Supergirl #1

The only thing I know about Supergirl is that she died in Crisis on Infinite Earths! So unless there happens to be a reason for me to mention Doom Patrol characters (like in Teen Titans!) or old issues of Suicide Squad (like in new issues of Suicide Squad), I probably won't have any historical knowledge to add as I read this.

Also, why does there have to be so many surviving things from Krypton? Isn't it more interesting if Superman is forever alone, the last surviving thing from the planet. Except for Kryptonite, of course!

Although, I guess having Supergirl in Superman's life makes for an interesting love triangle, even if she is his cousin. They would have to be somewhat attracted to each other, right? And I'm sure Krypton didn't have any laws about incest. That's probably why God destroyed their planet!

Ha ha! Dumb people believe stuff like that!

Supergirl comes crashing down to Earth inside of a meteorite. But she doesn't just smash down in Kansas in a big smoking crater like Superman did. Her meteorite hits America and plows right on through, popping up in Siberia. I guess she's lucky that she had just enough momentum to tunnel through the upper hemisphere and stop just after popping out of Siberia's surface.

Lucky or poorly written, that is! It seems to me that a meteorite going that fast (allowing that at its speed it would tunnel through the Earth and not shatter on impact) would cause a gigantic explosion of dirt and dust when it hit the Earth. But then I'm not a scientist! I'm just a caveman! I mean, comic book reader!

She pulls herself from her rock after who knows how many years of interstellar travel looking amazingly fresh and sexy. She believes she's dreaming because the Supergirl costume she's wearing is apparently some sort of graduation gown and she still has a year until she graduates. Now that's a graduation I wouldn't mind attending! Except that it would take place on an exploded planet and that would just be a hassle.

While Supergirl is walking around thinking about the dream she thinks she's dreaming, a bunch of robots attack her!

A moment I really like: Supergirl's arms are being held by the robot's rope things and she's beginning to realize this isn't a dream and it hurts. Tears of fear and pain begin to show in the corners of her eyes just as she notices the yellow sun rising above the horizon. She realizes this isn't Krypton just as the sun powers her and her eyes glow red with heat vision and the tears hisssss away.

Good moment. That's one I'd usually share but, once again (do I have to keep repeating it?), this is a first issue and it's out of DC's Big Book of First Issues which is a giant pain in the ass to scan.

And since I'm not going to scan any of this, I'll just summarize. The rest of the 20 pages are mostly Supergirl fighting with Men in Robot Suits. She shoots them with eye beams, screams her super scream, gets confused by her super hearing, looks through her hand with her X-ray vision and pummels all the robots until just a couple are left standing.

She's speaking Krypton and can't understand the soldiers she rips from the armor. And then Superman appears and says, "Stop." In Kryptonian.

And that's that.

This comic really is just a lot of pages like this:



Except wider. That's as much of the page as I can scan flat while the rest of the book hangs off the side of the scanner! It's just a bunch of pictures of yellow sky, snowy ground, robots and Supergirl.

What's interesting is that the first five pages look completely different, style-wise. They seem like water colours while the rest of the book looks like animation cels. So it looks like the first five pages took too long to do and the artists had to really get down to the business of beating the deadlines!

Not a bad start for the limited amount of story. But this really is more like a small prologue. It's definitely not a $3 story. I understand and I appreciate a well told tale that takes its time. But not at $3 for twenty pages when those twenty pages have a handful of panels with nothing but action happening. As a prologue for $1.50, I'd find this absolutely satisfactory!

I really can't rank this comic until I consume a little more.