Hero Profile: Supergirl

So, somehow Supergirl’s origin is even more muddled and confused than Batgirl’s. All I can really assume is that female superheroes get reinvented a little more often, thus leading to a rather confused jumbled mess of what their backstory is. Which makes it hard for someone like me to explain it. For this reason, I’ll be going with the most recent rendition of Supergirl’s backstory, simply because of the three or four I’ve read, this one is the most coherent. Let’s not waste any more time, on with the show.

Teenager with Super Strength. I shudder
to think about it.

Kara Zor-El lived on the planet Krypton, much like her cousin Kal-El, better known as Superman. Unlike Superman, though, Kara was born several years before Krypton’s final days and thus grew up as a “real” Kryptonian. Despite the planet’s end quickly approaching, things on Krypton were very peaceful, until Brainiac attacked. The hyper-intelligent alien attacked the capital city of Krypton, Kandor, and shrunk it down to keep in his collection of shrunken cities. Kara’s father, fearing another Brainiac attack or similar catastrophe, built an enormous force field around their home city of Argo. Good idea, but the fact he reversed engineered it from Brainiac’s tech probably wasn’t the best choice. When Krypton did finally blow up for…reasons, Argo was jettisoned from Krypton but was largely kept intact. They survived for a bit, not sure how that works unless Zor-El was smart enough to build the generators around a substantial amount of farm land, until that big brained donkey posterior Brainiac found the floating city. Not wanting to have a single Kryptonian city other than Kandor survive, he attempted to destroy it. Again, using his tech probably didn’t help the whole “hide from Brainiac” part of the plan.

Zor-El and his wife decided that it was then time to use their plan B, which was in fact his brother Jor-El’s plan B as well. Launching their only child at a largely unknown world populated by violent, backwards savages. By comparison to Kryptonians. Huh… still doesn’t sound like the best plan. Whatever, Kara, spaceship, sent to Earth. The rocket flew towards Earth, at roughly the speed of light, and was set to land within days of Kal’s pod. Unfortunately, a few more bits of fallen Krypton stuck the pod, encasing it in Kryptonite and really throwing off the trajectory. The end result was that Kara’s pod crash landed in Gotham Harbor, several hundred miles from Smallville, Kansas. Oh, and she arrived thirty odd years later. Speed of light man, not something to be played with.

I know she's bulletproof, but seriously, why
a belly shirt?

Batman found the pod, but was Boat-jacked by Kara while he was examining it. She drove it to Gotham harbor and started wandering around the city. Nude, for some reason, though most likely because men are pigs. What, don’t give me that look, we are. Now, being roughly sixteen, alone, nude, and in a city where you don’t speak the language is pretty much the worst spot any sentient being could be in. In her wanderings, she came across three guys. This can either go good or awful. One of them offered her his hand and smiled. She took it, an accidentally broke it because, you know, Kryptonian super strength. Guy # 2 attacks her to defend his friend, and got the tar knocked out of him. Guy #3 gives her his trench coat and begs for his life. Kara throws it on and continues running around Gotham.

Kara caused a few more accidents in Gotham as her Kryponian powers kept kicking in. Mostly vehicular accidents. She squashed one like a pancake and then heat-visioned a police cruiser into slag. Police officers fired on her. Biggest waste of bullets ever. And Kara flew off in fright. She ran into Batman on the rooftops and tried to fly farther away, but he got her with a bit of the ol’ glowing green Kryptonite.

When she woke up, she was understandably upset. Thankfully, Superman arrived before any Bat-neck snapping or more Kryptonian radiation poisoning took place. He spoke to her in Kryptonian, and seeing the family crest on Sups’ chest made Kara trust him almost instantly. He took her to the Fortress of Solitude and taught her to speak English and few of Earth’s customs. When he tried to take her to Metropolis and have a nice family outing, Wonder Woman and a detachment of Amazon’s arrived and told Superman, “She’s coming with us.” Apparently Batman gave WW the heads up about Kara and they both agreed she needed more extensive training to handle her powers. Kara was transported to Themyscira and trained with the Amazons. Which, is pretty much the ideal place to train a teenager with super strength, amongst a bunch of women with comparable strength. She adjusted well to Themyscira and came to think of the Island as her new home. Then Darkseid showed up.

Evil and stronger than Superman. Yep, "its" hit the fan.

Using an army of Doomsday monsters, Darkseid was able to distract the Amazonian’s long enough to kidnap Kara. Using Apokoliptian mind control techniques and the side effects of prolonged Kryptonite poisoning, you know from the pod, he turned Kara into a killing machine as part of his Female Furies. Wait, Furies are by definition female. Or does Darkseid also have a group of Male Furies? Whatever discussion for another time. Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman and Big Barda (Ex-Fury) attacked Apokolips and rescued Kara. After knocking her out with Kryptonite. She was a danger to herself and others, what else were they supposed to do? Kara leaves Themyscira after recovering, feeling she didn’t belong on the island anymore, and went to Kansas with Clark. Darkseid met them at the family farm. After an intense battle, they trick Darkseid into believing Kara had died. After that, Superman introduced his cousin to the superhero community.

Kara has the standard Kryptonian power package. Super strength, near invulnerability, flight, heat, x-ray, and infrared vision, super breath, and a killer metabolism. Kara is, understandably weaker in her powers than Clark. Because she’s significantly younger and has had significantly less time under the yellow sunlight. It has been said that for some unknown reason, she absorbs yellow sunlight more efficiently than Clark, suggesting she'll hit her physical peak faster and recover quicker than her cousin. She is also incredibly intelligent, compared to your average sixteen year old human, due to having spent most of her formative years on the highly advanced Krypton, which put a huge emphasis on science and tech.

