• DC Super Hero Girls: Intergalactic Games

    I am unsure exactly when this dvd entered my collection but I do know I got it for very cheap and it came out in 2017. When talking about the Super Hero Girls there are 2 separate eras to talk about, the web series era (G1) and the CN era (G2) and each era has a specific art style and vibe. This is a direct to dvd movie from the former era. The five main girls are Wonder Woman, Supergirl, Batgirl, Starfire, and Bumblebee but dozens of other heroes are featured as part of the school. Members of rival schools (Korugar Academy and the Female Furies of Apokolips) include Blackfire, Lobo, Bleez, Maxima, Mongal, Lashina, Stompa, Mad Harriet, Artemiz, and Speed Queen. The main plot of the movie centers around the 3 teams getting ready for and competing in the titular “Intergalactic Games” which kind of feels like the Olympics and kind of like high school sports.

    While the Intergalactic games are the focal point, there’s quite a few other major plots and set pieces that are worth mentioning. The beginning of the movie has the Super Hero Girls facing off against the Metal Men (just Platinum, Iron, and Lead) and Platinum herself would become integral to the plot going forward. The Metal Men, as they appear in the film, are projects of Will Magnus who was attempting to make artificial super heroes but because of their inability to have emotions or empathy they were deemed too dangerous and set for destruction. Lena Thurol (not Thorul as it’s normally spelled) is introduced here as the IT for Super Hero High and takes Platinum to be destroyed but instead takes her back to her laboratory.

    It is when the other schools come that we learn of Starfire’s sister Blackfire, who is part of Korugar Academy and Big Barda who used to be part of the Female Furies. Both of these relationships will be played with and explored as the movie goes on and they add a bit of tension and stakes to the competition at the end of the film. The Wonder Woman part of the plot is also revealed as her mother, Hippolyta, is wanting her to impress Ambassador Bek so that she can be a representative in the intergalactic council. Lena is revealed to not only be bald, but also evil although according to Platinum she doesn’t currently have any criminal record. Lena is working on reprogramming Platinum and building up an army of Krypto-Mite piloted mech suits based on Platinum’s technology. She also has a mysterious cohort that she talks to via an earpiece.

    The opening ceremony for the games results in an impromptu food fight started by a hidden Krypto-Mite but would quickly be encouraged by Harley Quinn. The competition started the next morning and all 3 teams were preforming admirably but the evening would have Super Hero High and Korugar Academy tied with the Furies tailing behind. Later that night the Female Furies would infiltrate one of the facilities to steal the responsometer that Doc Magnus had used in his creation of the Metal Men. This results in a battle between the Super Hero Girls and the Furies and would ultimately end with the Furies being removed from the competition and being placed in protective custody.

    With just 2 teams left and a few games remaining they stay pretty neck and neck. Thanks to Supergirl and Starfire leaving one of the competition to help with a building fire, Korugar Academy wins and they are once again tied going into the final competition. Unfortunately the game wouldn’t be played because Lena chooses this moment to launch her attack and reveal she isn’t Lena Thurol, but Lena Luthor! It’s here that Lena tries, and fails, to convert the citizens against the heroes before she launches an all out attack. Even faced with a mech suited and kryptonite powered Lena, Supergirl still tries compassion first instead of fists. And it is this compassion and heroism that shows Platinum there’s other ways to live beside Lena’s way. The battle rages on and the Krypto-Mites depower Supergirl, but thanks to the quick thinking of Batgirl, they’re able to get anti Kryptonite guns and Bumblebee has put together an anti kryptonite suit for Supergirl. Korugar Academy also left as soon as the fighting started, but Blackfire chose to stay back to help her sister in the fight.

    Battle won and Lena safely locked up, and only 15 minutes left of the movie, you think everything is wrapped up but nope! Brainiac shows up and merges all the mech suits Lena made, along with his skull ship and Platinum and starts up the fight once again. It’s the compassion Platinum witnessed from Supergirl and the bond between Starfire and Blackfire that eventually turns the fight against Brainiac in the Super Hero Girls favor. We see Platinum switch sides and help the girls but in doing so she sacrifices herself. Thankfully she was reconstructed by doctor Magnus and was able to attend the award ceremony with the rest of the girls.

