The Daring New Blog of Supergirl

Tag: Origin Story

  • Superman/Batman: Apocalypse

    Superman/Batman: Apocalypse

    Superman/Batman: Apocalypse is an animated film released by Warner Home Video in 2010. The movie stars Tim Daly as Superman, Kevin Conroy as Batman, Andre Braugher as Darkseid, and Summer Glau as Supergirl. The film is a sequel to Superman/Batman: Public enemies and both of these movies are fairly accurately depictions of the comic series Superman/Batman from 2003. Apocalypse adapts issues 8-13 of the series a story arc sometimes called The Supergirl from Krypton and sometimes just called Supergirl. The story acts as a new introduction of Kara Zor-El.

    I’ll only touch on the plot briefly because I encourage readers to check out this story either in its comic or movie form. Kara Zor-El’s ship crashes in Gotham harbor and is found by Batman. After a few scenes of Kara experiencing her new powers, Batman is able to track her down and use Kryptonite to bring her back to the Batcave. From here she meets Superman and finds out that they’re cousins to one another. The next chunk of the story shows Kara acclimating to life on earth, she learns English, she learns to shop, and then with the help of Wonder Woman and the Amazons she learns to fight. While on Themyscira, the island is attacked and Kara is kidnapped and taken to Apokolips. Darkseid, ruler of Apokolips, brainwashes Kara to be one of the Female Furies and it takes the combined efforts of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and Big Barda to get her back to earth safely. Back on earth she and Clark go to Smallville where Clark has set up for her to meet his parents Jonathan and Martha. However, as soon as they get there they are attacked by Darkseid. A fight breaks out and results in Darkseid getting sent through a boom tube and ending up either in the depths of space or the source wall, depending on if you watched the movie or read the comic. With the threat passed, Kara is now revealed to the world as the hero Supergirl.

    In the comics Kara Zor-El had been absent since her death in Crisis on Infinite Earths but Supergirl had shown up in a couple different ways. First as the Matrix, who was a protoplasmic clone of Lana Lang from an alternate dimension who later merged with a human girl named Linda Danvers and became an Earth Born Angel. The second attempt at a post crisis Supergirl was a character named Cir-El, the daughter of Superman and Lois Lane from the future that was actually just a creation of the Futuresmiths and was removed from continuity soon after her debut. While both of these versions of Supergirl have their fans and are interesting takes on the character, there’s something about the simplicity of a Supergirl from Krypton that, for me personally, works really well.

    This Kara Zor-El isn’t quite the same as her Pre-Crisis counterpart and her origin has quite a few differences (read about the Pre-Crisis debut of Supergirl Here). One of the major changes was the idea of Kara being older than Kal and being a teenager when Krypton was destroyed and being trapped in suspended animation for years as Kal grew up and became Superman. This suspended animation factor to her origin has similarities to the Supergirl from Superman the Animated Series and Power Girl’s origins. This idea of Kara being older than Kal has now become the norm and has been adapted into nearly everything including Smallville and the Supergirl series from 2015. Personally I think the suspended animation angle to her origin is quite good and Kara being alive on Krypton and remembering it before its destruction creates a nice distinction between her and Superman and leads to some interesting stories.

    Another major change to this new version of Supergirl is how immediately she was integrated into the wider DC Universe. This Supergirl didn’t live her first few years in an orphanage in Midvale as a secret weapon for Superman. She was trained by Wonder Woman and her origin is closely tied to Batman which leads to both these characters becoming mentor figures for her along with her cousin Superman. This is expanded upon bit more thoroughly in the comic, during the scene when she is revealed as Supergirl on Themyscira many of the major heroes of the DC universe are present including the Justice League, the Teen Titans, the JSA, and the Outsiders.

    In this movie Batman is very standoffish towards Supergirl and doesn’t trust her and has trouble believing that she is who she says she is. The main question that keeps coming up in the story is Batman asking Kara what the name of her mother is. Kara remembers Kal’s parents, Lara and Jor-El, and her own father Zor-El but doesn’t remember her mother’s name. Batman’s mindset is that all the information Kara has presented about her life on Krypton immediately after coming out of the rocket is that all the information is widely known or information that Superman had told her. It is near the end of the movie when Kara approaches Batman and says “Alura”. I think while the answer to Batman’s question was part of why he started trusting Kara, her evolution as a hero throughout the story also plays a major part in him trusting her.

