued once more, our present day heroine must be hypnotized lest her knowledge of the future cause turmoil to the present.

Moving forward, we now see a Supergirl fighting not just one, but 9 other Supergirls! The Daring New Adventures of Supergirl #11 starts with Supergirl in the clutches of the Council after she is thought dead at the hands of Reactron. While the Council had her captured, Professor Drake was able to make 6 (almost) perfect replicant clones of Supergirl the only issue is they’re only 12 inches tall. Nevertheless, they still have all the powers of the Last Daughter of Krypton and those powers are soon put to use as they track a weakened and escaped Supergirl back to the fortress of solitude. After a dangerous battle that nearly cost Supergirl her life, she is eventually able to overpower and then depower the 6 mini Supergirl clones. This cover isn’t totally a lie, Supergirl is in fact overpowered by small clones of herself but at no point does she face 9 clones. There are only ever 6 clones present.

We’ve now gone through and looked at all the pre-crisis Supergirl vs. Supergirl covers which feels like a nice place to break and discuss the various duplicate Supergirls so far. The first 2 stories both feature imposter Supergirls, first with Lena Thorul and then Ellie Leeds. We also saw a future Supergirl from 500,000 years in the future, which for our purposes we’ll sort under the “Supergirl from another universe” category. We then close out the list with clones. My prediction for this mystery Supergirl that’s shown up in Midvale in Sophie Campbell’s new book is that we’re dealing with an imposter. While Lesla-Lar seems to be the obvious choice for someone dressing as Supergirl, she loves to do so as shown in her first appearance that I talked about here. She has also been confirmed to show up in the book where she’s shown briefly in Kandor and she is mentioned in some future solicits. With all this pointing towards Lesla, I don’t think she’s the culprit. I think we should look, instead, to Ellie Leeds, the star of Superman Family 203. This is a character that knows about Kara’s history and is shown with Supergirl’s powers. Maybe she’s stumbled upon a new piece of X-Kryptonite and taken up saving the day in Supergirl’s absence. Ellie Leeds being the “Fake” Supergirl would also explain why she’s in the classic Supergirl costume from her first appearance and also why her body type is different from “Real” Supergirl in a way that wouldn’t really work if it was Lesla-Lar in the red and blue. The set up for the story is very similar too, in both cases we have Supergirl coming home from her heroic life in the big city only to be met with another Supergirl already there. While Ellie Leeds is my first guess for this potential new Supergirl, I think a relatively untapped well of double Supergirl stories lies in the form of robots. Supergirl, and Linda, robots were a huge part of Supergirl’s life in Midvale and a major presence in Silver Age comics which would be a fresh and exciting new take on the Supergirl vs Supergirl trope.

I’m looking forward to cracking open Supergirl #2 when it hits shelves next week and I hope you are too! Join me next Friday as I finish up the list of Supergirl vs Supergirl and maybe bring in an updated insight for our new mystery Supergirl. Thanks as always for reading and feel free to send me an email with any thoughts or suggestions at blogofsupergirl@gmail.com.

This is a children’s book from 2018 written by Michael Dahl and illustrated by Omar Lozano. This is a children’s bedtime storybook that seems to be part of a line of books from Capstone that also includes Bedtime for Batman, Good Morning Superman, and Be a Star Wonder Woman. A blurb in the front flap of the book gives a good explanation of the story to come:

A young Supergirl fan faces her most elusive adversary: sleep!

As darkness falls, a young girl attempts to catch some Z’s while DC Comics’ Supergirl tries to save the world. With heroic traits like bravery, patience, and persistence, they’ll turn sleepless nights into sweet success and sweet dreams.

The protagonist of the story stays unnamed throughout to allow any child to project themself onto. The protagonist has brown eyes and dark hair and wears a white Supergirl Shirt and blue skirt as her pajamas. The story is told across 28 pages, and maintains a structure where each page spread has a panel for Supergirl and a panel for the unnamed protagonist. Each panel gets a small line of text and each side seems to play off each other with Supergirl representing daytime and the protagonist representing nighttime. For example, one page spread has “For a hero, the day is breathless, nonstop action…” as Supergirl’s text and finishes with “…so night is time to relax and breathe easy.” On the side of the protagonist. In this example both half’s mention breathing and this dichotomy is consistent throughout giving the story a nice even pace and lets the protagonist sit equal to Supergirl. The story also helps show that some challenges that children may face – like darkness and a long exhausting day of play – are similar to Supergirl’s challenges – like Kryptonite and meteor showers. But even through all these difficulties, both Supergirl and the Protagonist are able to face their fears and soar off to face the day.

