Supergirl’s origin has been adjusted, adapted, and reinterpreted a number of times since she first appeared in 1959, but many of the core concepts have remained the same, even up through “The New 52”, DC’s big relaunch in 2011. Readers were reintroduced to Kara Zor-El, a survivor of the planet Krypton, sent to Earth just like her cousin Superman, where she would quickly take up the costumed identity of Supergirl. The biggest difference in their origin stories is that, while Superman was only a baby when Krypton exploded, Kara was already a teenager, living a full life as part of Kryptonian society. She remembers it like it was yesterday…and from her perspective, it literally was yesterday, since Kara’s ship kept her in suspended animation until waking her up on Earth, decades after her baby cousin Kal-El had already landed. Even though it’s been a lifetime since the universe lost Krypton, from her perspective it was alive and thriving just a few hours ago, and she was there.
The reality of how much time had actually passed was incredibly difficult for Kara to come to terms with, especially after waking up on what is to her an alien world where she doesn’t know anyone or speak any of the local languages. When Superman finds her and tries to explain what happened, Kara lashes out, because why would she ever believe that this thirty-year-old guy is the same cousin Kal-El who she just babysat yesterday? And none of this is even taking into account the shock of waking up with extremely strong super powers that she doesn’t understand. Her father had a plan that could potentially save some of Krypton’s population, but he wouldn’t risk his own daughter’s life on the chance that he could be wrong, so Kara was put into stasis and sent towards Earth, but not to Earth. Her ship was programmed to orbit the Sun and just wait there. If everything went according to plan, he’d be along eventually to pick her up, and then they’d go back to what remains of their people, to rebuild Kryptonian society. But if the worst case senecio happened, and her father failed to save anyone else, then at least Kara’s body will have spent years soaking up enough solar energy that nothing would ever be able to hurt her again.
Kara and Clark both arrived in Earth’s solar system at roughly the same time, and both spent decades absorbing energy from the Sun. The big difference is that Clark was on Earth, protected by an atmosphere that filters out most of the solar radiation, while Kara was floating right next to the sun, absorbing everything. And while Clark had a lifetime to ease into his abilities, and learn how to control them as they grew and developed, Kara literally just woke up one day on a strange world with all of this power and had no idea what was even real anymore. As a result, she’ll occasionally lose control and overflow, solar energy bursting out of her in the form of a destructive shockwave. Supergirl is canonically more powerful than Superman, and at this stage that’s an incredibly dangerous thing, both for her and for everyone who gets too close…and it’s made even worse by the way the people of Earth reacted to her arrival.
Since the very moment she first stepped out of her space ship, Kara’s been hunted by every government agency and mad scientist in the world. Sometimes they catch her, and torcher her with experiments that ignore the fact that she’s a person. The very first Human being who showed her any kindness at all was immediately murdered for it. The first person who tried to be her friend turned out to be possessed by an ancient Scottish demon. The first man she fell in love with ended up being a genocidal maniac who was just manipulating her…and while I do feel sympathy for Kara in this situation, I can’t get over the fact that his name was literally HELL…I know, she doesn’t understand the language and couldn’t possibly get it, but still, his name might as well have been “Evil Villain”. Kara eventually had to stop H’El by stabbing him through the heart with a Kryptonite dagger that also gave her Kryptonite poisoning that was so severe, she had to spend two weeks hooked up to a space station orbiting the sun, mainlining solar energy directly into her cells, just to survive.
Life on Earth was proving to be a nightmare, and it only got worse when she was tasked with protecting the time stream by traveling to the past and making sure that Krypton exploded like it was supposed to. Something had altered history and prevented Krypton’s destruction, resulting in chaos as the present day started caving in on itself to account for this change. And it occurs to Kara that she could just choose to do nothing and have her home back. But that would mean sacrificing the lives and futures of countless other worlds in exchange for one that had already ended, and she couldn’t do that. So she lost Krypton again, this time by choice.
And while it isn’t much, she does gain her own Fortress of Solitude, a Kryptonian Sanctuary grown from a crystal, programmed to respond to her every need. But this came around the same time Supergirl met Powergirl, who is literally an older and more successful version of herself from a different universe. When Supergirl looks at Powergril, all she can see is a better version of Kara Zor-El, one who doesn’t have all the flaws and inferiorities that she’s been struggling with since the New 52 began. And those feelings get even worse when Sanctuary makes the decision to reject Supergirl as an imposter, having decided that Powergirl is the real Kara Zor-El.
It’s around this time that Kara meets an alien hive mind that can physically manifest your memories, and she’s promptly attacked by the physical embodiment of every bad feeling and angry moment she’s experienced since arriving on Earth. Immediately after that, her body is used for raw material to fix a cyborg, leaving her as a disembodied ghost who’s merged with that same alien hive mind. This is when she starts screaming things like “I have the power of creation at my fingertips and I will not stop until I have forged you a world of misery!” and “Feel the wrath of what you have birthed!”. It’s worth mentioning that the cyborg who did this to her was her own father, who survived Krypton’s explosion because he was turned into a cyborg by Brainiac, but the process erased his memories so he doesn’t realize he’s her father, and she also doesn’t know he’s her father, so him using her body as raw material to fix his is extra messed up.
