Tag: Supergirl in the Multiverse

Earth-37 was originally called Earth-61 and is often associated with the Thrillkiller Elseworlds stories. Thrillkiller, and its sequel Thrillkiller ’62 were written by Howard Chaykin and depicted a Gotham in the 1960s that featured that all so common, at the time, 90s gritty realism. Barbara Gordon, and her partner Dick Grayson, patrol the streets of Gotham as Batgirl and Robin and are up against corrupt police and fiendish foes and a Gotham far removed from its normal 60s representations. Earth-37 however, also includes one of Chaykin’s other DC works Twilight. Twilight, much like Thrillkiller, represents more DC Characters in a gritty 90s realistic way but this time its classic DC Sci-Fi characters. Twilight has charachters like Tommy Tomorrow, Ironwolf, and (most important to this week’s post) The Star Rovers.

Karel Sorensen was a member of the Star Rovers and first appeared in Mystery in Space #66. The Star Rovers were a team of space adventurers and mystery solvers. In Twilight, they are working on finding the secret to immortality and are on the trail of the Methusoloids when Karel is caught in an atomic blast that would have normally killed anyone else. Instead, Karel survives and gains godlike powers and becomes a deity as mankind unlocks the secrets of immortality. She would gain an immense galaxywide following and the space museum would become her base of operations and church.

As with all my Supergirl in the Multiverse posts, this is my own artwork. Karel Sorensen, former Star Rover, is depicted in the center of the page in her deity garb with lots of golds and whites. To the left you can see the Space Museum that would come to be her base of operations, on the right is Sorensen in her Star Rover uniform and a depiction of her getting caught in the atomic blast that gave her her powers. The top right shows a motif of a star (for her time as a Star Rover) with a 37 on top of it.

Rounding up our little trilogy of homage universes we come to Earth-36. Earth-36 is a bit more fleshed out in the proper DC multiverse unlike the previous Earths-34 and 35, but it’s still fairly bare bones. Thankfully, the universe is analogous to Big Bang Comics. Big Bang Comics was a series that was published by Caliber Comics and later Image and the series tried to recapture Golden and Silver age concepts and vibes in their comics. Each issue would be an anthology with a rotating cast of characters like Ultiman, The Knight Watchman, Thunder Girl, and many others. While generally when looking into these characters, their first appearances are often listed as Big Bang #1 but nearly all of these characters have their roots in earlier books. Heck, Dr. Weird dates all the way back to the 60s!

Ultiman (Chris Kelly) is of course the Superman analog for this universe and his daughter, Christine (Ultragirl) Kelly is the Supergirl analogue. Both these characters, along with Youngblood surprisingly, first show up in the very short lived Megaton Comics. Ultragirl gets her origin in issue 1 where we see that she is the daughter of a well known superhero “Ultraman” (this would change to Ultiman in the shift over to Big Bang). Ultraman had been an astronaut exposed to some radiation and, in classic superhero fashion, got super powers instead of dying. Unfortunately for young Christine, her father became addicted to the super-heroics and would have to preform more and more dangerous experiments to recharge his irradiated cells. It was during one of these experiments that Christine came into the room and was flooded with radiation that gave her the same powers as her father and seemingly killed Ultraman. Christine would go on to be a hero as Ultragirl, team up with Megaton, and once making her way over to Big Bang Comics she would be part of a future team called the Pantheon of Heroes.

As with all my Supergirl in the Multiverse posts, this is my own artwork. This drawing is an homage to Superman #1 and shows Ultragirl flying above a city with her right arm angled down. The top right shows a motif of Ultragirl’s U symbol with a 36 on top of it.

Much like last week’s Earth-34 being an homage to Astro City, Earth-35 is an homage to the short lived universe that appeared in Awesome Comics. Awesome Comics was created by Rob Liefeld after his (forced) departure from Image Comics and featured such titles as; Youngblood, The Coven, and the most relevant to today’s post Supreme. Supreme was created by Rob Liefeld in 1992 but would be drastically retooled by Alan Moore in 1991. Supreme, as written by Moore, is a pretty clear pastiche of Silver Age Superman but instead of Supreme getting his powers from being an alien, Supreme was exposed to a meteorite (Supremium) at a young age that gave him super powers.

Sally Crane was the adopted sister of Ethan (Supreme) Crane who lived most her childhood as a normal school girl. One day however when her brother returned home on an adventure Sally was exposed to Supremium just as Ethan was many years before. While she initially though it only turned her hair silver, she would soon gain powers supreme and start her heroic super career as Suprema.

As with all my Supergirl in the Multiverse posts, this is my own artwork. Suprema and Radar (the Dog Supreme) are shown on a grassy ridge. Suprema has her hands on her hips, each has a cape billowing to the right. A cloudy orange sky sets the background and the Citadel Supreme can be seen peeking out from behind the clouds. A motif of Suprema’s chest symbol is in the top right with a 35 in it.

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.

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.