While staying pretty close to the costume Supergirl wore in Superman the Animated Series and the latter half of the Peter David Supergirl comic, the costume presented in Sweet Dreams Supergirl is a bit different. As opposed to the classic white crop top, the maid of might is instead wearing a full white t-shirt with an S symbol on it. In addition, the boots of the costume presented here are very simplified whereas in the other iterations that I mentioned before they are almost always shown as lace up boots. Also present in the story is the costume our protagonist wears that is heavily based on this story’s Supergirl. Her pajamas include a short sleeve white Supergirl t-shirt, a frilly blue skirt, and sometimes a red cape. Also underneath she has a long sleeve red pj shirt, red pj pants, and red and white sock. This under set of pajamas is shown in blue on the cover (not red) and absent in the final couple pages when she’s flying with Supergirl.

The story has a couple nods to the wider DC universe. Characters like Superman, Wonder Woman, Streaky, and Comet all show up alongside Supergirl in her sections and on the protagonist’s side we also get to see plush versions of Wonder Woman and Streaky as well as a duck and a unicorn. Supergirl’s side of the book also has a couple brief showings of Green Kryptonite and the Daily Planet.

This book is obviously not for adults and doesn’t feature any heavy subject matter. But what it set out to do I think it did wonderfully. This book shows that no matter how big or small, powered or not, you can be super and have heroic challenges that you face and overcome each and every day. The story is wonderfully told with soft visuals and a nicely paced dualistic narrative that will surely be fun for any young Supergirl fan.

That’s all for today, I hope you enjoyed. If you have any questions, suggestions, comments, or corrections, feel free to leave a comment or send an email to blogofsupergirl@gmail.com

Last week saw the debut of Sophie Campbell’s brand new Supergirl ongoing series that is full of references to many pre crisis characters and places both well know and obscure. While the book is perfectly fine to hop into not knowing any of these references, I wanted to take a Quick Look at all the characters, places, and things that Sophie put into the book and briefly discuss their history in the greater Supergirl mythos. This will not be a review of the story or the art but I will go out and say I quite enjoyed it and I can’t wait for next month!

Starting with What? There’s 3 items I’d like to talk about. The Yellow Ring of Nor Kann, the comb, and the hollow tree in Midvale.

The Yellow Ring of Nor Kann first appeared in Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #69. Nor Kann is a Kryptonian scientist that survived the explosion of Krypton by being in Kandor when Brainiac shrunk the city down. From the bottle city, Nor Kann was a common ally of Superman and Jimmy Olsen when they had their Nightwing and Flamebird adventures in the bottle city. In the case of Jimmy Olsen #69 — The Dynamic Duo of Kandor! — Superman and Jimmy encounter a thief that has Superman’s powers and is stealing relics from all over the city. This thief is later revealed to be Nor Kann who was hypnotized by the Superman Revenge Squad. The Squad forced him into making a ring that was able to absorb the solar rays of earth’s yellow sun even in the bottle city and steal the relics. Now broken from his hypnosis, Superman entrusts Nor Kann with the ring to use in emergencies and he held onto it until his death in Action Comics #317. However, it wasn’t until Supergirl (Vol. 1) #2 that the girl of steel added this ring to her collection. This story features her taking one of her professors at Vandyre University into Kandor to attempt to cure his uncurable disease. While in the bottle city, Supergirl finds the ring and uses it to help her face the challenges she faced in a city where she had no powers.

As for Supergirl’s Chromatic Super-Comb, we look forward a few years to Supergirl (Vol. 2) #17. Through the events of the story, Supergirl has to save her boss, Dr. Metzner, after he is kidnapped and taken to a remote island. To arrive under the radar, Supergirl shows up as Linda Danvers and is brought close enough to the doctor to do a quick costume change and tell him “I just borrowed your secretary’s identity for the afternoon,” this then leads the doctor to later exclaim to Linda how striking the resemblance between her and Linda was when Supergirl had on a brunette wig. It is then revealed that Linda had just invented the comb that reacts to her hair that she has charged with color sensitive molecules making the wig no longer necessary for her civilian secret identity. As a fun fact, this is also when she decides to add the headband to her Supergirl costume.

The final entry in our “What?” category is the hollow tree in Midvale. This story features a new boy, Johnny (later revealed to have the real name Price Valzorr), arriving at the orphanage where Linda is living at the time. Through the course of the story we find out that this boy is an alien who has a power that allows him to see in the dark. This superhuman ability causes him to view Linda using her powers that would normally go unnoticed by the other orphans. Supergirl is able to return the alien prince back home and it is revealed that, to cover her absence from the orphanage, she used a Linda Lee robot to stand in for her. This is also the first time the Linda Lee robot is shown, she becomes a frequent tool that Linda uses in her time at the orphanage to help protect her secret identity.

As we move into the Where? category none of the locations seem to be overwhelmingly obscure and most fans will probably recognize the cities of Metropolis, Kandor, and Midvale.

