Power Girl is the Kryptonian Kara Zor-L of Earth-2, a parallel universe that was once home to the Golden Age DC superheroes and their children. She has short blond hair and an outgoing, no-nonsense personality that suits her membership in the Justice Society of America. Her Kryptonian name is Kara and she is the daughter of Allura and Jor-L (not Jor-El). She escaped Krypton as a baby at the same as Superman but her ship took a much longer time to reach Earth. Power Girl was about 20 when she arrived and she soon adopted a costume and superhero identity all her own.
Power Girl’s first appearance was in All-Star Comics #58 (Jan-Feb 1976), an issue which revived the Justice Society of America on Earth-2. Earth-2 was the alternate reality in which DC’s Golden Age heroes were deemed to exist after the company reinvented many of its characters in the 1950s. Earth-1 was the mainstream universe with all the modern day heroes. Power Girl’s world was destroyed in the Crisis on Infinite Earths (1985-1986) and all its inhabitants, including her cousin Superman, were erased from history. Power Girl survived and exists in present day comics due to the quirky nature of the DC Universe.
Power Girl is one of the top fighters in the JSA, a rough and tumble brawler who embodies the Golden Age spirit. Notable for her gung-ho attitude, she likes to kick ass and takes no guff from anyone. She works equally well with both the older heroes of the JSA and younger heroes close to her own age: she has been a member of the JSA (starring in All-Star Comics #58-74 from 1976-1978), the junior super-team Infinity Inc. (from 1984-85), and the Justice League Europe/Justice League International (1989-1994). She rejoined the second JSA in 2002, three years after it was reformed, and became chair of the group in 2007.
Origin
When Power Girl first appeared in All-Star Comics #58, literally from the sky, she said only that her cousin was Superman and that she’d been training with him. Readers would be kept in the dark about Power Girl’s origin story for a couple of years until Showcase #97-98 (February-March 1978). This story revealed learned that Power Girl was another survivor of Krypton. In this universe, unbeknownst to Superman, both Kal-L and his cousin Kara had been rocketed to Earth-2 just as their home planet was being destroyed. However Kara’s ship ship took a longer route that led it to arrive many years after Superman had begun his adventures, and her baby cousin Kal-L was a middle aged man when she arrived. Power Girl’s specially built Symbioship had kept her in a suspended animation that slowed her growth, while the experience simulator provided her with a virtual reality life and full Kryptonian education.
For her first two years on Earth, Power Girl did not have a secret identity or base of operations. She would make an appearance whenever she was needed and then fly off again, avoiding answering the inquiries of nosy reporters and others who were curious as to her story. In Showcase #99 she took on the secret identity of Karen Starr, and landed a position as a software expert for a large computer corporation, thanks to the training of Wonder Woman’s “memory teacher” and her own keen Kryptonian intellect. Later she started her own software firm called StarrWare, Inc. which she eventually sold for a small fortune. Her civilian identity is now public knowledge and she oversees the Starr Foundation for orphaned children, which she founded in JSA #38.
Origin Confusion
Power Girl’s origin was changed by DC after Crisis so that she would no longer be Kryptonian or related in any way to Superman. Her origin story was retold in Secret Origins (Vol. 2) #11 (February 1987). Power Girl tells the reader in a flashback how she arrived with amnesia and fuzzy memories of growing up on an alien world that was now gone. Her ship was programmed with the command to “seek out family” and it honed in on the one Kryptonian on Earth: Superman. Due to their identical powers, Power Girl and Superman assumed they were related. (This origin story doesn’t hold up well to scrutiny due to the fact that the writer was trying to create a brand new origin for a character with an established history, family connections and powers.) However, in this timeline, DNA tests had revealed Power Girl and Superman to be of different species. This blow to her self-identity had wrought a fundamental change in the strong, self-assured hero readers had known and loved. The Power Girl of the Post-Crisis universe was insecure in her place in the world and plagued with self-doubt.
Secret Origins #11 continues as the Symbioship which brought Kara to Earth suddenly starts glowing, and the spirit of a long dead Atlantean magician named Arion begins speaking to her. (Arion was a character from DC’s fantasy comics of the 1970′s). He tells Power Girl that she is his grand-daughter, born many thousands of years ago and given magical powers as a toddler. Arion had sent her forward thru time in her Symbioship (which suddenly reveals itself to be a magical time travel device) to escape the clutches of his evil wizard brother. Power Girl and the spirit of Arion hug, and then the magician disappears, his sole purpose of telling us the new origin for Power Girl having been completed. The story feels unconvincing and too fantastic to be true, so it is surprising that DC kept it for twenty years.
This new origin could have been used to strengthen Power Girl, but she was never actually given any new magical powers to go along with it. Just the opposite: on Justice League Europe, written by Keith Giffen, Power Girl was vastly depowered so that she was no longer a threat to Superman’s special status. Giffen tended to portray her as a clichéd “man-hating feminist”, and he began a tradition, continued by Gerard Jones in Justice League International and Justice League America, of making sexist jokes at her expense. The Justice League years (1989-1996) saw Power Girl systematically stripped of her Kryptonian powers, her personality radically altered, and generally treated in a misogynistic manner – culminating in Jones’ much reviled mystical pregnancy storyline. The Justice League books were cancelled soon after, and for the first time in seven years Power Girl lacked a regular series. She drifted from book to book for a number of years, her powers fluctuating depending on the creative team. Her fans were eager to see Power Girl restored to her former glory, but how?
Origin Restored: Infinite Crisis (2005)
Power Girl joined the reformed JSA in JSA #31 (2002) and hints began to be dropped that her Atlantean origin might not be true: in JSA #32 tests revealed that her powers were not magical in origin. In JSA #52 Arion’s spirit appeared and told her that he was not her grandfather, but she would soon learn the truth from her mother. Power Girl’s real origin would soon be revealed as part of a new editorial direction which brought about a revival of many DC characters’ Pre-Crisis origins. This culminated in Infinite Crisis, the special seven-issue event that revisited the multiverse and saw the return of the Earth-2 Superman and Lois Lane Kent.
Since Power Girls’s altered origin was based on dubious sources and never truly settled, it wasn’t too difficult for DC to reinstate her backstory starting in JSA Classified #1-4 and concluding in Infinite Crisis #2. In JSA Classified Power Girl’s powers are fluctuating wildly and Dr. Mid-Nite confirms that they are not actually magic based. She experiences a series of hallucinations, created by the Psycho-Pirate, which present her with multiple possible origins. Finally Psycho-Pirate tells Power Girl that she is, like him, a refugee of Earth-2. In some way she is tethered to this world and survived, but why? Power Girl feels deep down that this story is, finally, the truth: she is a survivor from the multiverse. The daughter of Kryptonians, she was the cousin of her world’s Superman and a close friend of the Earth-2 Huntress.
In Infinite Crisis #2 Power Girl is reunited with the aged Superman and Lois Lane Kent of Earth-2. It is upon touching Lois that Power Girl regains her memories and understands finally who she is. Sadly this reunion is temporary; Superman and Lois both die during the course of Infinite Crisis. Power Girl truly is the sole survivor of her universe. A bittersweet conclusion to a long and convoluted journey of self-discovery, as Earth-2′s Kara has rediscovered her place in the world only to the lose the family she never knew she had.
Leader of the JSA and Solo Series: 2007 and Beyond
JSA was relaunched as Justice Society of America in December 2006, and in issue #4, Power Girl became the JSA chair. In she also gained her first solo title. See Power Girl Comics for PG’s continuing adventures in the DCU.