Supergirl: Being Super: Book Three

Electrical problems are the worst.

DC got the title of this comic book wrong. I'm not interested in the super part of Supergirl. I want to read Supergirl: Being A Girl. I suppose, technically, that's what this comic book is actually about. It's less Supergirl saving people and more Supergirl not saving people. Burn! Jen is dead because Supergirl wasn't being super enough. All that's left is Supergirl being a girl with her friend that is still alive. And by being a total girl, she's attracted the attention of her evil lesbian coach who either wants to explore being a girl with her or wants to experiment on her in a non-sexually aggressive manner. That was the name of my Chem Lab class my freshman year of college: Non-sexually Aggressive Chem Lab. It wasn't as much fun as Try Desperately to Get Laid Racquetball.

It would have been much easier to get laid in racquetball if some of the other students had been my type. You know, indiscriminate.

Supergirl has realized, via her dreams, that she's an alien from another planet. That might mean that I'll stop caring as much about this comic book. I liked the parts where she's just trying to be a regular Earth kid in high school with super powers and explosive masturbation. I don't care for the stories about Kryptonians who long to know more about their previous life. Whenever I see one of those Unsolved Mysteries where a person tries to find original family members from a time they can barely remember, I always think, "Pee-yuke! Why would I want to be reunited with some strangers with whom I'm supposed to feel some kind of bond?!" If anybody ever came forward to say that I was their long lost brother or son, I'd be really uncomfortable with it. They would probably decide I was a rude asshole because I would be all, "So we're only doing this get together once, right? Nothing against you, of course! I just don't need any more time parasites sucking up my life energy." Is that the polite way to say fuck off?

Kara decides there's too much going on in her head to worry about being an alien. Good! Now we can just get back to dealing with school stuff, like hanging out with friends and fighting off the lesbian coach's advances.

Your mom's meatloaf what?!

Dolly and Kara have a rough day listening to everybody talk about how the tragedy affected them. But it affected them even more! So everybody is stupid and dumb for having feelings. What do they know about feelings?! Jen wasn't their best friend so they couldn't know what it means to really hurt! I mean, it's not like Jen was their daughter so Kara and Dolly aren't having the greatest feelings about the subject. So maybe they should shut up and stop whining too because obviously Jen's parents are really, really hurting!

Dolly figures out that Kara has super powers but Kara is all, "No, I'm just being a normal girl. I can't be any more normal than this!" And Dolly is all, "I don't care if you're different." And Kara is all, "Well, look again cause I'm not. Totally normal if you accept the white middle class view of normality which is blonde, blue-eyed, light skinned, heterosexual, and from the middle of the country! Totally normal in that offensive way people use the term normal!"

Later, Kara decides to have a memory about how her mother's parents were total ungrateful shitholes. She saved her grandfather from a burning barn (that he probably set fire while testing his burning cross to be used later) and he was all, "That girl ain't right! Git ridda her!" So that's why she can't tell anybody about her powers, even her best living friend Dolly.

Speaking of Dolly, she tampered with her heart monitor slash tracker that the predatory coach gave to the girls she wants to fuck and discovered it had a LexCorp battery. She thought that was weird for some reason. I guess Lexcorp doesn't market batteries for public consumption and only uses them in their futuristic high-tech gear since they're powered by Apokoliptian energy?

That night, Kara hears a voice whispering "Save me." She flies off to see if it's Jen going through her super villain origin but discovers it's Coach Stone's secret lesbian laboratory. Coach freaks out and hits a panic button which triggers Kara's bracelet which knocks Kara's powers offline. It looks like maybe Coach Stone wasn't a creepy pervert lesbian after all! She was just a scientist working for LexCorps who totally have a permit to kidnap local kids and run tests on them.

Kara trashes the lab and Coach Stone runs off to try to look through Dolly's blinds. The person Coach Stone was experimenting on gets up and thanks Kara for saving him. He's speaking Kryptonian but she can totally understand him. His name is Tan-on and I've never heard of him. Kara remembers her name is Kara Zor-el. I hope this guy isn't her cousin also because they're totally giving each other the fuck eye.

Before Supergirl rushes off on an Earthling killing spree with Tan-on (not that Kara knows that's what's about to happen!), she has to go home and leave a note for her parents. "Mom. Dad. I met a boy from my planet. We are going to fuck and kill people. See you later!" She doesn't tell Dolly where she's going because she's not supposed to tell Dolly anything that would make Dolly realize the whole normal act was a lie. Not that Dolly believes it anyway. But she's pretending to believe it because she's a good friend, unlike Kara who is a jerko friend. You know how many friends I managed to not save from death? Less than Kara! Because I'm a great friend!

The Ranking!
+1! Sometimes I feel it isn't fair to rank open-ended comics with comics written to have a conclusion. Obviously the stories that have a beginning, a middle, and an ending are going to be better executed than the stories that have an early middle, a middle middle, and a later middle bleeding into the next early middle of the next story. That's just common sense!

Supergirl: Being Super: Book Two

This is where that jerk Jen dies because everything always has to be about her.

This issue is called "Hold On!" That probably means that the theme will have something do with holding on! It sounds like I just made the most obvious statement in the world but you probably didn't realize that I mean the holding on in a figurative sense. It's a metaphor for life! This is going to be the literary equivalent of the poster with the kitten falling out of a tree that's supposed to be uplifting but is just a really macabre thing to have in your office. That kitten probably died during that photo shoot!

