This issue features an amazing Supergirl cover, but Supergirl herself only appears briefly inside. However her initial appearance in Final Crisis gives Kara fans something juicy to contemplate: her apartment is littered with design sketches of what appears to be a new costume. Hurrah! After two years of wincing, can the belly top ‘n’ low-low riding skirt be disappearing? I don’t mind the top so much anymore, now that many artists have lowered its waistline and altered it to be a nifty V, but that skirt that sits barely above her pubic bone is just unbearable. Just move it closer to her waist, please! Every time I look at it I think how uncomfortable it would be, always riding up and needing to be tugged down again.
Looking at this panel we see that Kara has a wide range of artistic abilities: markers, a painting, cello guitar case, and a sewing machine (just purchased to whip up a new costume?) all appear. Of course we don’t know how good she is at music and sewing yet =) I assume the red skirt (on Kara, not in the sketch) is just a colouring error.
Supergirl Comic Box Commentary has a full review of this issue, which references numerous characters and events which only a reader who is deeply familiar with the DC universe would understand. I consider myself respectably knowledgeable, but I was quite lost at times! And is it too much to ask that we get an in-book translation of critical lines that appear in German?!
This one panel contains more characterization than the average issue of Supergirl I’d read. Yes, I get that she’s sad and lonely and lost, and I sympathize, but even the better, recent writers have left her too much on a one-note character. I’d like an artistic Supergirl. It would be cool.
I like her being artistic :D It’d be nice if in her book she had as much characterization as in that one panel :\
And I rly do like that outfit design she has up on her painting :D
One thing tho, did she change her skirt to be red alrdy or is that a colouring error? :O
Oh, I didn’t notice you alrdy said that you think it’s a colouring error. :O I guess the colourist took his cues subconsciously from the drawing there, or was told “in this panel make Supergirl’s skirt red” or something and applied it broadly XD
I agree with much of what has been said here.
1) I think the red skirt is a coloring mistake
2) There is more unsaid characterization in that panel than in all of Kelly’s run
I also think it is funny that a Streaky cat is becoming so prevalent. We see him here, in Tiny Titans, as part of the deluxe action figure, and supposedly in the Cosmic Adventures Johnny DC title coming out.
I liked Kelley’s characterization of Kara, but then I read 8 issues in a sitting. I can’t imagine trying to read one issue a month – talk about decompression O_o I suspect I was ‘reading in’ more than was actually on the page.
You mean Kelley as in Kelley Puckett not Joe Kelly right? :O
Yes. I thought “Kelly” was a typo and was confused by the comment!
I think the german is meant to say something like ‘I am supergirl, the sky is bleeding’ However we know from the past nazi supergirl is called overgirl (or undergirl something like that). The first time we saw her was in Nix Uotan’s drawings which leads me to think these could be more than designs. Is Kara channelling other selves? Nix drew Nazi superman but he hasn’t appeared so why supergirl? Right now I’m holding hope for the return of old Earth one Kara to bring the crisis full circle. Kara I died for the multiverse, now Barry is mysteriously back could the Nazi Supergirl be a portent? We’ve seen Kara I as a spirit a few times. She’s on the cover for a reason, maybe she plays a vital role overall? Maybe this is tied to legion of three worlds where Perez will draw ‘every legionnaire ever’, I think the person in the lightning rod is Bart but could that be to throw us off and its actually Barry or/and Kara. Brainiac 5 seemed pretty interested in it and it had never left his possession. So many possibilities we’ll have to wait and see
I’ve been a fan of Kara since I was a child in the early 1980′s and I don’t see what the big deal is with her costume. So, it’s low, so it’s high, whatever. Wonder Woman wears less and no one says anything. She’s invulnerable, so I doubt her clothes are going to be uncomfortable, and she comes from an enlightened society unlike ours where showing skin isn’t a big deal. If a girl her physical age came from some indigenous culture where all she wore was some gold jewelery or a grass skirt or something to America instead of Krypton, I don’t think people would cry out so much. It can be argued as being “sexy”, but I’d like to think people thought my favorite hero was as sexy as Wonder Woman or Black Widow or Catwoman or She-Hulk than Quaker-esque anyway. Besides, Kara has shown … Supergirl has shown, in all her incarnations, it’s not how much one wears or how less one wears, it’s that she’s a hero, and a young woman who carves her own path and doesn’t care what anybody else thinks. A feminist cowork of mine stated, and I was almost shocked to hear it from her because of some of the things she can come out with, but she said that if you’re invulnverable to pretty much anything, and can look good too, then why not wear some more revealing outfits. And, “super women can do anything super men can but also do it just as well on heels.” Finally, I’d like to add that there are younger girls out there who wear what I may think of as “Slutty” and this certainly isn’t.
@Amy: please brush up on some Feminism 101, in particular What is the male gaze?, What is sexual objectification? and What is “internalized sexism� Your sexist and racist defenses of misogyny are embarrassing to read.