Metropolis has been home to Superman since his initial debut back in Action Comics #1 but wasn’t named until the next year in Action Comics #16. Metropolis is often called The City of Tomorrow and has prominent locations such as The Daily Planet, Lexcorp (currently Supercorp), and Centennial Park to name a few. Metropolis has long been a home to many superheroes but most recently in Action Comics #1050, there seemed to be a large push to have the whole Superman Family operating out of Metropolis including Supergirl.

The Bottle City of Kandor is a prominent piece in Superman’s collection in his arctic Fortress of Solitude. This is a living city from Krypton snatched away from the planet before its destruction by Brainiac. Kandor has been seen in a few different forms since its initial appearance in Action Comics #242. Most recently, staring in the New 52 era of DC Comics, Kandor was show as the bottled city as it normally is. However, instead of the classic living city, this Kandor was full of Kryptonians locked in suspended animation. Most recently, during the events of Absolute Power, the Kandorians had woken from their suspended animation. In the Action Comics Weekly story Phantoms Superman has gone against the wishes of the Kandorian Science Council and has been banished from the city.

Midvale is the Silver Age home of Linda (Supergirl) Lee. It appears along with her in Action Comics #252 and would continue to be her base of operations until she enrolled in Stanhope College near the end of Supergirl’s time as a backup feature in Action Comics. While being depicted in both Supergirl (1984) and the Supergirl television show, Midvale was relatively absent from the comics since Crisis on Infinite Earths until Mariko Tamaki’s Being Super which takes place mostly in the town.

The final question to ask is Who? For this, I’d like to cover 9 characters that appear in this story. In order, as they appear in Sophie’s issue #1; Princess Shark, Krypto, Streaky, Lar-On, Lesla-Lar, Eliza Danvers, Jeremiah Danvers, Dick Malverne, and Clarissa Giltedge.

Princess Shark is a brand new character introduced in this issue but seems to be based on the Superboy villain of King Shark, who first appeared in Superboy (Vol. 4) #0. Princess Shark as she is shown seems villainous but maybe just misguided currently and maybe she can be set on a path to a more heroic life.

The Super-Dog himself, Krypto! A longtime companion of Superman from his boyhood first showing up in Adventure comics #210. Krypto is also a refugee from Krypton and is most often associated with Kara’s big cousin Kal, but she has been adventuring with him quite frequently in recent years especially in the miniseries Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow.

Looking quite mischievous as he appears here is Streaky the Super-Cat. First appearing in Action Comics #261. As opposed to Krypto, Streaky is a regular house cat that accidentally gets superpowers after being exposed to X-Kryptonite. Streaky has most recently appeared as a common companion to Power Girl in her comic series that started in 2023.

Lar-On is also a refugee from Krypton, but unlike his fellow Kryptonians, Lar-On is a bright pink Werewolf. While not showing up frequently, Lar-On did make quite a few appearances alongside Supergirl in her comic run from 2016 where Supergirl helps him through one of his lycanthropic rampages.

Lesla-Lar, although not named here, is very recognizable by wearing the same green outfit she wears in her first appearance in Action Comics #279 when she concocts a plan to steal Supergirl’s powers and also her role as the Maid of Might. Lesla-Lar is a Kandorian scientist turned criminal who seems obsessed with Supergirl.

Along with Lesla-Lar, the Danvers first appeared in Action Comics #279. The Danvers are the adoptive parents of Supergirl in all their iterations aside from the Supergirl series from the 90’s where Fred and Sylvia Danvers are the biological parents of Linda. While the Danvers have been a constant in Supergirl’s life, it wasn’t until the television series when they would be named as Jeremiah and Eliza. Jeremiah and Eliza would make the jump into the comics around the same time in Superman/Wonder Woman #29 from 2016.

The long time companion and love interest of Supergirl is Dick Malverne. He has shown up in many different forms and shown up quite frequently outside of main continuity that you can read about more in my Dick Malverne blog post. His passing that Kara mentions in this issue is in reference to Dick’s death in Solo #1 from 2004.

The most absurd reference that Sophie seems to pull in is Clarissa Giltedge, who makes just one appearance, in Action Comics #296, where she isn’t even the main focus. The story instead revolves around Dick Malverne thinking that Lena Thorul is secretly Supergirl and trying everything he can to prove it, while also becoming quite infatuated with her much to Linda’s displeasure. Clarissa mostly just serves to wear a set of jewels that sets the plot in motion when robbers break into the costume party – that Dick, Linda, and Lena are attending – to steal them. It’s honestly impressive that Linda recognizes her.

Hopefully you are all a bit more versed in the lore of some of these odd people, places, and things that show up in Supergirl #1. If you noticed any errors or missinformation or have any other thoughts that you’d like to share, feel free to leave a comment or send me an email at daringnewblog@gmail.com.