    There are 2 scenes from the movie that are some of my favorites that aren’t present in the comic or are much less prominent. The first is near the beginning of the movie when we see a montage of Clark taking Kara through Metropolis and she’s trying on clothes and shopping and really exploring her new life as a human girl. There’s something very fun and lighthearted about this scene. The scene is present in the comic but it isn’t as long and is mostly restricted to the hot dog scene and a panel of Clark mentioning that Kara had certainly gotten the shopping part of being a teenage girl down. The second scene that I want to talk about happens near the end in the climactic battle against Darkseid. In the comic Supergirl is taken out of the fight pretty early as she fakes her death to throw darkseid off his game leaving Superman to continue the battle by himself. The movie has Supergirl playing a much more active role and she spends a lot of time actively fighting Darkseid. She is also responsible for activating the boom tube that sends Darkseid into the depths of space. I really enjoy this more active role she plays here and feels like a much better start to her heroic career as opposed to her hiding away for most of the fight.

    There’s a few parts of this movie that I’m not particularly fond of. Kara starts her life on earth and comes out of the rocket naked and she stays this way for quite a while, this coupled with the constant over sexualization of the character never sits right with me especially considering Kara is supposedly 16 during this story. A good chunk of this story has Kara in an antagonistic role, first when Batman is untrusting of her after she arrives on earth, and then when she is under Darkseid’s control on Apokolips. These two factors are both very prominent in the Apokolips portion of the story in the middle when Superman is faced with having to fight supergirl and the outfit Kara is wearing doesn’t leave much to imagine.

    While this isn’t my favorite Supergirl origin story, it is a really easy and fun way for new fans of the character to get to know the Girl of Steel. Also looking at the story without solely focusing on Supergirl, there’s some pretty great scenes and a lot of cool action sequences. This storyline would also lead to an ongoing Supergirl title that started in 2005 which is full of really interesting storylines that further develop Kara and her history with Krypton and her future as a hero. Thanks so much for reading! If you liked my blog post about this movie or just want to hear more about it, fellow comics fan Mike Bailey did a podcast episode about it in his Moving Kryptonian Images maxi series that you can find Here. For any thoughts, questions, corrections, or suggestions feel free to leave a comment or email me at blogofsupergirl@gmail.com.

  • Supergirl: Being Super

    Supergirl: Being Super

    Supergirl: Being Super, written by Mariko Tamaki with art by Joëlle Jones, is my favorite Supergirl story. This story came out in late 2016 and early 2017 and was one of the first Supergirl stories I read after really getting into the character. At the point when this story was coming out most of my exposure to the character was from the television show and the Rebirth era Supergirl ongoing title and general knowledge of the character from stories I read as a kid where she would show up. Since then I have read a lot of supergirl stories but this one has maintained its position as my favorite Supergirl story and one of my favorite comic stories of all time.

    The story follows Kara Zor-El, who came to earth in a rocket 8 years ago. Jeremiah and Eliza Danvers are farmers from Midvale who find the young alien and adopt her as their daughter. The story explores Kara experiencing life as a teenager with superpowers in a way that feels natural and real. Kara has 2 best friends Jen and Dolly and they’re all on the track team together.

    I think the story does a lot of very interesting things to the lore of Supergirl and explores common concepts in some new and interesting ways. Part of the story revolves around Kara randomly losing her powers which ties into a plot where she learns to deal with not being able to save everyone. The story also introduces a new Kryptonian character, Tan-On, who was an explorer from Krypton that left the planet long before the destruction and was imprisoned on earth soon after landing. I thought this was a clever way to approach Kara learning about Krypton and also explain another Kryptonian who escaped Krypton.

    The Danvers that are presented in this story are very different than any other version that had been presented, and while they were depicted as farmers, they didn’t feel too much like the Kents. Eliza is a very kind hearted mother that doesn’t know how to approach Kara’s powers but knows how to be a good mom, and Jeremiah, while a man of few words, loves his daughter and will do anything to protect her.

