SUPERGIRL #16

The Truth

June 2007

Written by Joe Kelly

Pencils by Alé Garza

Inks by Marlo Alquiza

Cover by Alé Garza

Synopsis

After the explosion of Power Boy’s father box, Kara floats in space recalling her father and finally remembering the truth about herself, her family, and her past.  On Krypton, Jor-el created the Phantom Zone (an empty place where time stands still) has a method for punishing criminals.  In time, however, Kara’s father Zor-el realized that something was coming through the Phantom Zone and into Krypton.  Zor-el tries to warn his brother, but Jor-el refuses to listen as he is more concerned about the instability of the planet and its imminent destruction.  So, Zor-el set out to fix it one his own.  He learns the Sunstone Crystals were the key to fighting the phantoms, so he “innoculates” Kara with them.  When phantoms attack a school, Zor-el and Kara kill the phantoms, but to the rest of Krypton, they only murdered children.  Then Krypton starts to destruct.  When Zor-el learns of Jor-el’s plans for his son, he knows that the phantoms will follow Kal-el, so Zor-el sends his daughter to kill Kal-el. 

Review by Binkley (e-mail)

Finally, the meaning behind Kara’s strange dreams and weird flashbacks make sense.  But, when reading this, does that make all of Kelly’s original issues better?  No.  Perhaps when reading those issues a second time, it might change my view of certain moments or scenes, but I don’t think it actually improves any of the previous issues.  The key to Kara’s “origin” is her father’s instruction o kill Kal-el and why.  But until now, she did not know why, which brings poignancy to her dilemma because Kal-el is family and a hero.  The problem is that Kelly really wasn’t focusing on Kara’s relationship with Superman, which really is the cornerstone of this origin.  Kill your cousin!  Kill Earth’s hero!  But, no, Kara actually has been kept away from Superman.  Rather, Kelly has focused his stories on Kara trying to come to grips with who she is and where she fits on Earth, which could have been done without the phantom origin.  These issues could have taken place without the flashbacks and the misleading clues to make us believe Zor-el raised an evil child. 

What this origin actually has done is to give Kara a new Mission.  It answers the question of who she is and what she is meant to do.  Now, she will hunt down the phantoms and kill them with the sunstone crystals imbedded in her body.  I am not entirely certain this is the right direction.  Why can’t they just do Supergirl comics?  Why are we doing Ghostbusters?  Of course, this issue may also be a set-up to tie into the Last Son arc in Action Comics and if that were the case, I am intrigued.

The ending does not match, at all, the original scene in Batman/Superman, issue #8 when Batman found Kara’s ship at the bottom of Gotham Bay.  Plus, when she arrived, she was naked.  The ending also is problematic because it implies that could she could se the phantoms the moment she arrived on earth.  So, why hasn’t she mentioned this before?  You would think that even if she couldn’t remember why she came to Earth, she’d at least tell someone out the weird ghost figures coming out of people.

Once more I need to mention that Kelly as completely forgotten about the cliffhanger from last week.  What happened to Power Boy?  What happened to the father box that was tossed into the sun but exploded before it got there?  I can only hope that the beginning of this issue is the result of the explosion and that this issue was a dream-like moment.  I doubt it.  Kelly has this habit of forgetting the threads of the previous issue to pick up the next one.

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