So where is Supergirl?
And I’m not going to title this post the goddamned Supergirl Problem.
Maybe my level of expectation is too high, and it’s silly for me to be asking this question. I mean, over in Marvel, Wolverine spends 10 months either dead, zombified and killing for Hydra, or on a mission to take out Hydra in his own series, yet gallavants in various X-Men books like nothing’s out of the ordinary.
But where is Supergirl?
Maybe the question should be “Where isn’t Supergirl?” In “Up, Up and Away,” she’s in Metropolis, ready to respond to the de-powered Clark Kent’s distress calls. In “Supergirl,” she’s in Kandor, apparently wanting to kill Kal El yet is in love with him? (I don’t really know what’s going on there) And in “Supergirl and the Legion of Superheroes,” she’s 1000 years in the future.
Now a recent issue of “52” explained, or at least alluded to, how she ended up in the future. So I can understand that out in space, during Infinite Crisis, she was sent off into the future by some wayward beam of time warping mischief. And if one is returning from the future, one could feasibly return to any moment. So it’s entirely possible that she can come back from the 31st century in time to be Clark Kent’s personal Jesus.
But I don’t get how she’s in Kandor at the same time. For that matter, I don’t really get anything about what’s going on in “Supergirl,” because Power Girl’s in there with her, and she’s in “JSA.” And Kal El’s mom is alive. And my normal solution of just reading wikipedia for comicsland backstory is failing me on this one.
So I’m really hoping someone will stumble upon this and be able to set me straight, because I need some straight-setting. I’m fully aware of the possibility that this is just one of those things that happens when a character appears in more than one book in any comic company – they’re going to be in several places at once. But I think over the past year or so, DC has kind of conditioned me to expect tighter editorial control.
Sounds like there’s a Supergirl Problem to me.
Yeah, because you answered your own question of where she is.
Well here, let me rephrase this in case a selectively-literal reading of one sentence is distracting any readers from figuring out what the rest of the column says.
Is there any explanation for why Supergirl is in several places at once? And if so, what is said explanation? Because I would like to know it.
I’m not convinced the Supergirl in SG&TLOSH is the same Supergirl in Supergirl, because the one in the future is all sweet and stuff and the one in Kandor is a raging bitch. Supergirl’s appearance in the beginning of the Up, Up and Away arc could have just been an editorial glitch like Superman appearing in Shadowpact, because she didn’t appear after that. Of course, the OYL Supergilr arc starts by saying “One year and one month later” implying Supergirl must have been trapped in Kandor after she showed up in Up, Up and Away.
Here’s a timeline that (I think) works…
The Supergirl in LSH is Kara immediately after she got zapped in Infinite Crisis, with her brains knocked a bit loopy in the process. (Which, somehow, also makes her a much more appealing character…)
After she (somehow) returns to the present, brains intact once more, she becomes Clark Kent’s guardian angel but hates the situation so much (because she was originally sent to kill Kal-El, and fears she might actually do so), she goes to Kandor with Power Girl to ostensibly help the oppressed but in reality to get her skinny butt back to Argo.
And, as part of the traumatic stress of the past year’s events, is a flaming bee-yotch who is in love with someone who looks like Kal-El.
Clear? It’d be a lot clearer, admittedly, if the Supergirl series itself were a half decent book and not an excuse for rampant cheese cake, but that’s another rant …