Supergirl

• 1. Introduction

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  Supergirl died in issue #7 of Crisis on Infinite Earths, published in October 1985, and the aftermath was stranger than the death. Inside the story's world, nobody remembered that she had ever lived. A shift in editorial policy at DC Comics had left no room for her. Yet the name outlived the character. Many different heroines have carried it since, with origins that have almost nothing in common. Who first imagined a female counterpart to Superman, and why did it take several false starts? What did the writers do with her once she finally existed? And why does a character so often erased keep finding her way back?

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• 2. Trial Runs

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  Action Comics #60, published in May 1943, gave Superman his first female counterpart, and she was Lois Lane. In the story, a hospitalized Lois dreams that a blood transfusion from the Man of Steel has given her Kryptonian powers. She starts a career as Superwoman, complete with a copycat costume. Similar tales returned now and then. In Action Comics #156, from May 1951, Lois gains the powers by accident through an invention of Lex Luthor. As a crime fighter she wears a short blond wig, which makes her look almost identical to the later Kara Zor-El.

  Superboy #5, dated November-December 1949, used the name Supergirl for someone else entirely. Queen Lucy rules the fictional Latin American nation of Borgonia and is a stellar athlete and scholar. Tired of her duties, she slips away to Smallville to enjoy a normal life, and she wins Superboy's heart. He stages a show in which his powers make her seem superhuman, and during it she is called Supergirl. She wears a tan dress, a brown cape and his S symbol. After he saves her from a scheming minister, she goes back to her throne, and Superboy is left wondering whether she ever thinks of him.

  The Superboy #78 story 'Claire Kent, Alias Super-Sister' played with the idea as a gender swap. Superboy rescues an alien woman named Shar-La from a life-threatening crash, then ridicules her driving. In response, she turns him into a girl. In Smallville, Clark Kent says he is Claire Kent, an out-of-town relative staying with the Kents, and in costume he plays Superboy's sister. The whole transformation turns out to be an illusion that Shar-La created, and Superboy learns not to ridicule women.

  In Superman #123, dated August 1958, Jimmy Olsen uses a magic totem to wish a Super-Girl into existence as a helper for Superman. The two keep getting in each other's way. She is fatally injured shielding him from a Kryptonite meteor that a criminal has dropped toward him, and at her insistence Jimmy wishes her out of existence. DC used the story to gauge public response to a wholly new female counterpart. She has blond hair and a blue and red costume like Superman's. Early reprints recolored her with red hair and an orange and green costume, so readers would not confuse her with the Supergirl then current. Her original look closely resembles the uniform that actress Helen Slater would later wear in the 1984 film Supergirl.

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• 3. The Girl From Argo City

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  Thousands of letters poured into the DC Comics offices after Kara Zor-El first appeared in Action Comics #252, dated May 1959. Otto Binder wrote the story and Al Plastino drew it. Binder already knew the formula. Years earlier he had co-created Mary Marvel, the sister of Captain Marvel. She was a teenage female version of an adult male hero, in a costume identical to his except for a short skirt in place of tight trousers. Binder also created Marvel Comics' Miss America, who shared little with Captain America beyond the name.

  Kara's home was Argo City, which survived the explosion of Krypton and drifted through space. Zor-El, the younger brother of Jor-El, was a climatologist and engineer. He devised a plastic dome that moderated the weather and held together the land beneath the city. That land turned into green kryptonite, so it was covered with lead. Her name follows a Kryptonian custom, since women there take the full name of their fathers.

  The city drifted for about 15 years, and Kara grew to roughly 10 or 12 years old. Then meteors punctured the lead and released deadly radiation. Zor-El and his wife Alura In-Ze placed their daughter in a rocket bound for Earth, which he had studied through a powerful electronic telescope. There they saw a super-powered man who resembled Jor-El, and they concluded he was probably their nephew Kal-El, now grown. Later Silver Age accounts say the parents escaped into the Survival Zone, a dimension like the Phantom Zone. They were released and moved to the bottle city of Kandor. In the New Krypton storyline, Reactron kills them.