A little family flying bonding.

I feel like I should briefly touch upon her relationship to Clark, given that it’s pretty weird to think about. Days before Krypton was destroyed, she’d seen Clark as an infant. In fact, part of the reason Zor-El chose to send her to Earth was so she could look after and protect Clark. But, because of the speed of light and trajectory malfunction, she arrived to an Earth with an adult Clark. Their roles were obviously reversed at this point. In many ways Clark treats her more like a daughter than a younger cousin, at least in the versions I’ve seen. He’s overprotective of the last bit of his home world and biological family, to the point of greatly frustrating Kara. But she knows he means well, and while she does occasionally step out of line, she does respect Clark a great deal. Which must be weird, respecting the grown man that, from her perspective, was an infant just weeks before.

Also, the costume choice. Not going to harp on this one too much. Kara, as a near invulnerable Kryptonian can wear whatever she’d like into a fight and not have to worry how much it protects her. But, I will say this, when ones primary mode of transportation is self-propelled flight, a skirt is not the best choice. Just saying.

Supergirl has appeared in a number of DC series, usually alongside her cousin Superman.

She was a recurring character in Superman: The Animated Series. This version is notable because she’s a little different from the Kara of the comics. In this version, she’s not Clark’s biological cousin or even a “real” Kryptonian. Because DC insisted on keeping Clark “the last Kryptonian,” the writers rewrote Kara’s origins so that she was Kara In-Ze. Kara In-Ze was from the planet Argo, a small world in a neighboring planet to Krypton. Kryptonians colonized it ages ago, but the Kryptonian’s living on the planet were slightly different than “purebloods” from the homeworld. Her world was destroyed because of the destruction of Krypton. The shockwave from the explosion flung her world out of its orbit around their sun. The majority of her people either perished in the initial destruction or froze to death as Argo flew farther away from the star. Superman uncovered Kara as the last Argonian kept alive in suspended animation. Sups called her his cousin for simplicities sake.

Huh, guess some things really are universal.

This same version of Kara appeared in an episode of the New Batman Adventures, entitled “Girl’s Night Out” where she and Batgirl team-up to stop Batman villains Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn and Superman villain Livewire, while the titular heroes are away. Unlike their male counterparts, Kara and Barbara form a close friendship and become “besties” as the kids say.

Animated Kara appears again in Justice League Unlimited. She and Clark have a near sibling relationship at this point, which is a good and bad thing. The main “bad” thing being that Kara wants to be seen as more than Superman’s cousin. I don’t see why, in a Kara centric episode entitled “Chaos at the Earth’s Core” we see she has a legion of Japanese fan girls. She and teammate Stargirl spend most of the episode arguing, first with whose the better superhero and then in the end who had it worse in terms of overprotective guardian. While Stargirl having a curfew is bad, I’ve got to go with Kara being stuck on a farm in Kansas for two years as the “most overprotective guardian” action. She actually leaves the present to be part of the Legion of Super-Heroes (Future, Intergalactic Justice League) and to be with Brainiac 5, descendent of the big bad that everyone seems to want to know about. I wish I could have seen the look on Sups’ face when he found out. He probably heat-visioned something.

Kara appears as a recurring character in the seventh season of Smallville. Her origins are much the same, though this version has to deal with the fact that Lex Luthor is obsessively searching for her. She helps Clark on a number of adventures until the end of the season 10 penultimate episode “Prophecy” where she first helps Green Arrow locate a weapon to battle Darkseid, then uses a time manipulating Legion of Super-Heroes ring to travel to the far future to seek her own destiny.

Be afraid when she makes that face, fire leaps from
her eyes soon after.

Her background as given above is the main plot of the movie Superman/Batman Apocalypse. Like, almost word for word, scene by scene. It’s a good movie, check it out.

She’s also a major character in Superman: Unbound, where she spends a good chunk of the movie either kicking ass or moping about how Kandor was stolen by Brainiac. She does help out a lot though, so much so that I wonder why her name isn’t in the title too.

A new Supergirl TV series is in the works, with actress Melissa Benoist in the title role. Not much is known as of yet, and I’m wondering how they could do this show without making reference to be Big Blue Boy Scout? It’ll be interesting to see.

 Supergirl is a character that seems to alternate substantially with each version. At times she’s the bubbly superhuman cheerleader type. You know, superpowers with a lot of pep. Others, she’s more like a…real teenage girl, as Lois Lane put it in Superman: Unbound “rebellious, angry at the world, doesn’t know her own strength.” Of the two I prefer the real teenager type, just because, well, it’s real. How would a teenager react to not only the death of her entire species, but the discovery she’s now on a world where she can do just about anything? She’s smash stuff, lots of stuff. And despite her muddled background and constantly changing story, Supergirl is a very valiant hero that has, and, will probably continue to, sacrifice herself for the greater good. Can’t get much more heroic than that. She’s the sensational, stupendous, slightly secretive Supergirl. Next up, Hawkgirl.

http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Kara_Zor-El_%28Unbound%29

 http://dcanimated.wikia.com/wiki/Supergirl

 http://www.comicvine.com/profile/hypnosis/forums/?page=19

 http://img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100123194815/marvel_dc/images/d/d1/Kara_Zor-El_019.jpg

 http://es.superman.wikia.com/wiki/Archivo:Kara_sbA.png

 http://dcmovies.wikia.com/wiki/Kara_Zor-El_%28Superman:_Unbound%29