    One of the most impressive things to me about this story, is how it handles the Superman question. As the story is presented, Kara doesn’t remember Krypton aside from brief flashes, most likely due to the trauma surrounding the experience of her home and everyone she knew being gone in an instant. Because she doesn’t remember her planet, she doesn’t know she has a cousin that also came to Earth. The story is also set up in a way that Superman doesn’t expose himself to the world until nearly the end of the story which really adds to how alien and confused Kara feels about her powers. Structuring the story like this allows Kara to stand on her own as a hero and shine without being in her cousin’s shadow.

    The story was initially published as 4 prestige format issues and was soon collected as a single trade paperback. The coloring for these first 2 versions of the story was done by Kelly Fitzpatrick. In 2020 a new version of the story was released and the book was formatted at a smaller size similar to DC’s young readers line of graphic novels. This newer version had coloring by Jeremy Lawson who approached the story using a limited color pallet and having all the art use only blues, yellows, and reds. Most often the panels would have mostly a single color and sometimes use an additional color used to create a focal point.

    I’ve collected a couple examples of the coloring to show side by side comparisons. In my opinion, while I enjoy the thought and concept of a triadic pallet, I prefer the coloring by Fitzpatrick. I feel like in quite a few places that some of the details get lost or some of the artwork blends together too much. This being said, I did like how Lawson approached Kara having her powers fail on her. I felt like the hard contrast of the red line work and white coloring on the blue backgrounds worked really well and really helped illustrate the power loss.

    Before I close out I would like to mention this (minor) Kryptonian typo I noticed on my most recent read through.

    I assume this line is supposed to read “be safe, Kara Zor-El, my daughter” but it instead translates to “be sage, Kara Zor-El, my daughter”. This is of course inconsequential to the overall story but I noticed it and I wanted to mention it in this blog post.

    This is a perfect Supergirl story for anyone to read. I think it’s great for newcomers to the character and long time fans. I think it’s also a great coming of age story for young girls. As mentioned above, this book has been collected in 2 different ways since its initial run and should be fairly easy to get your hands on.

    Thanks so much for reading my blog! If you have any thoughts, questions, comments, or corrections about any of my posts feel free to contact me via email at blogofsupergirl@gmail.com

  • Supergirl Adventures #21

    Supergirl Adventures #21 is the 21st issue of the Superman Adventures comic which was a 66 issues series that tied into the Superman animated series that aired on the WB in the late 90s. This issue has its cover dress altered to read “Supergirl Adventures” as opposed to the normal “Superman Adventures” title logo that appears on the other issues in the series. The 5th issue of the series did a similar thing with Livewire taking over the cover dress.

    This story is titled “The Last Daughter of Argo” and was written by Evan Dorkin and Sarah Dyer with art by Bret Blevins, Terry Austin, Lee Loughridge, and Kevin Cunningham. This issue is oversized at 52 pages and while telling a continuous story it can easily be split into 2 parts. The first half of the issue explores Kara’s origin that was shown in the episode “Little Girl Lost” of the aforementioned Superman animated series but goes into further detail. The start of this story shows Kara In-Ze (who would later become Supergirl) as a young child on the planet of Argo. Her parents, Kala and Zor In-Ze, are scientists on the planet. As Zor goes off to Argo City he leaves Kara and Kala at an observatory. While Zor is gone Kara receives a video call from her friend Pala who lives on Krypton, a neighboring planet to Argo. This line goes dead and as Kara goes to tell her mother they witness the explosion of Krypton. Even though it was Krypton that exploded, not Argo, the destruction still hit the planet and causes mass destruction all over the planet. Kala, Kara, and a few other Argoans that were in the observatory stayed safe from the destruction but a new crisis arose. The explosion of Krypton knocked Argo out of orbit. Now as Argo drifts further and further away from Rao, their sun, the atmosphere becomes colder and the planet uninhabitable. To save the remaining survivors, Kala has everyone go into stasis pods in hopes of a distress signal reaching someone. At this point the story overlaps a bit with the episode of the animated series. Kara is shown waking up in STAR Labs, getting settled in with the Kent’s in Smallville, and even briefly touches on Kara’s tussle with Intergang.

