• Supergirl’s Mentor: Elizabeth Perske

    Liz Perske is many things, world traveler, art connoisseur, investor, one time wife of Lex Luthor, and for the purposes of this entry, she is Supergirl’s mentor. Liz Perske first shows up in the 1994 Miniseries and probably has Roger Stern, and June Brigman to thank as creators (writer and penciller respectively). In her initial appearances, issues 2 and 4 of this mini, she mostly serves as a catalyst to help Matrix start looking a bit more into if Lex II actually has her best interests at heart. Surprisingly enough though, she wasn’t merely tossed to the side once Peter David’s ongoing Supergirl title got started and she would have irregular appearances and we did get to learn a bit more about her. While she seems to be set up as a major confidant and companion of Supergirl at the end of Supergirl (vol. 3) #4, she only has around 10 appearances.

    We’ll be taking a look at her appearances a bit out of order, and instead try to piece together her life based on what we do find out in the pages of these Supergirl books. In Supergirl (vol. 4) #17 we get re-introduced to Liz Perske and find out that she is friends with none other than Dick Malverne’s own mother when she comes to Leesburg to visit the hospital bound Mrs. Malverne. We find out that Elsa and Liz were classmates in college together, but not much more is explored about the character. A good amount of her earlier appearances mention that she is the 3rd wife of Lex Luthor. The Superman Secret Files and Origins issue from 1999 has a 4 page called “Chance Encounter” that seems to feature both Perske and the Contessa (a later wife of Lex) which seems fascinating to me but I cannot for the life of me find a way to read this story.

    After this, chronologically, we get to the first meeting of Liz and Supergirl in Singapore. This is a chance encounter, as Perske was just in the country on business, when she tracks down Supergirl to tell her the concerns she has with her relationship to the son of her ex husband wondering “how much his heir takes after him”. Matrix seems skeptical at first, but pictures of a suspicious man following her at least gets Supergirl to pay a bit more attention around Lexcorp. This would lead to the maid of might trashing various Lexcorp facilities, realizing Lex was no good, and throwing him out a window.

    After Matrix settles down, she seeks out Perske again and wants to learn from her and wants her as a mentor to help deal with the “Luthor’s of this world”. We would see this relationship in full form in Showcase ‘95 #1 (although briefly) which I covered last week.

    The way Linda (not Supergirl at this point so Elizabeth Perske doesn’t recognize her) reacts to seeing her former mentor aboslutely makes it seem like she has not seen her since she merged with Linda. I do like Liz asking Dick if she is “addled”.

    It would be about a year and a half until we would see the former wife of Luthor but she would show up seeking out Linda, not Supergirl. Liz was once again in town visiting her old friend Elsa – issue 29 for those keeping track – when she notices the angel statues in her home. Elsa informs Liz that they were made by Linda and gifted to her son. Liz is quite taken by the craftsmanship on display and this would lead to her helping Linda get a gallery showing in Paris.

    This arc is told across issues 33-35 of the series and Perske’s involvement starts with her coming to Linda’s apartment to meet with her but after asking to use the restroom Linda quickly realizes her Supergirl costume is still hanging up in there and rushes in front of the older woman. Linda would stay backed up in the toilet until the end of the issue, but only as a cover while she was out Supergirl-ing. The end of the issue has Elizabeth Perske finally able to use the restroom and letting Linda know she’s got a gallery booking in Paris the next week.

    The Paris show opens thanks to Elizabeth Perske and Dick Malverne and the show seems to be going good until Linda remembers she had a Supergirl commitment at the same time on the other side of the planet and once again uses the bathroom excuse to sneak away prompting Liz to mention “perhaps I should put her together with my gastroenterologist. From here Liz and Dick have to contend with none other than Parasite destroying Linda’s art show for really no reason. The pair hold their own fairly well but the statues are all destroyed by the time Supergirl enters the scene.

    Supergirl and Parasite continue fighting for the rest of the issue and much of the following issue while Liz is left behind picking up the pieces (literally) of Linda’s show while she and Dick assume she is either still in the toilet or too embarrassed to see her show in this state. In a surprising turn of fate however, there are buyers lined up to buy all the remaining statues at significantly higher prices. Linda finally makes an appearance at the end of the issue where she gets the bad news – all her statues went ka-blooey – and the good news – she’s got boko amounts of money now.

