Well, we have reached a new year and that means it is a good time to go back and look at 2024 and how it treated Supergirl.
As with most years, this will be a three day review.
Today - non-comic year as well as Honorable Mention 2024 comic moments
Tomorrow - Top ten 2024comic moments, #10 - #6
Friday - Top ten 2024 comic moments, #5 - #1
It has been an interesting year for Supergirl overall.
She was a major player in the Crisis On Infinite Earths trilogy movie which wrapped up that era of the DC Animated universe. She also was a key player in the second season of My Adventures with Superman television show. A Supergirl movie is in the works and she was even casted. That is a lot of exposure for the character which I think is always a good thing. But certainly the concept of the upcoming movie and her portrayal in the two animated series weren't exactly what I look for in Supergirl as a character.
In comics, it was a bit more piecemeal as you had to sort of look to find Supergirl here and there. I think she had a great presence in the House of Brainiac arc. I think she has been treated well by Mark Waid in his Phantom Zone arc in Action Comics. But I have found her one solo story by Mariko Tamaki to be a bit lacking.
So overall I think it has been an okay year for the character. Certainly her being visible outside of comics is a good thing. And I'll reiterate that while these takes on her don't work for me, if you love them, I am glad.
As always, I want to thank the people who come to the site and read my ramblings! Appreciate you all!
The second season introduced Supergirl. It is hard for me to wrap my head around the entirety of her arc. She arrives on Earth as Brainiac's vanguard and seems to have little concern for human life. Then we see that she has some goodness, befriending Jimmy. We see that she has befriended aliens on other worlds she has visited, even taking souvenirs. But then we learn that she was emotionally abused by Brainiac as a child and even mind-controlled by him to become a living weapon, committing genocide on all those worlds. Ultimately she has to fight Superman as a raging servant of Brainiac before breaking his conditioning.
I don't know if I needed to see Kara as a 'dark' reflection of Superman (terrible upbringing vs. the Kents) and I especially didn't need to see her as the doomsday device of Brainiac. (Seriously, the story could have had Brainiac raze the planets from his ship while Kara was away.) Even if controlled, she was the instrument of death. That didn't sit right.
There is an upcoming season and I think we will see a sort of 'stranger in a strange land' take on Kara which will hopefully have her veer more to the hopeful inspiration I like to see.
Finally, early in the year Milly Alcock was announced as portraying Kara on the big screen in the James Gunn backed Supergirl Woman of Tomorrow movie. We also heard that David Gillespie will direct.
Supergirl also had a sort of weird role in the Crisis movies as well. Here she again feels like she doesn't belong. We learn that it was the Monitor who saved her when Krypton exploded, raising her. She takes on the mantle of Harbinger from the original COIE. That means, alas, she 'kills' the Monitor giving her a dark aspect as well.
She does get a scene reminiscent of COIE #7 where she temporarily takes the Anti-Monitor out so that the heroes can figure out his ultimate defeat. That takes us to the mandatory COIE #7 cover homage, although it was only on the screen for a second, so much so that even my screen shot as the red tendrils of the scene change.
One wrinkle about this is that while in the Crisis comic, Supergirl flies in to save Superman and doesn't know what will happen, in the movie it is clear this is a suicide mission, one Kara accepts. She feels she never should have survived Krypton so all her life after has been 'bonus time'. Yet another gray layer to add to the mix.
Alcock certainly looks the part. But, as I am sure everyone here knows, Woman of Tomorrow didn't work for me at all. So I will have to reserve judgment until I see how the story gets tweaked for the big screen. Shame Gunn really holds that story up in such high regard.
Still, a TV, a direct to market movie, and a big screen movie in the works. That is a lot of Supergirl.
On a personal note, I went to a couple of comic book conventions which were spectacular.
At Wicked Comic Con, I met up-and-comer Tom Reilly and got a great commission of the Crisis era Kara. At Terrificon I got some cool commissions from June Brigman and Greg LaRocque. In particular, the LaRocque one has a lot of meaning as I discussed then. I also got to meet a ton of creators, including Phillip Kennedy Johnson.
No complaints about the con season this year.
Whew ...
But this is, at its base,a look back at the comic book year for Supergirl. So I'll whet your appetite with four quick Honorable Mentions.
Honorable Mention #4 - DC All-In Special #1 - "The Big Leagues"
I know, in the new DCU, every hero is in the Justice League. It isn't as much of an honor. (I just remember the famous line from The Incredibles. 'If everyone is special, then no one is.')
Still, I did like this panel of a beaming Supergirl proudly showing her card. Supergirl is in that 'in-between', never really a Leaguer or a Titan (although she has been on both teams sporadically). Here she just seems so proud to have sort of made it. Fun moment.
Honorable Mention #3 - Action Comics #1066 - "The Enemy Of My Enemy"
We will see more of House of Brainiac later in this list. But this image of Superman martialing his major forces to fight the Brainiac army was solid. Supergirl had sort of assumed this role of field general and second in command to the Super-family in this time. So seeing her and Lobo (of all people) standing with Superman in a 'let's get ready to rumble' pose was pretty cool.
In past years that might have been Diana or Hal where she is. But she has ascended a bit.
Honorable Mention #2 - Action Comics #1070 - "Emergency Secret Weapon"
In Mark Waid's ongoing Phantom Zone story arc, Superman decides to enter the Zone to figure out what is happening. When Kara asks to join him, he tells her that he needs her on Earth to protect things while he is gone.
This could again be him telling the JL to be on guard. Or Jon. Or Conner.