    The second half of this story is original and has Kara watching over metropolis while Superman is out in space with the Justice League. While Superman is away, Supergirl does the usual saving cats from trees superheroing, when she hears of a bomb threat and the terrorist calling out for Superman. Supergirl soon rushes to the scene and is met by Kanto from Apokolips who tries to stop her with a Kryptonite knife. Supergirl, being from Argo not Krypton, isn’t affected by Kryptonite and easily takes care of the threat. We then cut to Apokolips and the displeasure of Darkseid. Granny Goodness and Kanto then go to the Phantom Zone to find a new threat to take out Superman and Supergirl and find Zod. Sending Zod to earth, he soon finds former foes of Superman Jax-Ur and Mala and the 3 join together and go off to take out Supergirl. After a few fights where Supergirl is overpowered by the triple threat, she once again uses her Kryptonite immunity to take out the Phantom Zone villains. This plan almost works but General Zod is also Argoan and has the same immunity. Kara rushes away to the Fortress of Solitude and, after another fight with Zod, uses her wits and a Phantom Zone projector to send all 3 villains back where they belong.

    This is a jam packed issue that has a lot of action and allows this Supergirl to really shine in her own story. The story is written with Kara writing diary entries to give the reader a bit more insight into what it’s like for Kara to live as a refugee from Argo on a planet that is centuries behind what she was familiar with. The story also explores the trauma and fear Kara has of cold and ice because of what Argo went through in the 4 years between Krypton’s destruction and being put into stasis. A lot of the elements of this story would later be used for other iterations of Supergirl. Kara being alive for the destruction of Krypton and being in stasis as Kal grew up on earth was something that was added to the Supergirl origin in the 21st century and has since become the norm for the heroine. The idea of another planet in the same system as Krypton being destroyed as well would be explored in season 2 of the CBS/CW Supergirl show when we’re shown Daxam having similar destruction happen.

    I would definitely recommend reading this story and it’s become fairly easy to get a hold of as it’s been included in 3 different collected editions. In 2015 DC began collecting the series in a handful of trades and this issue is in the 3rd volume. A compendium collection of the series is set to come out in July this year that collects the first 29 issues of the series including this story. Lastly, the issue is also collected in a compilation book called Supergirl Adventures Girl of Steel, which also collects 3 other Supergirl centric stories from the Superman Adventures and Justice League Unlimited comics from the late 90s and early 2000s.

    Thanks so much for reading my blog! If you have any thoughts, questions, comments, or corrections about any of my posts feel free to contact me via email at blogofsupergirl@gmail.com

  • Smallville Legends: Kara and the Chronicles of Krypton

    To coincide with season 7 of Smallville, the CW released a series of 6 short animations that were initially released and made available through Sprint phones and on the CW website. This is the 5th such series of shorts, all that have “chronicles” in the title, released like this alongside seasons of Smallville. The first 3 focus on Chloe Sullivan and are filmed in live action using the existing sets and telling short inconsequential stories that take place during the larger events of the show. The 4 chronicles series is a 3D animated telling of Oliver Queen’s origin and growth into Green Arrow. The Chronicles of Krypton is more similar to the Oliver Queen Cronicles as opposed to the earlier series. It is also animated, however as 2D animation this time, and explores Kara and her life on Krypton just before getting rocketed to earth.

    While this series is notable for exploring Krypton in a way that wasn’t done much in the main Smallville show, it doesn’t do anything groundbreaking. Each of the 6 episodes are only 4 minutes long making the series have a full runtime of less than half an hour, which only allows for a very brief story arc. The story follows Kara and her father, Zor-El. The series attempts to expand on Zod’s attacks on Krypton and explore Kara’s life on Krypton and how she came to earth.

    While I really enjoyed seeing some of the visuals of Kryptonian cities and dress and the introduction of a classmate to Kara (Augo), I felt like the short nature of the show didn’t allow for much to be shown and mostly focused on references to the main show such as showing the scene of Lara putting Kal in the rocket, and the scene of Kara getting into her rocket. It also had references to the Brain Interactive Construct who would become Brainiac and later Brainiac 5, and also briefly showed Aethyr and Nam-Ek from season 5. Because of how little actual story is told, I think my favorite part of this series is actually the outfit Kara is shown wearing. She has a white and blue dress that is asymmetrical and off one shoulder and feels both cute and alien representing the character of Supergirl well as someone who was raised on Krypton for many years of her life before coming to earth. Both Kara and Zor-El have the iconic House of El symbol on their costumes, but it is inverted with a yellow S and red background. The attention to detail of including her silver bracelet from the show was also a nice thing to see and helped The Chronicles of Krypton feel connected to Smallville.