    I really enjoyed this story arc for Liz and I like how her and Linda played off each other and I wish we could’ve gotten a bit more of that. Perhaps as an artist myself, I just want to see more of Linda pursuing her artistic career. The next time Liz shows up will be her last appearances (issues 53 and 54) and it once again plays up the art connoisseur side of Perske when Linda finds a young artist in New York who also has a bit of a specialty for angel statues. This similarity, along with the kid’s mom being wrongfully (or so it seems) against young Art pursuing his artistic talents, leads Linda to reach out to Perske again to get the young lad set up with a personal studio.

    Turns out that Art’s mom wasn’t totally in the wrong, seeing as how Art’s statues have the nasty habit of coming to life and being somewhat demon-esque. Thankfully Supergirl enters the scene to save the day with a bit of a back and forth dialogue (pictured above). Art’s mom tells Liz that his sculptures come to life when he’s sleeping, Buzz tries to kill the kid, and the day is saved by Linda (not Supergirl) faking being killed by the demon sculpture. This action causes Art to snap out of his dream-state and all the sculptures go back to being clay and marble.

    The story ends with Liz revealing that she’d always known that Linda was Supergirl, which must account for her not being upset every time she ran off to the bathroom. I do really enjoy this reveal about Liz, it lines up with her first encounter with Supergirl all the way back in Supergirl (vol. 2) #2 when she was able to spot Supergirl even when she wasn’t in her Supergirl costume. This issue (vol. 3 #54) is unfortunately her last appearance, but I’m not sure where else her arc could go.

    Elizabeth Perske is a great companion to the Matrix Supergirl and serves as a nice look into the past of Lex Luthor. It did seem to have some inconsistency about exactly what her role in society was, be it traveler, investor, or just general billionaire. I like seeing her as a role model and mentor to Supergirl and the one page in Showcase where we see them working together (before Mae jumps out a window) was a great dynamic that we didn’t see again. Her finally landing as an art connoisseur in her appearances written by Peter David felt like a great solution to who Perske could be and gave her another reason to work with Linda and Supergirl. Since the current Supergirl no longer had any ties to Lex Luthor romantically I can’t really see any situation where Liz Perske would show up again unless the 90s Linda Danvers were to also show back up or if she were to show up in a cameo capacity along with images of Lex’s other former wives.

    One last thing I wanted to note is that I did see some discrepancies in Perske’s list of appearances. League of Comic Geeks is my main source for tracking character appearances and it usually works pretty good, but the Secret Files issue as well as Supergirl #53 were not listed for her but they were listed on the DC Wiki. This does mean that potentially there are additional Perske appearances that I didn’t cover here so if anything seems missing please let me know.

  • Supergirl in the Multiverse: Earth-387

    In the nearly 100 entries of Supergirl in the Multiverse, somehow this is the first one that I’ve encountered that has it’s origin in a Supergirl story. We have had plenty where Supergirl shows up in the elseworld, or stories where an alternate Supergirl was a major player, but Earth-387 is specifically a Supergirl universe. Adventure Comics #387 was near the front end of Supergirl’s run as leading feature in the magazine and told the story of “The Wolf Girl of Stanhope”. This story did not take place in the universe of Earth-387 but that universe does get visited briefly in the story.

    In an effort to help Supergirl gain immunity to Kryptonite, Dr. Sanford from Stanhope creates a serum to potentially cure Supergirl of her weakness. The serum does work, however it has the unholy side-effect of turning Supergirl into Super-Wolf-Girl giving the maid of might a monstrous face and hands making her look like a movie wolf person. It turns out however, that a parallel universe suffered a similar fate. A pocket universe opens to show a normal looking Supergirl, this however is the Supergirl of Earth-387 where all it’s citizens look like wolf-people and that Supergirl also took a serum from her universe’s Dr. Sanford and the pair of Supergirl’s had opposite and similar effects of making their hero’s gain an unsettling visage. The pair of Dr. Sanford’s are able to swap serums and administer to each Supergirl reverting them back to normal.

    As with all my Supergirl in the Multiverse posts, this is my own artwork. Super-Wolf-Girl is leaping towards the camera her wolf claws extended. A newspaper in the foreground reads “Supergirl Returns” and a blue sky and cityscape fills the background. A s-symbol in the top right has a 387 on it.