The issue begins with Jen not being able to hold on after she falls in a giant crack that opened up during an earthquake the way giant cracks never actually open up during earthquakes. Sure, sometimes buildings fall down or bridges break or the ground cracks open enough for a lake to drain out. Maybe. I might be wrong about some of those. But I don't think giant cracks ever actually open up under your feet. I've lived through so many earthquakes having grown up in California that I think I'm the best authority you'll find on how giant cracks don't open up during earthquakes. It's science! I've experienced earthquakes and I've never seen a giant crack. Therefore they never happen. Q.E.D. That means my logic is unassailable.

Kara Danvers almost helps Jen hold on but then Kara's powers short out because she's been masturbating too much. Remember how when Kara's vagina explodes in a FWASH, she releases all of her stored yellow sun energy and then rolls over and falls a sleep for an hour? Well, she's apparently really been going at it a lot lately, being at that age, and so her powers have gotten wonky. Instead of saving the day by holding on to Jen, Kara loses her powers and Jen falls into a chasm to either die or become a super villain. It's the perfect origin story for a super villain! I wonder if her last name was Luthor?

No. Jen's stupid last name was Bard. Maybe she was the daughter of Jason Bard? He's a guy that huge comic book nerds know. He's famous enough that he has an old Who's Who entry! It's all about how lame he is. No, no! Literally! He's got a bum leg!

You're allowed to call people with mobility problems "lame" in comic books. Jane Foster said so.

Kara mourns by eating lots and lots of cereal. After that, she needs to burn off the cereal calories because she's still in high school and she doesn't want to be the fat girl as well as the girl that masturbates constantly. Everybody knows when Kara masturbates because of the loud boom and the flash of light that can be seen on the horizon. Also because she uses her super ventriloquism to yell "I'm coming!"

Just to make sure everybody understood that the "Hold on!" title wasn't just about literally holding on to Jen but also about figuratively holding on to Jen, Kara breaks down while thinking, "How could I not hold on to her?!"

I would probably have scanned a picture by now but I don't want to break the binding of this comic book by shoving it in my scanner. That's almost the exact same excuse for not shoving things up my ass.

At Jen's memorial service, a background person mentions how they haven't found Jen's body. A-ha! A super villain! I fucking knew it!

Oh! And I found a picture that I wanted to scan that was in the right place on the page so that I could scan it without harming the comic book.

I didn't know an egg in an egg cup was a Christian symbol. What does it represent?!

Jen's sister Beat-Rice is an idiot. She doesn't say anything emotional or intelligent. She's just all, "You made macaroni and shit! You were fucking fast but not fast enough, amirite?! Yo, you in heaven, sis? See you later! Beat-Rice out!"

After the memorial, Kara's coach hits on her. Yeesh! That's so inappropriate. At least wait until Kara's showering in the locker room and her best friend isn't dead!

Kara wears black and white checkered Vans. That was important enough to get a paragraph all to itself.

Kara's got a pretty good home life. The kind of home life that Superman had. That's the thing about Superman and Supergirl that makes them special. Not that they're from Krypton and have extraordinary powers. It's that they had great families and grew up without Daddy Issues. It's what makes the current run of Supergirl so awful! In The New 52 (it could have been earlier than The New 52 as well! I don't know every fact in the world!), somebody decided it would be a good idea to make Zor-el into Cyborg Superman. Somebody made the decision to give Supergirl Daddy Issues. Because how dare she be happy with her adopted family and growing up as an Earthling? Some writer is always coming along with another hot take on Superman or Supergirl and how they should be emotionally fucked up about their real parents and their original home. That's why I'm glad the biggest Daddy Issue Kara is dealing with in this comic book (so far!) is that her dad doesn't want to discuss her growing body with her! She thinks he doesn't want to talk about her super powers but I think he just feels weird talking about any of the changes her body is going through. Some dads find that stuff uncomfortable!

Kara and Dolly ditch their parents to meet up at Burger Shack and have some fries and shakes and to hold on to Jen. It's also an opportunity to remind the reader that the weird coach gave Jen, Kara, and Dolly bracelets that track their every movement. Gay! I mean suspicious! We already knew she was gay by the way she tried to take advantage of Kara's sad feelings at the memorial for a quick roll in the lesbian hay.

Kara's mom has a sweet chat with her before putting her to bed so that Kara can dream the only dream she ever has: the moment she was put in a capsule and shot off from Krypton. She doesn't know that's what the dream is about though! At least she didn't know until maybe tonight. She remembers her father and her mother. He mother says, in Kryptonian, "Be sage, Kara Zor-el, my daughter." That's a weird thing to say! "Be sage"?! I don't want to assume that the letterer made a typographical error so I'm going to assume it's canon that those were Alura's last words. "Be sage, Kara Zor-el, my daughter!"

The dream reminds Kara of the pod in the barn with the garish red blanket so she goes out to the barn to masturbate.

FWASH!

Meanwhile, somebody somewhere else has been handcuffed to a machine with Kryptonite handcuffs! It's either the primary or the secondary subject. I think maybe the coach is interested in more than just an underage lesbian hookup!

The Ranking!
+2! This book looks gorgeous and is smart and emotional and funny and other stuff that people who like comic books would enjoy. It doesn't have any decapitations though. So if that's what you're into, you might want to skip this and wait for Damian: Being Sadistic.