    I don’t know if I would recommend this for watching, nor would I any of the Chronicles series that ran alongside Smallville. However, the show is fairly easily accessible and if you’re a fan of Smallville it could be a good way to kill a half hour if you go in with pretty low expectations. While the show initially had a very odd release, these “Mobisodes” have been bundled with the Smallville Season 7 box set and are also uploaded on YouTube (in very low quality and unofficially).

    Thanks so much for reading my blog! If you have any thoughts, questions, comments, or corrections about any of my posts feel free to contact me via email at blogofsupergirl@gmail.com

  • Action Comics #252

    Action Comics #252 published in 1959 from DC Comics. At this time, Action Comics was an anthology title and contained 3 other stories, The Menace of Metallo, Little Pete, and Congo Bill Dies at Dawn. In this post I will only be discussing the 8 page story that introduced the Maiden of Might, Supergirl. The story is titled, “The Supergirl from Krypton” and was written by Otto Binder with art by Al Plastino and a cover by Curt Swan and Al Plastino.

    The story opens with a splash page featuring Superman shocked as Supergirl flies out of her rocket and expresses “Look again, Superman! It’s me… Supergirl! And I’m real!”. The story then opens to Clark Kent at the Daily planet who, with his super hearing and x-ray vision, notices a guided missile with a human trapped inside crashing to the earth. Rushing away, after changing to Superman, he witnesses the impossible, a girl exiting the missile unharmed in a costume that matches his own. The girl is Supergirl, who then tells Superman of her origin.

    As Krypton exploded, Argo City was miraculously spared and launched into space along with a bubble of atmosphere. Zor-El informs the citizens that with the air and food machine they have they can continue living indefinitely. Unfortunately his plan was thwarted later that evening as the ground radiated and turned to Kryptonite. Thankfully there was ample supply of lead that was used to protect them from radiation. Thinking he was safe he settled down with Alura In-Ze, who was unnamed at this point, and had a child named Kara Zor-El. They lived many years on Argo after this until a fateful day when asteroids hit the city disrupting the lead shielding. The city now only had a month to live and Zor-El worked tirelessly to build a rocket to send his daughter to Earth. Alura and Kara had seen Earth through a super telescope and witnessed a fellow Kryptonian who survived the explosion of their planet, Superman.

    After finishing her tale, Superman then takes her to Midvale Orphanage and helps her set up the civilian life of Linda Lee where she will acclimate to earth life and train her super powers to one day be revealed to the world as Supergirl. In the orphanage Linda is unfortunatley stuck with a rather worn down room but with the help of some of her super powers (Super Strength, Super Breath, Heat Vision, and X-ray Vision) she gets her room back in perfect shape.

    There are parts of this story that seem rather silly being read over 60 years later, like how Superman refuses to let Kara stay with him, or his somewhat odd though about the L.L. initials “Lana Lang was my girl friend when I was Superboy, and Lois Lane replaced her when I became Superman! By sheer coincidence she picked the same initials… L.L.” I also find it odd that he refuses to let Supergirl be a public figure and forces her to stay hidden even though he was active at the same age as Superboy. All that being said, this is a wonderful story that crams a lot of good storytelling into so few pages and paved the way for one of the most iconic heroes. She would continue as the backup feature in Action Comics in nearly every issue from 252-376. She has continued to have many comic appearances and headlined many of her own books including a new series starting later this year.

    This story has been reprinted many times, first in Superman Annual #1 form 1960. Also in Action Comics #344 (1966), Secret Origins #2 (1973), DC Special Series #19, The Great Superman Comic Collection (1981), DC Silver Age Classics Action Comics #252 (1992), Supergirl Archives Volume 1 (2001), Showcase Presents Superman Volume 1 (2005), Showcase Presents Supergirl Volume 1 (2008), DC Comics Graphic Novel Collection Vol. 21 Superman/Batman: Supergirl (2016), Supergirl the Silver Age Omnibus Volume 1 (2016), Supergirl the Silver Age Volume 1 (2017), Action Comics: 80 Years of Superman (2018), Superman in the Fifties, (2021), Superman the Silver Age Omnibus Volume 1 (2024), and most recently DC Finest: Supergirl – The Girl of Steel (2025).