    That’s most of the movie but there’s a couple fun background elements throughout the movie that I wanted to point out. The theme song at the start of the movie is the same one used for the webisodes but here we’ve got an extended version. The Super Hero Girls facing off against the Metal Men was cool to see even if Gold, Tin, and Mercury weren’t included. Throughout the movie we get a few scenes with Paradite as a groundskeeper for the school and his work is constantly getting ruined by the shenanigans going on with the rest of the plot. While I brushed over them in my synopsis, the games themselves all seem really well thought out and there’s quite a few shown in a montage. The funniest one might be Korugar putting Lobo in for the race against speedsters Flash and Speed Queen wherein Lobo realizes he’s out of his league almost instantly.

    There’s a lot of the movie that focuses on cross school relationships like Big Barda and her former teammates the Female Furies, as well as Starfire and her Sister Blackfire from Korugar Academy. This seems to be a major theme of the movie along with an idea of saving people’s lives over anything else even if it means you lose something you’re excited for.

    While Supergirl isn’t the main star of the movie, she does get a few nice moments. During the opening fight with the Metal Men, Platinum reads out a couple stats for Supergirl; “heat vision: 2000 degrees” & “Supergirl’s Fist Velocity: 168 miles per hour”. She also, along with Starfire, forfeits one of the competitions to save a family from a fire. Supergirl’s fight with Lena features both Super Compassion and Super Willpower as she continues to fight against the Kryptonite. Supergirl fighting Brainiac is also always a good time.

    While I wouldn’t say this movie is peak cinema, and it’s obviously made for a very young audience, it was a lot of fun and I had a good time watching it and they jammed a lot of stuff into host 76 minutes. The movie ends with a tease of Brainiac saying “I will destroy those supers!” I don’t know if this plot is ever picked back up again but I’m thrilled to find out as I track down more of these direct to dvd Super Hero Girls movies. If you have any thoughts or questions feel free to email me daringnewblog@gmail.com Hope you enjoyed and I hope you come back for more!

  • Supergirl in the Multiverse: Earth-34

    Earth-34 as it appears in DC continuity is relatively unexplored, however, it is very clearly supposed to be Kurt Busiek’s Astro City and I’ll be treating it like I did earths 7 and 8 (1610 and 616 Marvel universes) and base my drawing on the original universe not the DC version of it. Astro City is a comic series that has been through a few different publishers – including DC for a bit – but it seems to be currently under Image. The series doesn’t follow a single character or even a single team and instead follows the city itself. Stories focus on a single hero for a few issues or they will focus on average citizens as they interact with the super heroic world around them. Because of the nature of the storytelling we mostly see the heroes grow and evolve in the background. It is hard to adequately explain the brilliant storytelling in such a brief post, but it is truly a great series that has a sort of optimistic silver age futurism vibe told in a more modern era and is absolutely worth a read.

    For this series, when a universe doesn’t immediately have a Supergirl counterpart my first instinct is to figure out the Superman of the universe and Astro City’s Superman is very clearly the Samaritan. Unfortunately the Samaritan doesn’t have any partners or female counterparts with similar power sets so I was back to square one. I considered Starwoman as well because of her alien heritage but she didn’t really fit otherwise. It was when I read issues 2 and 3 of Astro City Vol. 2 and was introduced to Astra Furst. The First family is very obviously an homage to the Fantastic Four but something about Astra’s fun-loving personality and the fact that she is a young blonde girl who is part of a legacy of heroes that really sold her to me as a good Supergirl for the universe. Astra, as I mentioned, is part of the First Family who are public heroes in Astro City and have been active since the 1950s. Astra is part of the 3rd generation of the family and has energy based powers which allow her to fly, blast energy bolts, and maintain a nearly invulnerable energy form.

    As with all my Supergirl in the Multiverse posts, this is my own artwork. Astra Furst of the First Family is floating in the foreground casually lounging after flying up from Astro City pictured behind. Astro City can be seen stretching out around the bay and Mount Kirby. A motif is in the top right of the First Family logo with a 34 on top of it.

  • Superman Family: Super Extras

    Superman Family was an anthology title published by DC from 1974-1982 and it would feature, as you might have guessed, members of the Superman Family. The title would eventually, in issue 182, feature entirely new stories but before then each issue would have a single new story and would be supplemented with a handful of reprints from Superman’s rich history. While you did always get at least one new story per issue, DC would also entice new readers with what they called “Special Features”. These would vary from brief history recaps, puzzles, or sometimes wacky text edits to comic covers. After the title switched to being filled with all new stories these special features wouldn’t really be present so for today we’ll just be taking a look at issues 164-181 of the title and skipping over anything that doesn’t involve the girl of steel.

