Supergirl Soars

Supergirl has had mixed fortunes in the past, but the writer of her new Rebirth series, Steve Orlando, tells David Barnett he’s confident he’s got to the core of the character...

For a super-powered survivor of the planet Krypton, Supergirl sure has been badly treated in the nearly six decades since she was introduced. Killed off twice, revamped and rebooted within an inch of her meta-human life as editorial policy decided she wasn’t Kryptonian after all, then oh yes she was, then no she wasn’t again... It feels like nobody’s really ever known what to do with her.

Thank Rao, then, for Steve Orlando. The New York based writer is in the midst of Rebirthing the entire Justice League line for DC, but he has a special place in his heart for Kara Zor-El, who debuted in her own Rebirth title in the second half of 2016. Finally we’re getting the Supergirl we deserve.

But before we hear from Steve, just who is this red-white-and-blue streak across the sky?

Super beginnings

Funnily enough, when Supergirl was first introduced in the DC Universe, way back in Superman #123 (August 1958), she wasn’t Superman’s cousin at all. In fact, she was an actual male wish fulfilment figure... that of Superman’s pal Jimmy Olsen.

Finding himself in possession of a magic totem (this sort of thing happened a lot in the 1950s), Jimmy decides that the best way to use his wish is to conjure up a companion for his mate Supes... and creates Super-Girl (note the hyphenated name). Superman, it has to be said, is a little curmudgeonly at the sudden presence of this female version of him until Super-Girl makes the ultimate sacrifice to save the big fella from a Kryptonite meteorite lobbed at him by some villains. The dying Super-Girl begs Jimmy to use his magic totem to un-create her, which he duly does. And Super-Girl, in the same issue she had been introduced, suffered her first death and was no more.