Saturday, December 31, 2016

Supergirl: Being Super: Book One


Ugh! A comic book about a girl?! Gross!

I'm only pretending to not like comic books with girls in them because I don't want people thinking I'm less of a man for not reading comics full of men with lots of muscles. You know the kind of man I'm talking about! The kind who would rather see the world destroyed than see a woman leading the team to save the day. You know! The kind of man who would rather build a killer magic deck than talk to a woman he knows isn't interested in getting naked with him. Come on! I know you know the kind of man I'm talking about! The kind that always vaguely smells of farts and Arby's. They're the keepers of the male dominated everything and have the fortitude to stick to their guns, no matter how detrimental those guns are definitely going to be to their future sex life. Not that women are only in the world for men to have sex with! What I mean is that if a guy thinks women are only in the world for men to have sex with, that man isn't going to have sex with any of them. It's a self-denying prophecy!

No, but seriously. Did I use that segue correctly? I want everybody to know that I was just joshing in that previous paragraph. Just a little light humor between friends and possibly future Internet lovers. I can't really grasp the reason to feel threatened by female characters taking the lead roles in action movies and science fiction and other previously male-dominated genres. How does it affect a person's life in any way at all? When I was in elementary school, two of my favorite series were the Oz books and Ramona Quimby books. It never even occurred to me that I somehow couldn't or shouldn't identify with Dorothy or Ramona because I was a boy. Obviously I read way more books with male leads in them because there were more of those. I couldn't know what those characters, being female, meant to girls who had a scarcity of female leads in books that didn't get people tittering about periods and boobies. And that's my point. More female leads in fantastic stories is in no way taking anything away from guys. But it is adding value to the world for young girls. The only reason to be an angry asshole about it is that you are probably, inherently, an angry asshole.

Plus I'd rather watch Felicity Jones for two hours than Mark Hamill. Sorry, Mark. That's not being sexist! That's just me being true to my heterosexuality! I'm allowed to discuss my interests even when they align with the patriarchy's agenda! I'm allowed to watch a movie and go, "Le sigh!"

Supergirl's story begins with a page talking about how to begin the story. My high school English teacher would have read this in front of the class and humiliated Mariko for it. He was always all, "Just begin your fucking story! Don't call attention to beginning your story. Just fucking begin it! If you feel you have to mention the beginning in some sense to get going, just cut out the beginning nonsense when you're finished! You fucking idiots!" Then he'd kick a desk or two just to show that he really meant what he was saying. I don't know if he was right or not. I just know I never begin stories by talking about how I'm beginning the story because I'm too scared to.


This is the second page of the story. It's a perfectly acceptable place to start! Although the first page did show a spaceship crashing in a field. Maybe that was needed for anybody who picked this up thinking, "I wonder who Supergirl is and where she came from?!" Of course if they're that ignorant of Superman and Supergirl, the crashing spaceship scenes aren't going to clear anything up for them.

This Book is also called "Where Do I Begin?", so I guess the whole "Where do I start?" question is thematic to the entire piece. I think Mr. Borror might have been okay with the opening of this comic. But just this once!

I've always thought that when people write things about how they don't know what to write because they feel they need to write something, they may as well not be writing anything at all. If all you have to say is, "I don't know what to say!", maybe that's a sign that you should stop thinking of yourself as a writer.

Kara Danvers (Supergirl!) has two friends: the Athlete and the Dyke. I suppose she's the Nerd. They're most of the way to their own Breakfast Club already!


That's not sexist at all! Like I said earlier, people have a right to desire the things they desire without being told they're wrong for desiring them! Jerko Athlete!

Being sexually attracted to a specific group of people doesn't make you sexist against those people. Of course, treating them as if all they have to offer is relief to your aching secret body parts is probably sexist. There are probably other reasons people are sexist but I wouldn't know what they are because my Wisdom score is like 4. I put all of my Attribute Points into Shaming Men Who Play Magic the Gathering. One of the flaws I took to get more attribute points was "Male who plays Magic the Gathering." It wasn't the best decision.

Kara's birthday is coming up. It'll probably be the birthday when she becomes a woman. A super woman! A super woman called Supergirl! Hmm, that probably makes more sense than it seems to. I bet whoever dates Supergirl must feel really awkward telling other people. "Oh, I'm totally talking with this chick named Supergirl. Um, but she's a woman! A grown ass woman! I mean, a teenaged woman but, you know, I mean, she's not like eleven! You know what? We're breaking up. Never mind."

Kara has been wondering where she's from lately because it fits the theme of this story. She knows she arrived on Earth in a pod and that she can fly and that Jimmy in math (Second row back, fourth seat over) makes her belly float and that she's super strong but that's about it. I guess she doesn't even know Silver Banshee yet. Unless Dolly Granger (the Dyke!) is going to become Silver Banshee.


"Moooooooom! Gross!"

The morning of Kara's sixteenth birthday party, she squeezes a Kryptonian zit and almost destroys her house. Now I'm wondering what happened the first time Kal-el had a wet dream. He could have killed somebody in the next room!

Kara's hands also begin to glow and she gets a fever and she feels tired. I think she really is becoming a woman. Don't females go through some kind of menopause at this age? I don't mean the old person menopause where the meno gets put on pause. I mean it's the start of the meno but it could be called menopause as well because you don't just press the pause button to pause a show; you press the pause button to get it going again! I once had that revelation while on LSD and it was, well, a revelation! It wasn't quite as spectacular the next day. I also thought triangles explained everything but I couldn't remember the logic behind it the next day. Taking hallucinogens doesn't make you smarter or more spiritual or wiser. But they sure are entertaining!

Later at the big track meet, an earthquake hits and Dolly almost dies by falling in one of those huge cracks that opens up whenever an earthquake hits. I'm from California so I can confirm that's totally true. I've fallen in like five or six dozen over the years. Comic books really exaggerate them though and make it seem like you fall all the way to hell. Usually you just fall into the sewer and get bitten by a rat or two.

After Kara saves Dolly without exposing her ability to do super feats, she begins looking for her other friend, Jen. Jen is knocked down by the stampeding parents and it looks like she's about to fall in a crack too when the issue ends. It would be just like Jen, the character who knows exactly what she wants from life and the talent to get it, to die so that Kara Danvers can learn a lesson about how random and chaotic everything is and how nobody should ever bother pursuing their dreams because life is a futile attempt to attain any sort of lasting happiness.

Or Kara will, like, save the day and shit. Whatever.

The Ranking!
I'm not going to say Kara and her friends are super adorable in this comic book because that would be sexist and reductive. But I will say, "Oh my god they're so fucking cute with their teenage problems and high school friendships!" That's okay to say, right?

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