    The first issue of Superman Family was #164 which may seem odd but comics would often change titles or take over numbering from other titles and Superman Family is no different. Superman Family took over the numbering from Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen and as such, Jimmy would be one of the rotating stars of the title. Although the special feature in this book is “How the Artists Draw the Superman Family” Supergirl herself isn’t featured along with the other sketches. Fear not though as next issue features Supergirl in the lead story, a special feature all about the girl of steel, and a table of contents page styled after the iconic cover to Adventure Comics #397. Starting with the table of contents, pictured at the top of this post, we see Supergirl in her current shorts and v-neck costume and the titles of each of the stories are pictured around her and in her hands is a list of the issue’s “Super Features”. Getting into the Special Features now, “Supergirl’s Career” refers to a 1 page comic retelling of some of the major events of Supergirl’s life and also lists the issue numbers of when each thing happened which is great for people looking to learn more about the girl of steel.

    The next issue, 166, had “Super-Extras” which were Fact Files on the Superman Family and would continue into 167 as well. Supergirl is featured with a headshot, her birth name, her alias, and a 2 paragraph recap of Supergirl’s history. As opposed to the Super Feature from last issue, this synopsis mostly focuses on Argo and briefly talks about her reveal to the world, before quickly jumping to her new status quo that was introduced in the previous issue of Superman Family. Again this feels like a great way to introduce new readers to Supergirl and once again references specific issue numbers.

    Issue 167, as mentioned before, continues on with the Fact Files but also has a “Super-Special Feature” called “Super-Pets and Super-Threats”. This 2-page spread features an absurd amount of gorillas and not one but two of Supergirl’s Super-Pets, Streaky and Comet. Krypto is also featured on the page and is often associated with Supergirl but here is listed as “Superboy’s Superdog”. Comet’s origin is very quickly told and it says he “belongs” to Supergirl which feels a bit odd when considering the fact that Comet has the mind of a human and romantic feelings for Supergirl. Streaky’s history mentions the fact that he can no longer get super powers because X-Kryptonite was also destroyed along with all the other Kryptonite which I wasn’t aware of so that was fun to learn. We don’t get issue numbers with this Super-Special Feature like we did in the previous few issues so it’s would be a bit trickier for new readers to find these stories but the bios of the pets seem accurate and introduced me to at least 3 characters I was previously unaware of.

    The “Super-Extras” for issue 168 are numerous to say the least. First is a 2 page comic retelling all of Lena Thorul’s history (read more about the girl with the see-through mind here). Then we get a “Super Puzzle” which is a crossword with quite a few words to find. Lastly we get a page of “Comedy Cover Capers” where they’ve gone and changed the dialogue on 4 covers, 2 of which are Supergirl comics.

    Unfortunately the Super-Extras in issue 169 are all Lois Lane themed since she is the starring feature. The Table of Contents page seems to vanish come issue 170 but we continue to have Super-Extras but once again the feature is on the lead feature, Jimmy, and not on the girl of steel. With Supergirl back as lead in 171 we get a Super-Extra called “The Supergirl-Batgirl Team” which uses 2 pages to clue the reader in to Supergirl and Batgirl’s previous 3 team ups complete with issue numbers referenced. This is a great companion to Supergirl’s story since it also featured a brand new Supergirl-Batgirl team-up. We also get a new set of Comedy Cover Capers and all 4 are Supergirl Covers. And we finish out with a Super-Puzzle where all the answers are numerical and are used for a paint by number sorta deal. Questions k-m are all about Supergirl and are fairly simple questions.

    Flipping over to 172, the Super-Extra is 4 pages that are titled “The Superman Family Album” and Supergirl gets both pages 3 and 4. Once again we’re given a bit of a recap of Supergirl’s life as told through diary entries by Kara. This time out the recap seems to mostly focus on her Kryptonian heritage and seeing as it’s supposed to be Kara’s diary we don’t get any issue number references. Issue 173 only got one page allotted to Super-Extras and it was exclusively about Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen.

    174 has some really great Super-Extras between the “Supergirl Villains Quiz” and “New Fashions for Supergirl”. The fan drawn costumes are great to see and I’m particularly fond of the Scott Cassman design in the lower left even if it “isn’t really practical” like the artist mentions. The Villains Quiz is cool to see and I was happy that only #4 stumped me. Thankfully the issue also has answers and I found out that she was a Kandorian named Zora that I might dedicate a post to in the near future. (1. Nightflame, 2. Lesla-Lar, 3. Starfire, 4. Zora (Black Flame), 5. Satan Girl).

