Superman Homepage

Mild Mannered Reviews - Supergirl Comics

Supergirl Annual #2

Scheduled to arrive in stores: October 27, 2010

Cover date: December 2010

"Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes"

Writer: Sterling Gates
Artists: Matt Camp & Marco Rudy

Reviewed by: Jeffrey Bridges

Click to enlarge

In Metropolis in the 30th century, a satellite falls to earth, but Supergirl and the Legion arrive to stop it. Kara notices something inside, and finds Brainiac 5 studying a statue that he bombarded with "chronon energy" which causes everything to explode, and Kara flashes back to how she arrived.

She was flying back from Bizarro world when her ship exploded and somehow she woke up in the 30th century and the Legion was there, but she knows this isn't the same Legion she met before. And also somehow knows they're the Legion from Clark's younger days.

Brainiac 5 wants to send her immediately home to avoid any time paradoxes (ha, too late) but Lightning Lad and Kara convince him to let her stay.

Back in the "present" in the future, Lightning Lad is angry with Brainiac 5, who claims it was all an accident. Kara sticks up for him, but the Science Police arrive and want her to leave.

After they leave, there seems to be some red-eyed evil presence entering people's bodies in the city.

Kara then decided to stay in the 30th century for a while because it seemed more innocent than her own time, and earned her Legion ring by performing different tasks for the Legion. Kara still felt lonely, however, and went to visit the Superman Museum.

A holographic tour guide in the form of Jimmy Olsen appears, and Kara asks him to tell her about Supergirl, and she finds out she died "stopping the worst threat the earth had ever known". Kara flies through the Supergirl Memorial Hall and learns exactly how she died, but we don't see what she sees.

She then gets an emergency call from Brainiac 5 saying that there's riots in the city, possibly due to some kind of mind control. Kara gets too close to Brainiac 5 and there's a (literal, and red) spark between them, and then a large woman in red with demon horns (Satan Girl, a goddess of love and death) appears and says the world now belongs to her.

Brainiac 5 utilizes a personal time-travel device so they have time to strategize, and they end up four days into the future where the city looks destroyed and Brainiac reveals the statue he was bombarding with "chronon energy" on the satellite was of Satan Girl and that is what called her to the city, for which Kara punches him.

Then the mind-controlled Legion arrives and attacks, and Brainiac is wounded by a psychic attack from Saturn Girl. Kara takes him back to his lab, and in trying to help him gets too close and this time there's a pink spark between them, and Kara picks up a psychic message implanted in Brainiac's mind from Saturn Girl, whose body is controlled by Satan Girl but whose mind is still hers.

The message says Satan Girl is a herald for her race and she's building a portal to bring them all over, which will doom the universe, and Kara and Brainiac 5 must work together to stop her.

Kara and Brainiac 5 then assault her citadel with an army of animatronic Jimmy Olsens from the Superman Museum. They find the portal, and as Brainiac 5 tries to close it Kara battles Satan Girl. But the mind-controlled Legion arrives, Brainiac's force-field goes down and Satan Girl stabs him through the chest.

Kara rushes to him and activates his device, which closes the portal and sends them back through time and all is well.

The Legion takes Kara home, and before they leave she gives Brainiac 5 a kiss.

Saturn Girl then mentions how they wiped Kara's memory of her own death, but Brainiac 5 silently vows to let her know so that she won't have to die alone like she did in the history books.

Story - 3: This is, at least, better than last year's annual in that it seems less like filler. The downside is that it took a double-sized issue to tell us that Kara will die someday, according to the Legion, and Brainiac 5 wants to help her avoid that.

But to get to that point we've got time-travel to the 30th century for no reason, it's just glossed over as a spaceship-explosion accident, "Satan Girl" mind-controlling the entire planet due to an experiment gone awry and then all of it being reset like it never happened.

Also glossed over is Kara's time with the Legion before Superboy Prime threw a fit and punched a wall. What makes no sense to me is that her time with the old-continuity Legion is mentioned and referred to, but then never mentioned again. Why mention it at all? Why not just say "oh right, Kal spent time with this Legion when he was growing up" and move on?

Instead we now have a Kara who remembers the Legion she initially met and served with, but then also knows Kal served with a different Legion as a kid? And she reconciles these by basically just pretending she never thought the things she just thought about the old Legion.

It's a big continuity mess (with Supergirl? Get outta town!) that would have been better off not even acknowledging her earlier time with that other Legion. I understand they want to acknowledge the past for continuity, I am ALL ABOUT continuity, but DC were the ones who went and changed the continuity and here it's not changed but it IS changed. It's a confusing mess as they try to have their cake and eat it too, and it just makes your head swim.

That being said I like the story here, but it was just three times longer than it needed to be. All of the pointless Satan Girl stuff could be cut right out, which is fine because it was really all pointless anyway. All it seemed to serve was someone's desire to see an army of Jimmy Olsen robots, but regardless that entire plot just felt forced and contrived as a way to bring Kara and Brainiac 5 closer together. You could have instead done it through character in a third of the pages and had it mean a lot more, and left the nonsense (and hopefully also the continuity mind-boggling) out.

Art - 4: It's always hard to call when there's multiple artists. That being said, the transitions go from cute and kind of cartoony to more realistic and then back again. And it's jarring, but not as much as it could be, so I suppose some kudos are in order for that. I especially enjoyed Matt Camp's work.

Cover Art - 3: This is just far too busy for my tastes, and I'm not a fan of the old-school Legion costumes as much as I could be. Looking at this cover actually gives me a bit of a headache, so I'm going to stop now.

Mild Mannered Reviews

2010

Note: Month dates are from the issue covers, not the actual date when the comic went on sale.

January 2010

February 2010

March 2010

April 2010

May 2010

June 2010

July 2010

August 2010

September 2010

October 2010

November 2010

December 2010

Back to the Mild Mannered Reviews contents page.

Check out the Comic Index Lists for the complete list of Superman-related comics published in 2010.

Mild Mannered Reviews - Supergirl Comics

Supergirl Annual #2

Mild Mannered Reviews

2010

Superman Shorts

New Superman Merchandise at DC Shop – Classic Covers, Smallville and Metropolis Collections

Superman Hot Wheels Cars and Trucks