Supergirl #1 – Review

By: Michael Green & Mike Johnson (writers), Mahmud Asrar (penciller), Dan Green (inker), Dave McCaig (colorist)

The Story: Take me to your leader…and your best mall.

The Review: Most every comic book character is guilty of a burdensome back-history, but Supergirl has perhaps some of the most convoluted continuity of all.  Compared to her famous cousin, who turned into living lightning once, Kara Zor-El has been a protoplasmic matrix, an earth-born angel, and an experimental weapon by a vengeful father, among other things.  And we haven’t even covered the myriad personalities writers have imbued her with over the years.

Here, Green and Johnson wipe Kara’s slate clean as the fallen snow around the site where she awakens from her cosmic slumber.  Previous writers tended to tell this part of her origin story through the eyes of Superman.  This had the effect of making her arrival all the more wondrous, but it also kept us at a distance from her character.  As a side-effect, it took that much more time to appreciate the character for herself, a problem which particularly plagued her last incarnation.

Green-Johnson wisely stick us with Kara from the start, allowing us to get a sense of who she is and her point of view without relying on the reactions of others.  They keep her narrative natural, credible, and on-point, revealing interesting and crucial elements of her past without being overly direct.  We get a significant hint that Kara may not have been the most diligent student: “I’m not supposed to wear [my costume] for another year, when I graduate…if I graduate.”

Her implied lack of academic achievement may contribute to the funny, lovely kind of innocence she expresses throughout the issue.  In a perfect reaction for a girl from an advanced world, she smiles at a bunch of armed mechas surrounding her as if seeing an adorable pet.  Her musing that “Father would love this dream” gives you a couple things: appreciation for her girlish love for her dad, and dread for when she inevitably discovers what’s happened to her father and home.

Because you easily and immediately empathize with her, you do react strongly when she gets unexpectedly manhandled and pulled around by robots squawking an alien language.  It’s not often you see the hero cry in pain and fear (much less run away), especially one with an “S” on her chest.  Seeing her obvious panic and confusion actually succeeds in startling and disorienting you, too, giving the following scenes a nice tension that it probably wouldn’t have had otherwise.

Green-Johnson aren’t satisfied with leaving the action at that, as at the same time Kara’s trying desperately to assess her surroundings, her powers suddenly kick in.  We’ve had a lot of scenes of Clark discovering his powers in joyous or funny ways, but hardly any where his own abilities give him pain.  By witnessing all this, you gain an early sympathy for the trauma she goes through, excusing how she lashes out later in the issue, and likely later issues as well.

Asrar offers a nice balance between the sketchy looseness that always works well for titles featuring younger characters, and a strong solidity that lends some import to Kara’s emotional moments.  Kudos for making Kara look like an actual teenaged girl, rather than a Maxim model.  Asrar’s handling of Kara’s facial expressions plays a big role in making her appeal.  Her look of tenderness upon seeing those robots is a very defining moment for her character.

Conclusion: A very strong, poignant introduction to the character, one that already sets her apart from her iconic predecessor, and well-balanced between emotion and action.

Grade: B+

– Minhquan Nguyen

Some Musings: – Kara picks up bits of dialogue from other running titles, giving you a sense of where she pops up in the timeline: “—is the fiercest killer in all of Gotham…” from Nightwing, “A church.  It had to be a church…” from Birds of Prey, and “I don’t talk to fish,” presumably from Aquaman, and if so, then I’m already very excited I get to review that next week.

– I always appreciate when the “bad” guys don’t get portrayed as mindless thugs.  One of Kara’s captors, despite her choking him: “Don’t—aggh—don’t shoot!  She’s just a—hggk—kid!”