    While 175 has a couple “Super-Costume” paper dolls that are reminiscent of Supergirl in the Lois Lane Costume Parade, they’re not really Supergirl so I won’t count them. Jimmy Olsen takes the lead feature and Super-Extra spots in issue 176, but Supergirl takes both back over in 177. This time we get “Supergirl’s Boyfriends” and we get a panel and a paragraph for 5 of Linda (Supergirl) Danver’s boyfriends. The 5 lovers are Brainiac 5, Jerro, Bronco (Comet) Bill Starr, Dick Malverne, and Mr. Mxyzptlk. Personally, from the list, I’d go for Brainiac 5 but Dick Malverne has a special place in my heart.

    Lois gets the monopoly of the Super-Extras in 178, but 179 does give Supergirl a couple panels even though it’s a Jimmy issue. This extra is called “Strangest Strangers of Space” and is introduced by Jimmy as “aliens confronted by Superman Family members”. Supergirl’s 2 entries are for the giant red monster she faced off against after her reveal to the world, and a robot made by Jor-El. And unfortunately this is the end of the Super-Extras since 180 and 181 don’t have any additional content and even the Jimmy and Supergirl backup features are combined with a reprint of a story from Jimmy Olsen #57 wherein the pair get married in an imaginary story.

    This was a really fun way to look at the Superman Family title to celebrate finally getting a complete run in my comic collection (issue 169 was the last book that I had to find). Please excuse the photographs of the comic pages, these stories aren’t available digitally (at least not easily) and I feel like even if they were on the DC Infinite app, the extras would be excluded. The letters pages were also included in each issue and would rotate between Letters to Lois, Jimmy Olsen’s Pen-Pals, and Super Fe-Mail. These are generally listed along with the extras but weren’t really part of the bonus content that I wanted to cover for this blog post. A couple of personal favorite Super-Extras for me were “New Fashions for Supergirl” and the various Super-Puzzles. The various retellings of Supergirl’s life we saw were also interesting and the Comedy Cover Capers were fun. On a whole though I had a great time going through them and it really makes it feel like getting the whole series was worth it. If you enjoyed reading and want to let me know your favorite Super-Extra feel free to email me at daringnewblog@gmail.com and I’ll see you next time!

  • Supergirl in the Multiverse: Earth-33

    This week we’re looking at the “real world” universe of DC Comics. DC has portrayed the world that we live in a number of times. It was called Earth-Prime in the Pre-Crisis era and we saw real world DC staffers show up in comics like Julius Schwartz and this universe would also birth Superboy-Prime. Earth-33 specifically refers the universe as it appears in Multiversity by Grant Morrison, and has a hero called Ultra. However, the real world universe I’m using as reference comes from Superman: Secret Identity by Kurt Busiek and Stuart Immonen. In this story we’re introduced to a kid named after the famous comic character Clark Kent. Clark is a kid from Picketsville, Kansas who is just a normal kid that gets too many Superman toys and gets teased relentlessly for his name. That is until one day he starts flying. The story goes on to show us how someone from the real world might react to suddenly having the powers of Superman.

    This week we’ve got 2 Supergirls as opposed to 1 but they really do come as a matched set so it felt rude to leave either out. Jane and Carol Kent are the twin daughters of Clark Kent and while they appeared as babies in issue 3 of Secret Identity, it was in issue 4 where they really came into prominence. Jane and Carol, much like their father, mysteriously acquired super powers when they were teens. And, much like their father, would secretly use these powers to help people.

    As with all my Supergirl in the Multiverse posts, this is my own artwork. The Supergirls from Superman: Secret Identity are shown saving a cat from a tree. Jane is floating up and carefully removing a very upset cat from a high branch while Carol stands in the foreground posing for a picture.

  • Action Comics: Supergirls

    Near the end of 2003 there was a 3-part story told across issues 806-808 called Supergirls. 2003 was an odd year for the girl of steel, Kara Zor-El had been absent from comics since the Crisis and the Matrix Supergirl had long ago merged with Linda Danvers but even her story wrapped up in the early months of the year. As such the role of Supergirl was left open and would soon be filled by Cir-El. Cir-El was introduced as the future daughter of Lois Lane and Superman. I do plan on doing a full exploration of Cir-El at some point but for today I want to talk about what might be her best story from her brief time in comics.

