Supergirl (Kara Zor-El)

• 1. Introduction

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  Supergirl, whose Kryptonian name is Kara Zor-El, first appeared in Action Comics #252 in May 1959. Writer Otto Binder created her, and artist Al Plastino designed her and drew that debut. Her story begins on Argo City, a fragment of Krypton that survived the planet's destruction. When a meteor shower dooms the city, her parents Zor-El and Alura In-Ze send her to Earth to be raised by her cousin. That cousin is Kal-El, who took the name Clark Kent and became Superman. Her father Zor-El is the brother of Superman's father, Jor-El.

  On paper, she is an easy character to describe. In practice, her publisher has killed her, written her out of existence, and then brought her back. Other characters carried her name in the gap. Her own creators and editors have disagreed about whether she adds anything at all. Why would DC Comics remove a heroine that readers loved? Who filled her place while she was gone? And what did it take to make her return stick?

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• 2. Linda Lee's Many Lives

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  Argo City did not fall in a single blow. Its soil slowly turned into Kryptonite, and Zor-El covered the ground with lead sheeting to shield the citizens from the radiation. Meteorites pierced the sheeting, and the Kryptonians died of radiation poisoning because the metal was never replaced.

  On Earth, Midvale Orphanage became Kara's home, and Linda Lee, an orphan, became her cover name. She had promised Superman to keep her existence secret so that he could use her as a secret weapon. That promise did not stop her from testing her new powers in private. Reader letters about her debut, printed in Action Comics #255, reportedly showed a sizeable and mostly positive response.

  Artist Jim Mooney drew her backup feature in Action Comics for ten years, until 1968. The orphanage was run by a headmistress, Miss Hart. Kara hid her blond hair beneath a brunette wig and did good deeds one person at a time. She also rescued Superman many times with clever schemes, while avoiding adoption until he could present her to the public.

  In Action Comics #279, dated July 1961, engineer and rocket scientist Fred Danvers and his wife Edna adopted her. She became Linda Lee Danvers. The adoption happened while a Kandorian scientist named Lesla-Lar, who wanted to supplant Kara on Earth, had temporarily stripped her of her powers. In Action Comics #285, dated February 1962, Superman finally introduced her to the world. That issue closed an eight-part serial called "The World's Greatest Heroine", then the longest-running series DC had published. On the same day, she told her adoptive parents her secret.

  Dreams of her parents turned out to be real. With help from her father's engineering talent, Kara built a machine and rescued Zor-El and Alura from the Survival Zone, where they had teleported in Argo City's last moments. The couple eventually settled in Kandor. When the bottled city was enlarged, they moved to Rokyn, also called New Krypton.

  She finished high school in 1965 and won a scholarship to Stanhope College, where she stayed until 1971. Her companions included a cat named Streaky and a Super-Horse named Comet. She befriended Lena Thorul, who had first appeared in the Lois Lane series. Like her cousin before her, she joined the Legion of Super-Heroes, where she grew close to Brainiac 5. Her boyfriends included Richard "Dick" Malverne from the orphanage and Jerro the merboy from Atlantis. In 1967, in World's Finest Comics, she met Batgirl, and the two became close friends and teamed up several more times.

  In June 1969, with Adventure Comics #381, she left Action Comics to become a featured character in that title. Her costume changed often through the 1970s, and so did her jobs. After longtime Superman family editor Mort Weisinger retired in 1971, editor Joe Orlando and artist Mike Sekowsky revitalized her. She left the Danvers home for San Francisco, where she ran a camera at KSF-TV and fell for her boss, Geoffrey Anderson. There she met Nasthalthia, known as Nasty, a niece of Lex Luthor, who chased her to the station hoping to prove her dual identity.

  Her first solo monthly series ran from 1972 until October 1974. It then merged with Superman's Girl Friend, Lois Lane and Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen to form The Superman Family, where she eventually became the steady lead story. Along the way, she worked as a student advisor at New Athens Experimental School and moved to New York to act on a daytime soap, Secret Hearts. By one count, Kara Zor-El appeared in over 750 DC stories between 1959 and 1985.

  In 1982, she got a second solo series, The Daring New Adventures of Supergirl. It moved her to Chicago, where Linda studied psychology as a mature student. Carmine Infantino penciled the art and Bob Oksner inked it. With issue 13, the title was revamped, with a new costume that included a red headband, and it was shortened to Supergirl. DC cancelled it suddenly in 1984, only two months before a big-budget Hollywood film about her opened.

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• 3. The Crisis Sacrifice

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  In 1985, the maxi-series Crisis on Infinite Earths set out to reduce DC continuity to a single universe where every character kept one history. Supergirl was popular and a central member of the Superman Family. The editors and the maxi-series creators still decided to kill her.