…and if you’re wondering how Kara can balance all of this torturous grief with maintaining a normal life on Earth, the answer is that she doesn’t. The few times she tried to wear normal Earth cloths and blend in, she was attacked by people and monsters who could detect her unique energy signature. And whenever she risks her own life to save people, everyone gets scared of how powerful and destructive she is, ensuring that she remains a perpetual target. She’s on a totally alien world that she doesn’t understand anything about, and doesn’t even start to learn any local languages until issue eleven, and even then she’s limited to the English word “hello” and a couple familiar first names. I think it’s significant that Kara never prioritized learning to communicate with Humans…Earth has been openly hostile towards her, with very few exceptions, and since she didn’t grow up here she’s having trouble seeing the good in people. She does feel empathy for the general public at large, and doesn’t want to see innocent people harmed, but that’s pretty much as far as it goes. And who can blame her? The worst of Humanity found her first, and hasn’t left her alone. The fact that she couldn’t think of Earth as her new home made it even harder to process the loss of Krypton, and drove an ever-widening wedge between her and the Human population, so something like learning a language, acclimating to the world…why would she even want to do that? And it’s heartbreaking, because the slow process of getting better at English could represent Kara gradually feeling more and more at home here. But it never happens. And when she does learn the language fully, it’s only because H’El zapped the knowledge into her brain without asking…she didn’t even choose to make this connection to the world, it was forced on her, just like how being sent to Earth in the first place was someone else’s decision.
And you’d think that Superman would be a big help in this situation, since he’s the only family she has left, and is the one person in the world who could possibly understand her. But whenever they interact, all she gets from him are speeches about how Krypton is gone and she needs to move past it, and all the responsibilities she’s inherited by coming to Earth. Their ability to relate to each other is nearly non-existent…Superman was raised as an Earthling, by Earthlings, and his understanding of Krypton is academic at best. Kara even remarks on how, whenever he speaks the Kryprtonian language to her, it’s awkward because he clearly learned it from a book and never conversed with a native speaker. For Superman, Krypton is an idea, a memory he never had, his ties to it are intellectual but not emotional, and that’s why he can’t understand Kara or what she’s going through. Technically, they’re both survivors of Krypton, but out of the two of them, she’s the only one who ever truly lived there. In that sense, she feels entirely isolated, one connectionless person drifting through the world…and yet, at the same time, the world won’t leave her alone, never giving her a moment of peace.
Kara’s entire existence had come to be defined by an endless cycle of misery and pain, constantly haunted by the memory of her dead world, with everyone and everything reminding her that she shouldn’t be here, that she doesn’t belong anywhere. And that’s when it happened. That’s when a ring of the Red Lantern Corps found her, attracted by her overflowing rage, offering her an alternative to the life that’s been forced upon her.
When a Red Lantern ring lands on someone’s finger, it amplifies their anger into something overpowering that drowns out all coherent thought. Kara immediately went on a destructive rampage that began on Earth before extending into space, and it took nearly a dozen Green Lanterns working together just to restrain her. The threat posed by a rampaging Red Lantern Kryptonian is massive, so Hal and the Corps took Supergirl to the Red Lantern homeworld of Ysmault. By this point, Guy Gardener had already left the Green Lantern Corps to become a Red Lantern again, and Hal figured that Guy would know how to break through all of that rage and calm her down.
With the help of Guy and his team, they were able to force Supergirl into the blood lake, a magic pool with the ability to bring a Red Lantern to their senses. And when Kara emerged from the lake, once again in her right mind, she found something that’s eluded her since arriving on Earth. A close-knit group of people, united under the same banner by common goals and problems, looking out for each other and valuing each other…it was a place she could belong, a place where people understood her and wanted her around. Guy Gardner had some major concerns about letting her join, and it’s hard to blame him, because Supergirl was already as angry as she was powerful, and giving her a ring that makes her even angrier while giving her even more power…well, Guy was afraid that they couldn’t handle her, that she was a bomb just waiting to go off. But it’s not like they had another option, there was nobody else in the universe who could handle a teenager with so much power and such a short fuze. Guy was preparing for the worst, but it never came, because she wasn’t being hunted anymore, nobody was judging her, and her anger became a tool that could help people. Honestly, the biggest outburst she had was during the one time Guy tried to take Supergirl back to Earth so Superman could take care fo her. Meanwhile, when allowed to live on Ysmault with the rest of the Red Lanterns, Kara was thriving. She formed a strong friendship with Bleeze, and the two gave each other new perspective on what’s become of their lives, and what the future might hold for each of them.
