Supergirl Origin Story Revisions

I’m working on a review of the issues in last month’s “Codename: Patriot”, but I got sidetracked into another project which I’ve been wanting to tackle for a while: chronicling the revisions to Supergirl’s origin story in the current series. This is the first stage in something that will eventually become a content page linked from Kara, the Modern Supergirl.

In the fall of 2008, DC published the 6-part story called “Brainiac” which revised portions of the story of Krypton’s destruction for the modern timeline. This revision brought the story more in line with the Silver Age canon, so much feels familiar while being told in a new way.

Supergirl’s origin story is shifted in one significant way in the Brainiac story. Originally we were told that Kara escaped Krypton at the point of its destruction, as shown in SUPERMAN/BATMAN #9 (April 2004) and SUPERGIRL #1 (Aug 2005):

But in ACTION COMICS #869 (Nov 2008) we learn she survived the destruction along with her parents, living in Argo City for a number of months before Brainiac showed up again. It’s in this second attack, on what was left of Krypton, that her parents launched her escape pod to Earth:

The change in timing is a direct retcon to SUPERGIRL #1, but I don’t mind because of everything it gives us: Kara’s parents surviving, Kandor and Argo, and the chilling Brainiac story. And the amazing stories that have come out of New Krypton since have been nothing but good for Kara. The story remains the same in its essence: like Superman, Supergirl escaped their doomed world at its (second) point of destruction, and thought her parents and everything she knew to be lost. She’s still sent after Kal-El, whom she expects to find as a baby she will need to take care of. Her story is still as tragic: she may have lived in the floating city of Argo like in the Silver Age, but it was only for a short period, whereas in the Silver Age Kara was born on Argo and knew nothing of the trauma of Krypton and Brainiac.

The changes to the story affect others in Kandor/Argo far more than they do Kara, because she was still in suspended animation for decades while life went on, painfully, for the survivors in Kandor and Argo.

The Brainiac/New Krypton storyline is a reworking of a similar development of Supergirl’s Silver Age history that was no doubt just as monumental at the time, but in hindsight seems like such an integral part of the canon that now we can’t imagine it being otherwise.

If Kara didn’t escape Krypton when the planet destroyed, but escaped from Argo an unknown number of months later, then what about the Kryptonite asteroid that trapped her ship? Was there enough left of Krypton’s crust under Argo when Brainiac attacked a second time and integrated the Argonian population into his bottled Kandor? This chunk of Krytonite is absolutely vital to Supergirl’s origin story:

1) It slowed her journey so that she arrived when did, years after Superman (and in the real world, years after his reboot in 1985).

2) It was used retroactively in SUPERGIRL #35 (Jan 2009), following the Brainiac storyline, to explain story inconsistencies in her series to that point: her proximity to the Kryptonite for those 30 or so years caused her to develop Kryptonite poisoning (How was this disease known if Kryptonite only turns “bad” once the planet explodes? DON’T ASK.) which causes such story-convenient symptoms as hallucinations, memory loss, and all around misperceptions of reality. In other words: anything doesn’t quite “fit” in the SUPERGIRL issues can be handwaved away internally as “kryptonite poisoning” rather than bad storytelling/poor continuity control. This explanation is a bit clunky, but unfortunately necessary, and I like how it’s a “soft retcon” that honors the previous issues and the reader’s experience of them. Everything that happened still happened, just not necessarily the way you (the reader/Kara) remember it (paraphrased from Sterling Gates).

In the depiction of Argo’s destruction in ACTION #869, Kara’s ship is once again shown escaping as Argo blows up behind her in a fiery red explosion. No glowing green planetary chunks are visible like they were in SUPERGIRL #1, but we see more clearly what happened in SUPERGIRL #35 (published about a year later). SUPERGIRL #35 is the definitive retelling of Supergirl’s origin story for this series, and it beautifully reconciles Supergirl’s oft-tweaked origin story with the way events are portrayed in the Brainiac version.

Supergirl’s origin story still works, almost exactly as we knew it before, but now it’s so much richer because we know more of Krypton survived. (Also, points for keeping the ship design consistent!)

I still need to fill in the blanks by discussing the smaller changes to Supergirl’s origin story that were inserted by the various writers between SUPERGIRL #1 and SUPERGIRL #35. There’s some nice bits like the stronger role Alura is shown playing in SUPERGIRL #24.

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Brainiac’s pivotal role in Krypton’s destruction is written into the story very nicely, but I’m still niggled by what it does to Jor-El’s theory about Krypton’s impending doom. So much hinges on Jor-El’s warnings and the Kryptonian science council’s refusal to accept them. The whole point of the Brainiac story is that Brainiac caused the destruction of Krypton by triggering the explosion of its sun after abducting Kandor. So was Jor-El wrong? Would Krypton never have exploded had Brainiac come along? Or did Brainiac show up to strip Krypton’s culture and knowledge precisely because he sensed the planet was on the brink of destruction? I think this is a really important plot point that was missed and should have been followed up on. I want to see some in-story confirmation that Brainiac prematurely triggered Krypton’s destruction, and have Jor-El’s predictions be validated.