Tag: Supergirl Surprise

Back again for my monthly look at a random issue of Supergirl from my collection. For the month of May we’re looking at issue 27 of Supergirl volume 5 written by Kelley Puckett with art by Rick Leonardi, Dan Green, Drew Johnson, and Ray Snyder. This book was released on March 5th 2008. This issue is part of the arc where Supergirl promises to save a boy. At the time she just thinks she’ll save him like she would anyone else, but the boy has cancer and thinks she means that he will beat cancer with her help. The arc as a whole deals with Supergirl coming to terms with the idea of having so many powers but still being unable to save everyone. This is a common trope in Superman mythos most often show by Jonathan (Pa) Kent who dies in a way that Clark is unable to save him. The way this storyline flips the narrative is by having Kara refuse this idea and promising once again, after learning of the boy’s condition, that she would save him.

Now that we’ve addressed the overall narrative, we can now look at the plot of issue 27 specifically. The story opens with Supergirl promising the boy that she will not let him die. Quickly she notices time has come to a standstill and she notices someone new in the room with her, the only other moving thing in the room is a man in some sort of protective suit pointing a gun at her. He fires off the gun and Supergirl handily catches the bullet not realizing it was kryptonite. Weakened now, she is unprepared for the second bullet but is saved by Superman slowly catching up to what’s going on. Superman, presumably at superspeed, sees into the stopped time and shoots off his heat vision at the attacker rupturing his protective suit. Unknowingly to Superman and Supergirl this activates some sort of teleportation bringing Supergirl and the attacker back to where the attacker was from.

Now in an unknown environment with more people pointing guns at her and Kara having more questions than answers, she takes her initial attacker away and flies far from where they came from in an attempt to get some answers. Supergirl, now seeing more of her new surroundings, realizes this new place that looks so alien, also still feels like earth. After talking, she finds out that she is 400 years in the future and this man is part of a group that was trying to go back in time to stop Supergirl before she could drastically change the future by saving the boy with cancer. She is told that by doing this action she changes the course of history and in her attempt to make humanity better, she has made mankind feel like they aren’t human anymore.

It is at this time that she also finds out that the only way back to her time is through the Time Machine that was destroyed upon her arrival and the only person who can fix it has just taken a suicide pill. Rushing him back to try to fix the machine in time they are met with the machine already put back in order. Apparently, while they were out, a group called The Batmen had come in and fixed the Time Machine. These Batmen seem to be descendants or clones of Bruce Wayne and help Kara return home and give her the advice to “do what you think is right”. And this is where the issue ends.

I’m a huge sucker for alternate universes and possible futures so I’m quite fond of this issue that briefly looks into a future that might be. The story also addresses right and wrong and what makes people people. The narrative is left fairly open and doesn’t tell the reader how to think and more so just asks some questions of the reader and allows the reader to make their own decisions and think about what they think the right thing to do is.

I really enjoy a lot of the art in this issue, especially the sequence where Kara catches the kryptonite bullet and a lot of the full page images. I do feel that some of the panels, especially the faces and the figure work, seem a bit inconsistent throughout the book and I assume some of the inconsistencies are because of the large amount of artist credits. This is by no means a deal breaker and they seem to consistently get Supergirl right and show her in some great dynamic poses. This story is also from a time in comics where they seemed to have less dialogue and larger panels as compared to comics that came out in the 70s and 80s. This isn’t a good or bad thing but I will say this issue is a fairly quick read with intricate artwork depicting epic scenery. I also think the lighter dialogue helps give the reader time to sit and think about the subjects mentioned before in regards to how Supergirl should approach her current challenge.

This issue has been reprinted twice, first in the Supergirl: Beyond Good and Evil trade paperback released soon after the storyline finished, and again in 2018 in Supergirl Volume 3: Ghosts of Krypton. It’s been a while since I read this storyline in its entirety but I remember enjoying it and I still feel like it’s a great way to approach the theme of not being able to save everyone.

Come back on Monday for my next installment of Supergirl in the Multiverse, and next Friday for a brand new blog post about something entirely different. Supergirl Surprise will return again the second Friday of June. For any comments, questions, corrections, or thoughts feel free to leave a comment below or send an email to daringnewblog@gmail.com. Thanks so much for reading!

In a new feature of my blog called “Supergirl Surprise” I will go to my Supergirl comic boxes and pick an issue at random to read and talk about. My goal for these posts is to explore the issue on its own and on its own as a collection of paper and staples. As such I will be taking pictures of the comic as opposed to finding digital screenshots of the panels. I will also bring in pictures of the ads or letters pages if there’s anything that catches my eye.

Supergirl #5 has the cover date of January 1997 and is written by Peter David and has art by Gary Frank and Cam Smith. The story opens with our heroine visiting her, at one time, adopted parents Jonathan and Martha Kent.

This interaction gives some nice closure to Supergirl’s life before the new status quo introduced in the vol. 4 iteration of Supergirl. This Supergirl, Mae, is a protoplasmic clone from another dimension. More recently, when this comic had come out, Mae had merged with the dying human Linda Danvers. Showing her interacting with her past life in a way that feels almost alien to her as Linda now was a nice way to respect where the character was before and allow for the character to start anew.

We then fly from Smallville back to Leesburg, the home of Linda Danvers. Here we are briefly introduced to the new Dick Malverne who says “sometimes you recognize people’s souls from previous incarnations” which is of course a clever nod to the pre crisis Supergirl and Dick Malverne. To find out more about Dick Malverne take a look at my blog post about him here.

Meanwhile, in the background, a b-plot has been brewing that involves Chemo reforming in a lab in Leesburg. The A and B plots come together and result in a fight between Supergirl and Chemo. This fight results in a dialogue between the two where Supergirl tells Chemo he isn’t alive because he’s a collection of chemicals and the result of a freak accident. This conversation ends the fight and Chemo dissipates into the sky but Supergirl is met with a crisis of conscious wondering if she is alive or not when she is also just a creation that wants to be more and wants to be human.

This issue is a great look at Supergirl and her transition from the Matrix Supergirl into something more and helps further build the new world of Linda Danvers and Leesburg. This issue is the first appearance of Dick Malverne in the post crisis universe and has been reprinted in Supergirl Volume 1 TP from 1997, Supergirl by Peter David book 1 from 2016, and will be reprinted in the upcoming DC Finest: Supergirl – Body and Soul that realeases in October. This issue also came bundled with a Supergirl action figure based on Linda’s later white t-shirt costume that came out in 2005.

None of the ads really caught my eye but were mostly advertising PlayStation and Sega Saturn games. The letters didn’t intrigue me much aside from this one that called this new Supergirl title “Supergirl Vertigo-style” and “Twin Peaks on Kryptonite”.

The letters page also came with a little blurb that briefly caught readers up on the previous 4 issues of the title.

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