  On Earth, Kara gained powers identical to Superman's and became Linda Lee, a resident of the Midvale Orphanage. She hid her blonde hair under a brunette wig. At Superman's request, she acted as Supergirl only in secret until, in his opinion, she had enough control of her powers and the wisdom to use them. Her debut was delayed when a Kandorian villainess stole her powers. During that period Fred and Edna Danvers adopted her.

  As Linda Danvers she attended Midvale High School and later Stanhope College. Her jobs ranged from student counseling to news reporting to acting in a TV soap opera called Secret Hearts. Her boyfriends included Richard Malverne, Jerro the Merboy from Atlantis, and Brainiac 5 of the Legion of Super-Heroes. She shunned serious commitments and put her super-career first. Only Superman, her foster parents and the Legion knew her secret.

  In 1969, her adventures became the lead feature in Adventure Comics. An eponymous series followed in 1972 and ran until 1974. A second monthly series, The Daring New Adventures of Supergirl, ran from 1982 to 1984, and it brought a very different cast of enemies.

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• 4. Companions and Rivals

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  Streaky the Supercat, Kara's orange cat, gained temporary superpowers from X-kryptonite. That was a form of kryptonite Kara had accidentally created while trying to neutralize the effects of green kryptonite. In the pre-Crisis comics he is named for a jagged stripe of lighter fur on his side. Her horse Comet began as a centaur whom Circe had accidentally cursed into equine form.

  Lena Thorul, a fellow orphan at Midvale, became one of Linda Lee's best friends without knowing she was Lex Luthor's younger sister. When Lena was small and Lex a teenager, a laboratory accident that he blamed on Superboy left him bald, and he turned evil. Their parents disowned him and moved away from Smallville. They changed the family name to Thorul, an anagram of Luthor, and told Lena her brother had died in a mountain climbing accident. After her parents died in a car accident, Lena landed in the orphanage. A childhood accident in Lex's laboratory had given her extrasensory perception.

  Dick Wilson, another orphan, suspected that Linda was secretly Supergirl and kept trying to prove it. After a couple named Malverne adopted him, he became Dick Malverne. Siobhan Smythe, another friend, first mistook Kara for an enemy. The two later bonded and fought Siobhan's father, the Black Banshee.

  Lesla-Lar, a Kandorian introduced in Action Comics #279 in August 1961, tried several times to switch places with Supergirl. Black Flame, a Kandorian who chose a life of crime, arrived in Action Comics #304 in September 1963. Nasthalthia Luthor, Lex's niece and Supergirl's rival, debuted in Adventure Comics #397 in September 1970. Princess Tlaca, an Aztec princess who wanted to restore the prestige of her civilization, followed in Superman Family #165 in June 1974.

  The Daring New Adventures of Supergirl filled 1982 and 1983 with a Chicago rogues gallery. Its first issue, dated November 1982, introduced Psi, a powerful psionic named Gayle Marsh. Daniel Pendergast manipulated her into trying to destroy Chicago, and he was himself turned into a slime creature called Decay. The Council, a clandestine criminal organization introduced in January 1983, employed a robot named Matrix-Prime and mercenaries called the Gang. Its members were Brains, Bulldozer, Ms. Mesmer and Kong. Reactron, a former army sergeant who can generate radioactive energy, appeared in June 1983.

  In November 1983, Supergirl vol. 2 #13 brought Blackstarr. She was Rachel Berkowitz, who used the Unified Field Theory to manipulate reality as leader of a neo-Nazi group called the Party For Social Reform. The most ominous rival came decades later. In March 2012, Supergirl (vol. 6) #5 introduced Reign, a Worldkiller, which was a biological weapon created on Krypton and soon outlawed by the Kryptonian Science Council.

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• 5. Borrowed Capes

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  Superman (vol. 2) #16, from April 1988, introduced a Supergirl who was not Kryptonian at all. DC editors wanted Superman to remain the only Kryptonian survivor after the post-Crisis reboot, so the character needed a new origin. Matrix was a man-made lifeform of synthetic protoplasm, created by a heroic Lex Luthor of a 'pocket continuum'. She wore a miniskirted version of Superman's costume. She could fly and had super-strength, and she also had psychokinesis, shapeshifting and invisibility.

