Issue 41: Superhero Information Initiative
By Amdnarg Toh

Supergirl

During my decade-long hiatus of being involved in the reading, collecting, and generally being owned by comic books and comic book characters, some really weird stuff happened…

Comics got really dark.
X-Men changed costumes at least 12 times.
The only Avenger I knew was Captain America.
The original Robin became Nightwing, and replacement Robin #1 was killed by the Joker.
And… Superman died. It was the Death of Superman that awakened me from my lethargic non-comic book involved state.
And why? Not really because Superman died. I knew it was a ratings ploy from the start.

Because Supergirl wierded me out!

A bit of explanation first…

Doomsday was the mysterious monster being who began to terrorize the countryside around Metropolis, Superman’s adult hometown. The Justice League of America was dispatched to take care of him and they ALL, collectively, got their asses handed to them by this unknown beast. Of course, Superman was unavailable at the time, but eventually got the message and showed up to make Doomsday’s – well— er— day. Kal-el found out he was WAY in over his head, and sacrificed himself to stop Doomsday, dying in the arms of his wife, Lois Lane. But that’s not THIS story…

In a critical moment of the battle between Superman and Doomsday, Supergirl intervened. I figured “Hmmm… There might just be enough power between TWO Kryptonians to take care of this menace.” Within about two nanoseconds of her joining her cousin’s defense of Metropolis and humanity itself, she gets KO’ed by the big grey guy. And turns into a grey putty like substance, smoking like she had escaped from a fire!!! And she’s picked up by none other than Lex Luthor, but he’s got long red hair and beard!!! I had to figure this one out, so I turned to the Internet, which at the time was a bit in its infancy, and didn’t have the mountains of comic related information readily available, so I had to do my research the old fashioned way – by collecting and reading the different issues that had information in them about Supergirl.

A short bit of research on today’s Internet yields the following Supergirl “lineage”:

Kara Zor-El – The original version, who was Superman’s cousin from Krypton. Some story lines indicate she lived in the bottled city of Kandor, some have her being sent to Earth in a rocket, much like Kal-El. In the original story line, a small part of Krypton survived its explosion, was eventually in jeopardy, so Kara was sent to Earth by her parents to be raised by her cousin. She holds a secret identity, Linda Danvers. This Supergirl died in the Crisis on Infinite Earths series in 1985. However, she has been recently reintroduced into the DC comics storyline, (2004.)

Matrix – The Supergirl encountered in the Doomsday story. Turns out this incarnation of Supergirl was a being called Matrix. She was a created lifeform with shape shifting abilities who took on the persona of Supergirl to help her hero, Superman. She had telekinetic abilities, which allowed her to mimic a number of Superman’s powers. Her story takes a number of twists, eventually leading to her “merging” with a human named Linda Danvers, losing some of her powers, gaining them back, and eventually being wiped out of the universe by the 2005 Infinite Crisis storyline.

Cir-El – A short-lived Supergirl who was initially thought to be the daughter of Kal-El and Lois Lane, returned from the future, but was found out to be a genetically modified human.