    As mentioned earlier, Supergirls was told from issue 806-808 of Action Comics and all 3 issues have the same creative team. Joe Kelley writing, Pasqal Ferry, Cam Smith, and Guy Major on art, and Comicraft providing letters. The issues came out from August to October of 2003 and while the covers all call the story “Supergirls” the story is listed on the inside as “Hungry Ghost” referring to the antagonist Byakko. As the title suggests, this isn’t a story of just one “Supergirl” but 3 and surprisingly none of them are named Kara. The stars of this story are, in order of appearance, Traci Thirteen, Natasha Irons, and Cir-El. Cir-El is the only of the trio that actually uses the moniker of Supergirl but Superman does refer to the group as “Super…Girls” so if they had gone on to further adventures I’m sure that would be their team name. Both Traci 13 and Cir-El are fairly new characters to the lineup having both appeared for the first time at the beginning of the year. Traci sometimes shortens her last name from “Thirteen” to “13” and sometimes goes for “Girl 13” but generally doesn’t bother too much with a superhero identity. She is the daughter of Doctor Terry Thirteen who spends a lot of his time debunking supernatural and magical occurences. Naturally, as his daughter, Traci has what is referred to as “City Magic” drawing most her power from her urban surroundings and can do all the general magic things that you would expect. Cir-El, as I mentioned earlier, is the sort of future daughter of Superman and also has a alter ego of May and there seems to be some sort of split personality thing going on between the two. Cir-El, being half-Kryptonian, has all the normal Kryptonian powers but to a lesser degree because of her diluted DNA. Natasha Irons is the most developed of the trio fist appearing all the way back in 1994. She has, up until now, only been a support for her more well know uncle, Steel. Although throughout the story she comes into her role as a proper superhero herself when she takes up her uncle’s hammer and a new suit of armor to become the new Steel.

    The story itself features a half-dead Superman, injured at the hands of Byakko, another recent addition to Superman’s cast. Byakko is able to phase in and out of things which is how she is able to so easily lodge a pipe in the man of steel and also gets the better of all the Supergirls throughout the story. Byakko blames the death of her husband on Superman, a reference to her introductory story, thus resulting in a lack of Superman action for 3 months in Action Comics.

    Even though the Supergirls are really no match for Byakko, their admirable determination – and a bit of a pep talk from Nat – helps Byakko realize the world is much better with Superman than without and withdrawals herself from the battle as she tells Lana “[Superman] has wonderful children. My husband would have admired them very much.” This brings up another notable point of the story, Lana Lang. Lana is of course a well known childhood friend and confidant of Clark Kent. More recently to this story, however, she is the wife of Pete Ross who has just jumped from Vice President to President after the arrest of former President Lex Luthor. Throughout the story we see Lana getting an apartment in Metropolis and we learn of her plans to leave her husband. There is also reference to a Kiss between her and Superman that I assume was well documented and happened in a previous story. This supposed romantic relationship is what leads Traci to Lana’s apartment after finding an incapacitated Superman in the streets and kicking off this storyline.

    Much like my feelings for Cir-El as a whole, I feel my enjoyment of this story is much more about its potential rather than its execution. The story itself isn’t anything stunning, and the dialogue doesn’t do much for me. But the idea of 3 young teen girls in Metropolis working together to figure out their powers and save the day is really interesting to me. I would love to see this group have continuing stories as we learn more about these “daughters” of Superman. Unfortunately, Cirl-El would vanish from existence just a few months later never to be seen again aside from a brief cameo in Superman/Batman a couple years later. Traci and Natasha have continued to appear in comics and even bounced in and out of a romantic relationship since this story so there is a bit of continuation of this team, but I think without Cir-El they aren’t really Supergirls.

    Sorry to end this on a bit of a downer, I do really enjoy this story and I’m quite fond of the art throughout, and how can I think it’s bad when my biggest complaint is that there isn’t more. With the more loosey goosey nature of DC’s current Everything-is-Canon continuity, I could see Cir-El showing back up, but I really don’t think she would be able to exist aside from a mention or a cameo when we have characters like Jon Kent and Otho-Ra and Osul-Ra filling similar roles. Cir-El could be good to use in an elseworlds story (Powergirl of the Tangent universe in the Superman’s Reign story has a bit of a Cir-El vibe) or we could even see continuations of this Supergirls team told as past stories like Peter Tomasi did with the later Super Sons stories. Be on the lookout for an upcoming post about Cir-El’s full history and feel free to send comments and questions to daringnewblog@gmail.com !