  • Supergirl: Perfect Form (Showcase ’95 #1 & #2)

    After Supergirl’s miniseries in 1994 but before her ongoing began in 1996 Supergirl had a few appearances in the anthology book Showcase. The Showcase series ran from ’93-’96 and each issue would be split into 3 stories and would often help to launch characters into new series or new storylines, sort of like pilot episodes in comic form. Supergirl had 4 appearances in the Showcase series and today we’ll be talking about the first story called “Perfect Form” by creators Charles Moore (Writer), Stuart Imonen (Penciler), Wade Von Grawbadger (Inker), Tom McCraw (Colorist), and Ken Brunzenak (Letterer).

    I gotta start with talking about Stuart Immonen’s art. Immonen does fantastic work and he’s easily one of my favorite Supergirl artists because of his work here and it’s a real shame he never went on to be a more regular artist on the character. Immonen didn’t do any other starring Supergirl titles but he would do quite a lot of work on the Superman titles in the 90s as well as the post Zero Hour Legion titles so I can’t say this is his only work on Supergirl and he did do the critically acclaimed Superman: Secret Identity mini series that was my favorite Superman book for a long time and the basis for Earth-33 in my Supergirl in the Multiverse series. All that to say, I would really love to see Immonen on more Supergirl work.

    Perfect form isn’t a particularly world shattering story, but it does work great as a Supergirl story and specifically a Matrix Sueprgirl story. I do think this could easily work as a launch to a Supergirl comic and it does end with a lead in to Supergirl’s role in the New Titans book which I had sort of forgotten about before reading these issues for this week’s entry. The story revolves around an alien life-form that has recently re-awakened or possibly has just gained sentience on his journey to earth to find a new body that would hold his sentience. As I was reading this it almost seemed like the antagonist was Cyborg Superman for a bit but he’s not quite as competent, perhaps a Supergirl version of the Cyborg which seems like something season 1 of the Supergirl show might’ve done.

    The robot is named Dichon but he doesn’t have much in the way of staying power and I don’t imagine he ever showed up again after getting sent away by Supergirl in part 2. He is brought to earth by sensing gnolar crystal deposits that he believes will be the best substance to create his “perfect form”. These crystals also serve as one of the other plots of the story with the Bone Dagger Labs crew that are mining these same crystals.

    This mining crew wears jumpsuits with skull shaped logos and their mining havoc brings Supergirl to the scene to stop them from what seems to be nefarious deeds. Supergirl is surprised when, after stopping the crew, their leader Bailey presents papers showing that they’re legally allowed to be where they are and do what they do. Supergirl let’s them continue but she doesn’t trust them enough to not keep a close eye on them. It’s around this time where Dichon joins the party and takes the fight to Supergirl. After handily taking out the alien’s robot goons, a tractor beam stops Supergirl in her tracks and part one ends with Supergirl in the clutches of the enemy who realizes her protoplasmic form would be perfect new body for him.

    It takes just a few panels for Supergirl to break out of the cage she was trapped in and get back outside of the ship. Her escape is well timed as she catches the Bone Dagger fools who had the plan to drive the ship away to become seen as heroes, they failed rather spectacularly. Supergirl formulates a plan and works together with the Bone Dagggers to send Dichon away once and for all.

    In short, Hitch and Skyver stick behind to try jamming Dichon’s signal and Supergirl and Bailey go up to the ship to stop him. Bailey takes a rather serious blow from Dichon which prompts Supergirl to change into her rage form (one of my favorite looks for her) and she handily scares the robot long enough for Bailey to finish his part of the plan. Dichon says “I would most assuredly defeat you eventually but if I am to live I must find the crystals elsewhere” which to me feels like he was chickening out. The Bone Daggers are reunited, Supergirl sends them off now treating them as friends, and Raven pulls Supergirl out of the end of this story and right into New Titans #120.