  Marv Wolfman, who wrote Crisis, laid out the reasoning. Before the event, he said, half of Krypton seemed to have survived. There were Superman, Supergirl, Krypto, the Phantom Zone criminals and the bottled city of Kandor, among others. The goal was to make Superman unique, so Kal-El became the only survivor of Krypton. In Wolfman's words, "That, sadly, was why Supergirl had to die." He added that letters called her death the best Supergirl story readers had seen, and that "I miss Kara, too."

  Dick Giordano, DC's vice president and executive editor, first conceived the idea and lobbied publishers for it. He later said he never regretted it. His explanation was blunt: "Supergirl was created initially to take advantage of the high Superman sales and not much thought was put into her creation." He also described her as essentially a female Superman. Some sources blamed the poor initial reception of the 1984 film as well.

  Inside the story, the heroes of the multiverse unite against the Anti-Monitor. When he knocks Superman unconscious, Supergirl rushes in to save him and holds the Anti-Monitor off long enough for Doctor Light to carry her cousin to a safe distance. The Anti-Monitor then kills her. She is buried on New Krypton, and a memorial service is held in Chicago. When the universe is rebooted, the timeline is altered and every memory of Kara is erased.

  One trace remained. In the 1989 tale "Christmas with the Super-Heroes", Kara's soul appears to Boston Brand, the hero Deadman, and cheers him up. Then she disappears from continuity for years.

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• 4. Borrowed Capes

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  With Kara gone, three characters unrelated to Superman took on the Supergirl persona. The Matrix was a shapeshifting, genetically engineered life-form that defaulted to Supergirl. Linda Danvers was the result of Matrix merging with a dying Linda Danvers, becoming an Earth-bound angel of fire. Cir-El was Superman's apparent daughter from a possible future.

  By 2000, the series starring Linda Danvers was in danger of cancellation. Writer Peter David thought a storyline about Kara Zor-El could revive it. He told Cliff Biggers of Newsarama that "the impetus at this point was, frankly, sales." He saw two audiences to win back: readers bored with the current storyline, and readers who accepted no Supergirl but Kara.

  In issues 49 and 50, dated October and November 2000, the dead Kara appears as Linda's guardian angel. Then, in issues 75 to 80, the arc "Many Happy Returns" brings a young Kara from a time long before the Crisis. Linda tries to take Kara's place as the Crisis sacrifice. She lives for years in a Silver Age universe where "no one swears, the villains are always easy to defeat, and everything's very, very clean". There she marries the Silver Age Superman and has a daughter with him. Ed Benes, who had also illustrated Gail Simone's Birds of Prey, drew the run.

  The Spectre eventually forces Linda back to her own universe, revealing that her effort to replace Kara will not succeed. Failing to save Kara and losing her daughter devastates Linda. She leaves Superman a note saying she has not lived up to the standards of a true Supergirl, and she goes somewhere she cannot be found. Fans commonly cite this arc as one of the best Supergirl stories ever written, and the series ended with issue 80.

  The original Kara did not stay gone for good. In Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds #5, a heroine resembling the pre-Crisis Kara appears among alternate universe Legionnaires gathered to battle the Time Trapper.

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• 5. The Asteroid From Krypton

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  Dan DiDio, then a DC Comics senior vice president, wanted to simplify Supergirl after the Superman/Batman series launched. The simplest version of the character was Superman's cousin. Writer Jeph Loeb and editor Eddie Berganza found their opening as the first story arc of Superman/Batman ended.

  Loeb described it as "the convergence of two trains heading on toward each other." He and Berganza had been kicking around an Armageddon-style tale in which a giant asteroid from Krypton approaches Earth. They planned to tie it to "The Fall of Luthor", the arc in which Lex Luthor leaves the White House. Loeb recalls the two of them giggling over the idea of something, or someone, inside the asteroid, neither daring to speak her name.

  The modern Kara Zor-El debuted in Superman/Batman #8 in 2004, and took up the Supergirl mantle by the end of that storyline. Her ship had been caught in a large green Kryptonite meteorite that held her in suspended animation. She is chronologically older than Superman, yet she looked 16. Sometimes she still saw her cousin as a child, because she had last held him as a baby.

  DC relaunched her monthly series, now billing her as "The Girl of Steel". Loeb wrote the first arc, and Ian Churchill illustrated it. On the appeal of the role, Loeb said, "I love that she has all this power and has to learn what it is to be a superhero in the DCU." On her journey of self-discovery she meets Power Girl, the Teen Titans, the Outsiders, the Justice League of America and Lex Luthor. Later, artist Jamal Igle and editor Matt Idleson swapped the red panties under her skirt for biker shorts, a change they called more respectable.