  The Kents of Smallville took her in, named her Mae and treated her like their own daughter. Later she began a romance with Lex Luthor II, which ended when she discovered he had been cloning her. She left him with the support of his ex-wife, Elizabeth Perske, and served for a time with the Teen Titans. Her adventures included Panic in the Sky, Death and Return of Superman, and Zero Hour: Crisis in Time!

  In September 1996, Peter David began writing Supergirl (vol. 4), which merged Matrix with a human being. The woman was named Linda Danvers, matching the pre-Crisis secret identity. The series was set in Leesburg, a town named after her pre-adoption surname, and her father was called Fred Danvers. At the start, Matrix sacrifices herself to save a dying Linda. Their bodies, minds and souls merge into an 'Earth-Born Angel', a being created when one selflessly gives up life for another who is beyond saving. This Supergirl lost some powers and gained fiery angel wings and a 'shunt' ability to teleport anywhere she had been before.

  The angelic half eventually fell from grace and split from Linda. Linda kept some strength and durability, and she could leap one-eighth of a mile but could no longer fly. After Linda found the angel in the Garden of Eden and freed her from the Demon Mother, Matrix merged with a woman named Twilight. She became the new Earth-Born Angel of Fire.

  Issue #75 of that series, dated December 2002, sent the pre-Crisis Kara Zor-El to Leesburg. Learning that Kara was destined to die, Linda traveled to the pre-Crisis universe in her place. There she married Superman and gave birth to a daughter named Ariella, later seen as the Supergirl of the 853rd century. Linda let history unfold as it should, on the condition that her daughter be the one exception. Finding no assurance that Ariella survived, she gave up the role of Supergirl, sent Superman a farewell note and left for points unknown.

  Peter David kept telling Linda's story elsewhere. His creator-owned series Fallen Angel, first published by DC, is set in a fictional city named Bete Noire. Its lead, Lee, was written so that she could have been Linda, and David stayed coy about it during the DC run. After the series moved to IDW, Lee's origin showed she was not Danvers. Then Fallen Angel #14 introduced Lin, called Lee's predecessor as guardian of Bete Noire, who had recently escaped Limbo.

  On the 13th of December 2006, David told readers on his blog to pick up issues #14 and #15 if they were upset that Linda had been consigned to oblivion. He could not claim that a DC-owned character was the same as one he owned. So he wrote: 'Can I say this is Linda Danvers? Of course I can't. However, it's pretty freaking obvious that it is.'

  Whether Matrix survived Infinite Crisis was disputed. An interview with Newsarama said she was wiped from existence, while writer Geoff Johns later said Danvers was not. The 2008 miniseries Reign in Hell settled it, showing the Shadowpact trying to apprehend Linda before she is 'recalled' to Hell.

  Cir-El appeared in Superman: The 10 Cent Adventure #1 in 2003, claiming to be the future daughter of Superman and Lois Lane. She had Superman's strength, speed and hearing but could only leap great distances. She could also fire blasts of red solar energy. Her alter ego was a street person named Mia. She proved to be a human girl whom Brainiac had altered genetically to look Kryptonian. She died thwarting a plot involving Brainiac 13, and Superman (vol. 2) #200 implies the realigned timeline erased her.

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• 6. Kara Returns

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  Issue #8 of Superman/Batman, published in 2004, brought Kara Zor-El back after the 1996-2003 Supergirl series ended. By then the rule that Superman must be Krypton's only survivor had been relaxed. This Kara again claims to be the daughter of Zor-El and Alura In-Ze. Unlike the traditional version, she is born before Superman and is a teenager when he is a baby. Her rocket carried her in suspended animation to look after the infant Kal-El. Instead it was caught in the explosion of Krypton and encased in a Kryptonite asteroid. She reached Earth years after Kal-El had grown up, which makes her 'younger' than her cousin. At the end of that arc, Superman introduces her to the other heroes, and she adopts the costume and the name.

