SUPERGIRL #18

Little Miss Perfect

August 2007

Written by Joe Kelly

Pencils by Adam Archer and Alé Garza

Inks by Sandra Hope

Cover by Alé Garza and Richard Friend

Synopsis

The world has become overrun by Phantoms that have escaped from the Phantom Zone.  To save Earth, Supergirl must kill her cousin, Superman.  Supergirl wants to find another way.  Then a second Supergirl appears and tells the first that she is not the real Supergirl.  The second Supergirl explains that the first is an abomination and is the real reason the world is being overrun by phantoms.  She then attempts to get the first Supergirl to step aside so that the second Supergirl can make things right.  The first Supergirl agrees and it seems as if the second Supergirl won, but then the first Supergirl asserts that the real Supergirl would never give up.  Suddenly, Dark Angel appears and tells Supergirl that she is a cancer to the universe.  Dark Angel tries to eliminate Supergirl, but one of the Monitors appears and apologizes for Dark Angel.  The Monitor firmly believes that Kara is the real Supergirl and belongs in the universe.  The Monitor leaves and Supergirl is in space, in the middle of nowhere.  She is not alone. 

Review by Binkley (e-mail)

My first reaction when I finished this comic, besides the fact that I did not like it, was that it was a waste of space.  It had no purpose, other than to just exist as a tangential story to the overriding story taking place in Countdown.  Beyond that it did nothing, except to put Kara back to where she was at the end of issue #10.  This issue clearly erases the past several issues (beginning with issue #11 where we get Kara’s father’s story about the phantoms) as being nothing more than a test by Dark Angel.  None of it was real, which is a sneaky way of saying that (possibly) Kara’s “dreams” of killing Kal were not real, thus allowing DC to reboot her character without having to reboot her character, if you get my drift.  She was being manipulated.  And so are we, which irritates me.  As a reader, I have invested a lot of time in reading these stories and I don’t like to be told, well, all of that, it wasn’t really real. 

But then it dawned on me.  This entire issue is a meta-textual comment on the current state of Supergirl.  Everything the second Supergirl tells Kara are exactly the same comments and criticisms that have leveled at this book since DC began to publish it.  In a way, Kelly is commenting on what the fanboys want to see with Supergirl.  Kelly obviously doesn’t like the silver age Supergirl and presents here (with fake smile and everything) has very simple and two-dimensional.  This issue is Kelly’s way of telling the readers why Kara has so much angst. 

This comic just reinforces the Siegel lawsuit (in which Siegel owns the copyright to Superboy) that prohibits DC from using the name or character of Superboy:  on the statue, you can’t even see the logo on Conner’s shirt.  In two different panels, nonetheless. 

Comic Connection

In the Return of Donna Troy, it was revealed that Dark Angel was originally the Donna Troy from Earth-7 saved from death during the first crisis by one of the anti-monitors.  Donna defeated the Dark Angel and then became the sum of all Donna Troys and the link to the multiverse.

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