  During Infinite Crisis in 2005, a sequel to Crisis on Infinite Earths, Supergirl is carried to the 31st century. There she is revered as a member of the Superman family and joins the Legion of Super-Heroes. DC renamed that monthly series Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes, beginning with issue 16. In the limited series 52, Donna Troy recalls the original Kara and her sacrifice. Back in the 21st century, Kara briefly guards Metropolis for a depowered Superman. She then becomes Flamebird, with Power Girl as Nightwing, in Greg Rucka's arc "Supergirl: Candor".

  In 2007, she appeared in the miniseries Amazons Attack! and joined the Teen Titans for five issues. Talks with heroes who keep secret identities led her to seek deeper human connections. She accepted Lana Lang's offer to present her at the Daily Planet as "Linda Lang", Lana's teenaged niece.

  In the 2008-2009 "New Krypton" arc, Superman frees the real Kandor and many of its citizens. Kara is reunited with her mother Alura and her father Zor-El, though the villain Reactron kills Zor-El. She is torn between Earth and her duty to her mother, and she joins the New Krypton Science Guild. The saga ends with the destruction of New Krypton, leaving Supergirl to mourn her people.

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• 6. Reboots and Rebirths

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  In September 2011, DC Comics cancelled all of its monthly superhero titles and relaunched 52 new ones. This reboot was called The New 52. Its Supergirl series, Volume 6, ran from 2011 to 2015 and gave Kara a new origin. Artist Mahmud Asrar designed a costume that resembled Superman's more than her classic "cheerleader" suit, and some readers criticized the change.

  In this version, Kara's ship lands in Smallville but hurtles through the Earth and emerges in Siberia. She remembers nothing of Krypton's destruction and believes only three days have passed since launch. Superman tells her the truth. She later travels through a wormhole to find Argo City in ruins, orbiting a blue sun. A Worldkiller named Reign attacks her before the city plummets into the sun. The Worldkillers are superweapons of Kryptonian design, and Kara returns to Earth to defeat them.

  Her grief leads another Kryptonian, whom she loves, to manipulate her into nearly destroying the Earth. When she realizes it, she kills him by driving Kryptonite through his heart, and she succumbs to Kryptonite poisoning. She leaves Earth to die alone, escapes Brainiac and Cyborg Superman, and is sent into the past with Superman and Superboy. There she makes sure a resurrected H'el cannot save Krypton. A later meeting with the assassin Lobo exposes deep mental wounds and draws a Red Lantern ring to her. Rage drives her across space until Guy Gardner restores her sanity. Later she flies into the Sun to destroy a Worldkiller, and in the Sun's core she is revived.

  In the Convergence arc, the original pre-Crisis Kara appears on the amalgamated planet of Telos. She volunteers to fight the Anti-Monitor again, with her timeline's Barry Allen, the pre-Flashpoint Superman and his pregnant wife, Lois Lane, and a repentant Parallax. A later mini-series reveals that after the victory, the group scatters. Her fate after that arc is yet to be revealed.

  The 2016 DC Rebirth relaunch borrowed the costume, name, setting and some characters from the Supergirl television series. Supergirl: Rebirth, Volume 7, was written by Steven Orlando, with Brian Ching penciling the first arc and redesigning her costume toward a classic look. Here a 16-year-old Kara lives in National City with adoptive parents Jeremiah and Eliza Danvers, both D.E.O. agents. She interns at Cat Grant's CATCO alongside Ben Rubel. In April 2018, DC announced the title would be cancelled after issue 20. It was revived that August under writer Marc Andreyko and artist Kevin Maguire, and it ended with its 42nd issue. In its story, she is infected by the toxin of The Batman Who Laughs and briefly turns evil.

  The Future State comics imagined an adult Kara who takes the alias Superwoman and guards the Moon, which has become a refugee colony for aliens. Marguerite Bennett wrote it and Marguerite Sauvage penciled it. In June 2021, Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow debuted, written by Tom King and penciled by the Brazilian artists Bilquis Evely and Mat Lopes. It begins at Kara's 21st birthday, which she spends drinking on a planet whose red sun removes her powers. A young girl named Ruthye asks her to kill Krem, her father's murderer. King said the revenge-mentor plot was inspired by the original novel True Grit and both film versions. Kara manifests flame wings after taking red kryptonite to save a space bus crew from a Karpane dragon, a homage to Linda Danvers.

  In May 2025, Sophie Campbell began writing and drawing a new Supergirl series under the DC All In line, bringing back Silver Age and Bronze Age elements. In it, Kara returns to Midvale and finds Lesla-Lar posing as Supergirl and as Linda Danvers. Lesla explains that she took Kara's identity to find praise and a place to fit in. Kara agrees to train her, and Lesla becomes the hero Luminary.