  A new Supergirl series written by Jeph Loeb began in August 2005. Its first arc shows a darker Kara emerging after Lex Luthor exposes her to Black Kryptonite. The evil Supergirl suggests her family sent her to kill Kal-El over a family grudge. Flashbacks later seem to confirm it, including a claim that her father physically altered her and that she took part in murders on Krypton. These memories were later revealed as delusions from Kryptonite poisoning. Once cured, she showed a personality closer to her Silver Age self.

  This Kara also manifests sunstone crystals from her body, though only under great stress. Her father implanted them to protect her from Phantom Zone beings, and he told her to destroy Kal-El. More recent comics blame that plotline on poisoning from her asteroid. In another storyline, she promises a little boy she will save him and searches for a cure for his cancer. After he dies, she tracks down a villain who can jump through time. She decides against using that power, because she would be doing exactly what the villain does, and she accepts that she cannot save everyone.

  The New 52 rebooted her origin again. An amnesiac Kara wakes after her lifepod crashes to Earth during a meteor shower. When Superman finds her, she attacks him as an impostor, because she remembers her cousin as a baby only days earlier. After battles with villains, including the Worldkillers, she accepts Krypton's destruction but struggles with grief. Her wish to restore Krypton lets another Kryptonian manipulate her into nearly destroying Earth. She had fallen in love with him, and on realizing the manipulation she drives kryptonite through his heart and falls ill from poisoning.

  She leaves Earth to die alone. Adrift in space, she saves a planet from monsters, unaware that it is a trap set by Brainiac. The Cyborg Superman captures her, but she escapes. Back on Earth, the Oracle sends her into the past with Superman and Superboy, where she ensures that a resurrected H'el cannot save Krypton. She sacrifices the planet and her family to save the universe.

  The assassin Lobo then attacks her, and in the fight she kills him in a burst of rage. A Red Lantern power ring finds her and turns her into a Red Lantern. Mad with rage, she wanders space until Green Lanterns capture her and bring her to Hal Jordan. He cannot remove the ring without killing her, so he takes her to Guy Gardner, who restores her sanity. Later she learns the Worldkillers are parasitic suits of armor. To stop their leader, she flies into the Sun and removes her power ring. In the Sun's core she is revealed to be immortal, and she returns to life without the ring or the poisoning.

  The 2016 miniseries Supergirl: Being Super, written by Mariko Tamaki and penciled by Joelle Jones, tells a quieter story. Kara is a seemingly ordinary teenager in rural Midvale, living with the Danvers couple who found her pod in a field. She glimpses her origins in dreams and hides her abilities even from her closest friends.

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• 7. Parallel Earths

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  The final issue of 52, the year-long weekly series of 2006-07, revealed a Multiverse of 52 parallel universes. The mainstream continuity became New Earth. That storytelling device let writers imagine alternative Supergirls, and they took the invitation seriously.

  Power Girl is Kara Zor-L, a version of Kara from the parallel world Earth-Two, where she is cousin to Kal-L. After Flashpoint, she had been that world's Supergirl. She and Helena Wayne were displaced onto Earth-0 through a dimensional warp and lived there for seven years. On evil Earth-3, Ultragirl first appeared in Countdown to Final Crisis #16 in 2007. Unlike her Superman counterpart Ultraman, she is vulnerable to kryptonite rather than powered by it.

  On Earth-10, Nazi Germany won World War II, and that world's Superman is named Overman. Overgirl first shows up as a sketch by the exiled Monitor Nix Uotan in Final Crisis #2. In issue #3 she crash-lands in a burning heap on New Earth and tells Renee Montoya, in German, that the sky is bleeding. She is not truly Overman's cousin. She is the one child to survive Nazi experiments that tried to seed a human child with his DNA. She died in Final Crisis #7. In The Multiversity - Mastermen #1, dated February 2015, Overman is still mourning her six years later and opens a memorial in Metropolis.

  In Kingdom Come by Mark Waid and Alex Ross, the Superman family's cousin is Power Woman, on a world now called Earth-22. In the Tangent Comics imprint, Powergirl is a genetically engineered heroine built by the Chinese government, and Supergirl was an unsuccessful prototype. On Earth-38, Kara Kent is the daughter of Superman and Lois Lane, and she wears a black wig as Supergirl. Her brother Joel, jealous because prenatal gold kryptonite exposure left him powerless, murders their mother and then Kara during her wedding to Batman II.