This rag-tag found family had made a tremendous impact on Kara, making the barren hellscape of the planet Ysmault into a more welcoming environment than the Earth, but sadly it couldn’t last. Atrocitus, the former leader of the Red Lantern Corps, had been quietly building up his own faction of new Red Lanterns, and was preparing to go to war with Guy Gardner and his team. And once it became clear that they might not survive that fight, Guy chose to send Kara away. I know, intentionally losing your most powerful member right before getting into the fight of your life seems like a stupid thing to do, but when Guy looks at Kara he doesn’t see a Lantern or a weapon or a dangerous alien…he sees a teenage girl who deserves a better chance at life than what the Red Lanterns can give her, and there’s no way to guarantee that she could survive Atrocitus’ onslaught. Supergirl had only been a Red Lantern for a little while, she was still new, maybe there was a chance for her to have what the rest of them couldn’t: a future free of violence and rage. And the only way to chase that future was for them to part ways, before it’s too late. The best Guy could do for her was send her to the Green Lantern Corps, to John Stewart, in hopes that he could find a way to set her free from the red ring.
Though her time with the Red Lanterns was short, it taught her a lot about herself and her anger. As strange as it may seem, this was the most at peace Kara had been in the entire New 52, and it’s a shame it had to end so abruptly. But before Kara could reach the Green Lantern Corps, or return to Earth, or figure out something else to do with her life, she was confronted with a new enemy who’s philosophy cuts to the core of her very soul. A warlord who believes that true strength can only be forged in tragedy, that when a society crumbles only the strong survive, and those survivors go on to embody the true potential of their people. Again and again, he’s lead his army to decimate entire planets, confidant that anyone they couldn’t kill would rebuild and thrive without any of the weaker members of society holding them back. And he is fixated on Kara, because this warlord based all of his beliefs on the death of Krypton. He looks at Supergirl and Superman, two survivors out of an entire world, who have gone on to gain unfathomable power because of their planet’s destruction, and thinks that they embody this extremist version of survival of the fittest…that Krypton wasn’t a tragedy, but a crucible that turned Kara and Clark into the pinnacle of Kryptonian potential.
So there she was, Supergirl, last daughter of Krypton, powered by the yellow sun coursing through her cells and the Red Lantern ring pumping rage through her veins, rage that ultimately came from the loss of her world. There she stood, confronted with someone who believes with all his heart that the loss of her world was a good thing, the best possible thing, so much so that he’s actively been inflicting that same tragedy onto as many people as possible. And at any other point in the story, this is where Kara would’ve erupted like a supernova, pouring every ounce of her bottomless anger into annihilating this monster, winning the fight and saving countless worlds, but still carrying all of that weight, all of that anger, no matter what she does. But this isn’t the same Kara who aimlessly crisscrossed the globe, unable to speak the language, while being hunted by the worst of Humanity. This is a Kara who spent time living among the Red Lanterns, each of them an alien refugee consumed by rage, each with a story to tell and experience to share. By getting to know them, by seeing first hand the tragic way that a life defined by rage can end, it gave Kara the clarity and the strength she needed to confront this threat without losing herself to her own fury. Instead of lashing out in anger, she let go of it. She took off her Red Lantern ring, which is something that nobody should be able to survive, since the ring functionally replaces your heart. Taking that ring off would have been a death sentence for anyone else…but she isn’t anyone else. She’s Kara Zor-El, Supergirl, a Kryptonian, and the yellow sun of the Earth was right there in front of her. All this time, two things have been fueling Kara: the radiant light of the sun, and the smoldering rage inside of her. And for the first time since waking up on Earth, Kara made the difficult choice to push past her anger and embrace the warm light of the future her father had hoped she would find. Letting go of that much rage is hard, and releasing the ring almost killed her, but the power of the sun rejuvenated her, fixed everything the ring broke, and gave her yet another new lease on life. Like a phoenix, Supergirl is reborn from the fire of a star, and then uses that very star’s power to end the threat posed by the alien warlord. Not only was the same strength that he worshiped his ultimate undoing, but Kara was able to confront someone who somehow managed to make the tragedy of Krypton even worse, and overcame it all without giving in to anger. She’d come a long way, but the real question remains…what now?
Supergirl returns to Earth. She gets a job serving coffee. She’s not very good at it, and she still doesn’t really even like the Earth…but for the first time, she’s making an effort to fit in, and is beginning to make genuine connections with people. And if she can keep that up, it can make all the difference in the world.
Nothing can bring Krypton back, and that loss will never stop hurting, but as long as Kara is alive there will always be hope for a better tomorrow. Hope has always been a central component to the Superman mythos, and in the New 52 that’s been the hardest part of the legacy for Kara to inherit. She’s walked a journey of a thousand miles just to take these first few steps down a path that will see her become the best version of herself. The fact that she can know everything that she knows and feel everything that she feels, and yet in the end still choose hope…that’s ultimately what makes her Supergirl.
background music?
ReplyDelete