    This is a thoroughly Matrix story and I really enjoy that. There’s a lot of Supergirl using her Matrix specific powers like telekinesis and other psi-based powers, and we even got to see her in her base protomatter form briefly. We also get to see the rage form costume, also showing up on the cover to issue 2. But the entire story centering around Matrix’s specific body composition and that being the end goal of the antagonist really sets this story apart. The gnolar crystals, that Dichon was initially after, reacting oddly to Supergirl’s shapechanging form not allowing her to morph around them as she would normally be able to and how she can merge the crystals into her body is what leads Dichon seek out Supergirl’s body for his own. Also one of my favorite Supergirl supporting characters – Elizabeth Perske – makes a brief cameo in this story.

    Liz Perske and the Bone Daggers feel like they were being set up as supporting cast members for potential upcoming Supergirl stories and I wonder how things might’ve played out if this crew continued making Supergirl stories instead of the Peter David stories we would get soon after this. The David stories are truly fantastic and that Supergirl series is a great read, it does however start feeling less and less like a Supergirl story as it goes on. I will be covering the remaining Showcase stories at a later date, but Perske’s brief appearance here makes me want to take a deep dive into the 4th ex-wife of Lex Luthor, so stay tuned to see that coming next week.

  • Supergirl in the Multiverse: Earth-395

    There are quite a few universes that re-imagine superheroes into different time periods. One of the common time periods that likes to get explored is the Medieval era. The current most known universe is probably Earth-118, the home to Dark Knights of Steel which reimagines the DC Universe but with knights and castles and sorcery. You also have the Elseworlds tale from the mid-90s called League of Justice which leans more towards the mystical/fairy tale side of Medieval stories, but today we’re looking at Earth-395 which is home to the stories Batman: Dark Knight of the Round Table and Superman: Kal which lean into the Arthurian legend while depositing 2 of the more prominent heroes of the DC Universe. While both of these tales are canonically a part of this universe, they don’t bear any interaction and stand alone for the most part. Due to this, and because I didn’t particularly care for the Batman story, I will mostly be focusing on Superman: Kal. A lot of Superman Elseworlds tales are based primarily around Kal-El landing somewhere other than on the outskirts of Smallville and being found by the Kents. This story places Kal outside the Kingdom of Lexford, once again found by 2 kindly farmers but many centuries before in Medieval England. Kal, having named himself, grew up on the farm but in his teenage years the town blacksmith, Oll, would hire him on as an apprentice. This apprenticeship would lead to Kal competing in a tournament to win the affection of the fair lady Loisse. While Loisse is clearly enamored with the young smith, the king Lex wants her for himself, and quite brutally takes her. Earlier in the tale Lex had found the rocket ship that brought the alien to earth and forced Kal to forge a suit of armor for him out of it. Lex also had a piece of Kryptonite that he wore as a necklace, this paired with the impervious rocket armor made him nigh indestructable, but nothing could stop Kal from avenging his lost love. Kal had also forged a sword from the rocket. and the pair came to blows tragically ending in both of their deaths.

    The story ends on an epilogue with Jamie Ollson telling the story to a young child (named Merlin) and he also reveals that with Kal’s last bit of strength he safely stored the sword so that someone years later could use it for good. The sword is seen embedded in an anvil, serving as the basis for this week’s Supergirl entry. Supergirl does not appear in any of these stories, but the story potential of another hero rising up and taking up Kal’s sword was too good to pass up. The story could be told a couple ways, perhaps Kara – the young knight who would weild the sword – could also be Kryptonian like Kal was. But she could also be a human that just follows in Kal’s footsteps and uses the sword for a new generation as a protector with the obvious blessing that comes with pulling the sword from its resting place. There is definitly potential for more story here, but Dark Knights of Steel will probably keep any alternative Medieval Elseworlds tales from popping up any time soon.

    As with all my Supergirl in the Multiverse posts, this is my own artwork. The knight Kara is standing over an anvil labled “Oll-Son”. She is pulling a sword out of the anvil and a blue light is emitting from where it was stored. Kara backlit from an open doorway and the room she is in has various bits of armor and other metal-work. A s-symbol with a 395 on it is in the top right corner.