But it is Supergirl he says that he needs. Again, she has sort of moved up the ranks.
Honorable Mention #1 - Zero Hour 30th Anniversary Special - "Back In Black"
In the Zero Hour 30th Anniversary Special, Kyle Rayner visits a splinter universe with an unusual timeline, one in which Superman remained dead at the hands of Doomsday. Who better to take up the mantle then Matrix Supergirl. Pretty cool to see her don the famous black costume Superman wore when he returned. Is this a statement of mourning? Or wearing his garb?
In the actual 'Funeral For A Friend' arc after the death of Superman, Supergirl really grew into the role of hero, turning away from Lex's machinations. This was sort of a peek at what would transpire had she continued to grow into the role. Pretty cool, especially seeing Tom Grummett drawing her again!
Okay, four pretty cool moments from 2024. But what made the top ten?
What do you think of her non-comic appearances?
Let me know!
7 comments:
"I want to thank the people who come to the site and read my ramblings! Appreciate you all!"
You're very welcome. And a Happy New Year to ANJ and all SCCC readers!
‘… a bit lacking.’
A bit of an understatement!
Anyway, I always enjoy this feature, I was surprised by your number one honourable mention because I know you’re not a huge fan of Supers floating above people, looking angry, but you explained it. I’ve still not watched that anime Superman cartoon, I dislike the Lois design so much and what I’ve read here doesn’t entice me. And I’ve not seen the Crisis cartoons… the comic story is THE story, I’m too mean to shell out for what is going to feel like an inferior version. Bring on the comics!
That June Brigman sketch is so lovely.
Thanks for the post. I think you did a pretty solid job of covering Kara's highlights outside of the comics. I think the best point you made is that the end of MAWS's second season has provided fans with a reasonable basis for believing that a third season of the show will feature a more unambiguously heroic portrayal of her, which hopefully will focus on her attempt to assimilate into American culture while she deepens the relationships she seemed to have established with Jimmy, Lois, Clar, and the Kents by the end of Season 2. In line with that, I hope D.C. ends up publishing a second MAWS comic that provides more detail on Kara's assimilation to American culture and the development of her relationships the way the MAWS comic published this year helped to provide more detail on how Clark settled into his relationships with Lois and Jimmy after they became aware he's Superman while also dealing with his attempts after the finale of Season 1 to reconcile his realization of his alienness with the heartland American identity he'd grown up with.
I think one point worth noting which you didn't mention is that this is that this was also unfortunately the year in which it became clear that D.C. botched its portrayal of Power Girl. To be clear, I of course get that PG is a distinct character, and by extension I get why you omitted her from a discussion of Kara's ups and downs. With that said, her status as an alternate universe version of Kara who lives in the same fictional universe as her seems to suggest that it's worth taking her into consideration when thinking about developments in the wider characterization of Supergirl. Unfortunately, I would say that while at the beginning of the year there was some hope that Leah Williams's Power Girl series might provide a decent portrayal of PG, what actually got published was a bitter disappointment. Williams doesn't seem to get PG and also doesn't seem to have much interest in writing stories about her, while D.C.'s editorial staff in turn don't seem capable of steering Williams' towards a genuinely good narrative direction. The mutual failure of Williams and her editors to deliver a decent Power Girl series should be regarded as one of D.C.'s more significant creative failures from the last year, and could reasonably be used as prof along with the decision to publish Mariko Tamaki's abysmal Supergirl story and Jason Aaron's awful I, Bizzarro storyline that D.C. has some serious problems in terms of judgement and quality control when it comes to the publication of Superman related comics.
With that said, I also think there were enough decent stories in both Action Comics and Superman that I wouldn't say the year was a failure for Superman related comics. It was at best a mixed bag, albeit I do think it was a step down from 2023. On that point, I think it's fair to say that 2024 proved that dismissing PKJ from Action Comics was a mistake, and that the "Superstars" initiative ended up delivering an inconsistent series of arcs which were inferior to what the readership got when he was helming the title. In line with that, I would contend that the single best piece of news from D.C. during 2024 was the announcement of PKJ's return to writing Superman stories in his upcoming "Book of El" miniseries.
In closing, I would like to pose two questions that I hope you would be willing to answer. The first is what's your take on PKJ's return to writing Superman related stories? The second is why do you think she failed at writing a decent Supergirl story for Action Comics when her success with "Supergirl: Being Super" - which you reviewed positively - seems to suggest that she is capable of writing a good story featuring Kara as a protagonist?
Sorry. In case this isn't clear, the "she" in the last paragraph refers to Mariko Tamaki. I'm not quite sure how that got deleted from the original post, but regardless that's who I was referencing.
Thanks for the comments on this first part.
Mart, I wonder if you'd like the MAWS comic. There are some sweet moments.
And Anon, while I occasionally dabble in PG coverage here, I try to leave this end of year to be specifically about SG. That PG comic didn't work for me at all.
As for you questions, I am thrilled PKJ is coming back. He definitely had an understanding and respect for all the family. I hope he gets to finish his take on the Twins. And really hoping Supergirl is in there.
I am not sure why Tamaki hasn't risen in the last couple of Supergirl takes. But both the special and this last arc is a far cry from the Kara we are seeing everyone else write in the current continuity. I would have tolerated that take more in an elseworlds like Being Super ironically.
This was the delight it is every year! I don't watch much super-hero TV or even movies so te glimpse was welcome.
Thank you for your prompt and thorough response. I greatly appreciate that you answered my questions, and look forward to reading more of your thoughts vis a vis Kara and media featuring her or the rest of the Superman Family.
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