  On Earth D, Kara is married to that world's Superman, and both die as antimatter storms consume their Earth during the Crisis. In the Ame-Comi imprint, Power Girl is Kara Jor-El, Jor-El's daughter and the cousin of Kara Zor-El. Their fathers destroy Krypton intentionally in a failed attempt to destroy Brainiac.

  The 2015 DC Bombshells line sets Kara in an alternate World War II. Russian farmers Varvara Dugina and Ipati Dugan find her spaceship and raise her with their daughter Kortni. In their teens, the two sisters travel to Moscow to join the Night Witches, an all-female fighter squadron. They leave when they learn their general wants to use them for destructive ends, and they join the Bombshells. Kara becomes romantically involved with Lois Lane in this universe.

  Some versions play for laughs. In Superman/Gen13, Caitlin Fairchild bumps her head, wakes with amnesia beside Superman's cape and decides she is Supergirl. The six-issue Supergirl: Cosmic Adventures in the 8th Grade gives a tongue-in-cheek take for young readers, with Kara as a teenager from Krypton's moon Argo. In Tiny Titans, she is giggly and kind and attends pet club with Batgirl and Robin. In Justice League vs. Godzilla vs. Kong, Grodd brainwashes her, and she breaks free to help defeat a rebuilt Mechagodzilla.

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• 8. On Screen

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  In May 2011, IGN placed Supergirl 94th on its list of the Top 100 Comic Book Heroes of All Time. In November 2013 it ranked her 17th among the Top 25 Heroes of DC Comics. By then she had branched into animation, film, television and merchandising.

  Producer Ilya Salkind first wrote a treatment for the third film in the Christopher Reeve Superman series that brought in Supergirl, along with Brainiac and Mister Mxyzptlk. It featured a father-daughter bond between Brainiac and Supergirl and a romance between her and Superman, though they are cousins in the comics. Warner Bros. rejected the outline. The first live-action Supergirl was the 1984 film with Helen Slater, connected to the Superman series through Marc McClure's Jimmy Olsen. Her Kara leaves Argo City for Earth to retrieve the Omegahedron, which has fallen into the hands of the witch Selena, played by Faye Dunaway. The film was poorly received and did poorly at the box office. Superman IV: The Quest for Peace made no reference to the character.

  Laura Vandervoort played Kara in the seventh season of Smallville, in 2007-2008. Her ship had been trapped in stasis until a dam's destruction in the sixth season finale disrupted it. Much of the season follows her adjusting to Earth and to the fact that her 'younger' cousin Clark, played by Tom Welling, is now her age. She became a Justice League member in the tenth season, and in the finale the Fortress of Solitude sent her to the future so Clark could defeat Darkseid alone.

  The series Supergirl, starring Melissa Benoist as Kara Danvers, premiered on CBS on the 26th of October 2015. It moved to The CW on the 12th of May 2016. In this version, Kara's pod was knocked off course and stranded in the Phantom Zone for 24 years. After she crashed on Earth-38, the Danvers family raised her and hid her abilities. Twelve years later, she was a reporter for Cat Co Worldwide Media. She revealed her powers by saving her adoptive sister Alex Danvers from a near plane crash, and Cat Grant dubbed her Supergirl.

  In animation, Nicholle Tom voiced Supergirl in Superman: The Animated Series as Kara In-Ze, a near-Kryptonian from Krypton's sister planet Argos. In the second season of My Adventures with Superman, Kiana Madeira voices a Kara captured by Brainiac as an infant. He conditions her to conquer worlds until her memories resurface. In the video game Injustice 2, Laura Bailey voices a Kara trained by Black Adam and Wonder Woman, and she must choose between Batman and her cousin.

  In February 2021, Sasha Calle was cast as Supergirl in The Flash (2023), directed by Andy Muschietti. In January 2024, Milly Alcock was cast as Kara Zor-El in the DC Universe. She was due to debut in Superman before a solo film that would draw heavily on the 2021-22 miniseries Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, by writer Tom King and artist Bilquis Evely.

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