  • Supergirl Surprise #17: Supergirl (Vol. 5) #15

    For those unaware, which might be everyone because I’m not sure I’ve explained it, the way I go about picking the Supergirl Surprise issues each month is by consulting a random number generator and my excel document that lists all my Supergirl comics. The excel document is something I put together soon after I started the blog for the sole purpose of tracking Supergirl Surprise but I’ve since also used it to track just how many comics Supergirl has headlined since I’ve got (pretty much) all of them now. This list currently sits at 412 comics, so each month I’ll pull up a random number generator and key in a request of a random number from 1-412 and consult my list then go to my long boxes and find the respective issue. This is a long winded way of me saying I was gob smacked when I pulled out a Supergirl comic with Power Boy on the cover after just talking about one of Supergirl’s other abusive exes in last month’s Supergirl Surprise #16 (H’El). I really did not want to go through another entry of talking about red flags, but upon re-reading I was quite refreshed at how Supergirl was shown approaching Power Boy and his specific brand of affection.

    “Love the Ones we Hurt” was written by Joe Kelly, with pencils from Ian Churchill, inks from Norm Rapmund, colors from Rod Reis, and lettering by Comic Craft. This issue gives us some backstory on nobody’s favorite character, Power Boy. For those unaware, Power Boy was introduced in the post-Infinite Crisis era and was very briefly a part of the Teen Titans. He went on to have about a dozen appearances and died rather unceremoniously soon after his introduction. About half of his appearances were alongside Supergirl and he was set up as a romantic counterpart to the girl of steel but I imagine it was never meant to last and was more-so a depiction of what a bad boyfriend would look like.

    Captain Boomerang Jr. was another of Supergirl’s supporting cast members in this period of time in her comic and the story opens with him in the hospital for reasons I can’t immediately remember. Supergirl and Power Boy are flying and making out when Supergirl realizes that kid boomerang is awake at the hospital now and tries to break away from Power Boy to go check on him. Power Boy, realizing that he is no longer the center of her attention, yells “Don’t turn you back on me when I’m talking to you.” and then punches her through a hospital. Yikes. He then has the audacity to tell her to calm down. Double yikes. He continues putting the beat down on her, telling her he loves her, and eventually renders her unconscious. You can probably see why I was nervous about covering this one.

    Supergirl awakes on a heart shaped bed with power dampening cuffs on her and then looks up to a wall full of photos of herself that can only be described as stalker-esque. He response is justified when she says “Power Boy is psycho”. Power Boy then opens the conversation with saying that Supergirl was out of line before and proceeds to talk about how his powers work and we find out that he is from Apokolips which is where he first noticed Supergirl. This was when she was brainwashed by Darkseid as part of the Superman/Batman: Apocalypse storyline and she wasn’t at her best. But to Power Boy, this villainous, scantily clad girl of steel is what he thinks is best for her and says “We can be prefect together, if you’ll just let me fix you” while holding up her costume that she was wearing on Apokolips.

    At this point is when I really started getting into how Supergirl approached this situation and why I preferred this issue to the H’El issue from last month. Supergirl, at this point, has had enough. She uses her heat vision to burn her cuffs, the Apokolips costume, and Power Boy’s hands while saying “I think we need to break up”. I love how Kara is shown here having full ownership of herself and her body and knows when to say no to a problematic partner and she knows that what Power Boy is calling love is anything but.

    Also we get like 6 pages of Kara kicking the shit out of Power Boy whilst saying lines like “you said you loved me…and you hit me” and “no one who says he loves you should hit you, ever”. This comic is not the most nuanced take on domestic violence and it’s not particularly subtle, however it is nice to see Supergirl standing up for herself like this and holding her own. I don’t love this period of Supergirl comics, we’re right in the middle of the Zor-El sent Kara to earth to kill Kal arc which is just a bit dumb in my opinion. I was also never really fond on Captain Boomerang Jr. so his inclusion here doesn’t really matter too much to me. Also Felix Faust was here for a page, I guess that was setting up things to come. The issue ends with Power Boy’s Father Box exploding in space and Supergirl looking a bit worse for wear as a cliffhanger.

    Nothing super notable in the ad space this time out, but we do have a couple I wanted to show off. There’s an ad page that’s split in half so the top half is advertising the critically acclaimed comic Green Lantern: Rebirth while the bottom is just an absolutely baffling abovetheinfluence ad where one kid is telling the other to play football instead of smoking pot. Most of the other ads here are for 52 and Countdown as it was that time at DC but the inside cover boldly proclaims “Jimmy Olsen Must Die!” which at the very least caught my husband’s attention while I was reading so maybe they’re doing something right in the 2007 DC offices.