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• 7. Strength and Doubles

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  Under a yellow sun, Kara has virtually unlimited strength, stamina and invulnerability. She flies, and she can run at super speed. She cannot match speedsters like The Flash, who draw power from an interdimensional source called the Speed Force. Like Superman, she has super senses, super-breath, freeze breath and several forms of super-vision, including X-ray, heat, telescopic and microscopic. A bio-electric aura protects her skin and costume from dirt and wear, so she is perpetually clean.

  The sun also extends her life so far that she is effectively a biological immortal. She needs no food, water or sleep, and she is immune to most diseases. When someone of equal strength or one of her weaknesses harms her, she heals almost instantly. Black Adam, Darkseid, Despero, Doomsday, Bizarro, Wonder Woman and Superman can all overpower her.

  Her cousin Clark is actually younger than she is. Kara lived on Krypton before its destruction, so unlike Superman she remembers Kryptonian culture and his parents. Many characters in the DC Universe have noted that she sometimes seems even stronger than Superman. He has explained why. Since infancy, he has subconsciously held back his full power to avoid hurting others, while Kara has no such habit and uses all of it.

  Kara was old enough to undergo martial arts training as part of her citizenship tests. At the Crucible Academy, she mastered Kryptonian fighting styles such as Klurkor and Torquasm Rao. After her conflict with the Fatal Five overwhelmed her powers, she learned the art of Bagua under I-Ching, practicing how to manipulate her Chi or Qi. Batman trained her in advanced martial arts, and she trained with the Amazons of Themyscira in armed and unarmed combat, including fencing and shield handling. She trained extensively with Wonder Woman and Artemis.

  Power Girl, whose real name is Kara Zor-L and who is also known as Karen Starr, first appeared in All Star Comics #58 in January and February 1976. She is the Earth-Two counterpart of Supergirl and the first cousin of Kal-L, the pre-Crisis Earth-Two Superman. Her ship took much longer to reach Earth-Two than his did. She became the first chairwoman of the Justice Society of America, and in her early appearances she often clashed with Wildcat, whose habit of talking to her like an ordinary woman annoyed her.

  Crisis on Infinite Earths eliminated Earth-Two and changed her origin. She became the granddaughter of the Atlantean sorcerer Arion. Events culminating in the Infinite Crisis limited series, in 2005 and 2006, restored her status as a refugee from the Krypton of the destroyed Earth-Two. Like Kara's Streaky, Power Girl has a cat, featured in a story by Amanda Conner in Wonder Woman #600.

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• 8. Screens and Reputation

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  Helen Slater played Supergirl in the 1984 film Supergirl, her first live-action appearance. In August 2018, a new film was announced, with Oren Uziel hired as screenwriter. The studio wanted a female director, and Reed Morano, who had expressed interest, was its top choice. Filming was expected to start in early 2020.

  On television, Laura Vandervoort played Kara in Smallville. Melissa Benoist took the role in the series Supergirl and in other shows set in the Arrowverse. The character also made a cameo in the Peacemaker episode "The Ties That Grind".

  Animation reimagined her more freely. In Superman: The Animated Series, voiced by Nicholle Tom, Kara Kent comes from Argo, Krypton's sister planet, which was knocked out of orbit. She and her family entered suspended animation to survive the cooling, and the stasis chambers failed over time. Superman finds her, and Jonathan and Martha Kent adopt her. In My Adventures with Superman, Kiana Madeira voices a Kara who is a warrior of the Kryptonian Empire and a brainwashed servant of Brainiac, whom she believes is her father. In Harley Quinn, Lacey Chabert voices a Supergirl who is an ophthalmologist. In Legion of Super-Heroes, Meg Donnelly voices a Kara sent to the 31st century, who comes into conflict with Brainiac 5 before they reconcile and begin a relationship.

  Video games gave her more roles. In Injustice 2, Laura Bailey voices an alternate universe Supergirl who is trained to serve Superman's Regime. When Brainiac attacks Earth, she realizes Superman's tyranny and defects to Batman's Insurgency. She is also a playable character in Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham and in Lego Dimensions, where she appears in her Red Lantern form.

  IGN ranked her the 94th-greatest comic book superhero, noting that a character born in a Silver Age that produced everything from a Super Baby to a Super Monkey had grown into something much more. In 2013, IGN ranked her the 17th-greatest DC comic superhero. It called her "an early example of a female sidekick developing a large fanbase in her own right".

  In the 2023 film The Flash, Sasha Calle plays an alternate universe Kara. An A.I.-based recreation of Helen Slater's version also makes a non-speaking cameo there. Milly Alcock then appeared uncredited as Supergirl in the DC Universe film Superman in 2025. A self-titled DCU film, Supergirl, dated 2026, brings Alcock back in the lead role.

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