There is one more thing in the Kara vs Linda/Matrix/anyone else as Supergirl debate I'd like to touch on.

On the CBR board, I got into a discussion with someone who was complaining about the Batman family having more books than the Superman family, and how the Superman family also has very few characters compared to the Batman family. At the same time there was another discussion going on about 'how many Kryptonians' people wanted. with the 'last son' idea being ridiculed by he majority as too limiting. But I don't see it that way at all.

In the post-crisis DCU there was no room for Kara not because Matrix had the role, but because of an editorial edict that would eventually be reversed. Likewise, after Kara was brought back in 2004, it was an edict that kept Linda/Matrix in limbo rater than something inherent in Kara. Even Cir-El's replacement of Linda in 2003 was because of an editorial edict instead of being because the two couldn't coexist. The multiple Supergirls can coexist so easily that DC would have evolved the PAD series into one that revolved around that very concept if not for the Cir El experiment.

This is because with legacy/sidekick characters the roles are supposed to be grown out of eventually. Eventually Dick grows up and someone else becomes Robin. Eventually Barbara gets too old to keep calling herself 'Batgirl.' Then Cass or Steph takes up the mantle until they outgrow it as well. In theory Supergirl should work the same way. Eventually the person with the mantle should 'graduate' to Superwoman or another name and then there'd be an opening for someone else to use the title. Cir-El in particular probably would have gone over better with fans if they never called her Supergirl in the first place.

Kara is an exception, however, for two reasons, both of which apply specifically to when she is the 'first' Supergirl of a given continuity. One is that she is not going to outgrow the Supergirl name, probably ever. Before or after the reboot, the only foreseeable way for Kara to give the title to someone else is to either have her quit being a superhero altogether or die, because Kara is never going to grow beyond the role of Superman's younger cousin.

Being Superman's cousin presents its own strengths and weaknesses. Being a blood relative makes it easy to establish a relationship between her and Superman at any point, which is why she can afford to be introduced after other Supergirls. No matter how many 'step-siblings' Superman has, there is always room for 'real' cousins. On the other hand, if Kara is introduced first, like in the Nu52, that makes it harder for other characters to establish a family relationship with Superman, because everyone involved, Superman, the other superhero(es) being introduced, and the writer, will have a much harder time establishing that sort of relationship. It's like having Damien be the first Robin and then trying to establish a father/son relationship between Bruce and Dick or Jason or Tim. You're just fulfilling a need that's already been filled.

This means that when Kara is introduced, especially if she is introduced before any other character, it becomes much harder to expand the female side of the Superman family. Even on the male side, storywise it works better to have male characters who aren't human like Steel put on the shield before other Kryptonians show up.

What options does that leave a character like Matrix/Linda in the Nu52? From 2005-2011, they could have brought Linda back at any time, given a small explanation of where she'd been, and there'd have been no problems with Kara giving up the name because Linda would have just gone by Superwoman or another name with her history intact. Now, in order to stay in the Superman family, there are only two options. One is to retcon her into having a history with Superman from before Kara arrived, which is feasible but cuts into Kara's brand and perhaps goes against the 'reboot' grain too much. Just keeping the stepsister angle would require her to be raised by the Kents during Clark's teenage years because in this continuity they're dead.

The other scenario where she could stay in the Superman family is to make her Superman's romantic interest, which given her history isn't as ridiculous as it sounds at first, but would almost definitely not go over well. That way she can be introduced as a fresh character without either being even more green than Kara or taking away from Kara's status.

The only other way to have her come back at this point would be to separate her from the Superman family altogether. This is probably the best option, especially without the Kents around. Losing the relationships with Clark and Ma/Pa, plus her big sister relationship with Kon-El, would be hard, but they're already gone and between no Kents and Kara, too difficult to reestablish.

I'm actually doing just that. In the DC New Dawn fanfiction universe I'm starting a series about Linda Danvers. I was given an editorial mandate not to call the character 'super'-anything so as not to dilute the 'female super-character' brand, but even if I hadn't been given that mandate, I wouldn't have done so. I decided to not associate with the Superman line at all and put the character in the universe's supernatural line. With the strong supporting cast and unique power set I think she'd work just fine on her own.

That is creatively. How much could such a books sell in the current market when even books associated with the Superman line don't sell well and get cancelled? Probably not well. Saleswise I think the best option would be to use option 1, retconning her into having a history before Kara, to revive the 'Supergirls' concept. With Kara's titles repeatedly failing a new direction is needed for the Supergirl brand, and multiple protagonists may be the way to go.

So going back to the original issue, the relatively small size of the Superman family and line, I think that Kara's presence is one of the factors limiting the size of both. It may be counterintuitive, but it seems to me that including more Kryptonians actually reduces the size of the Superman family. In the late 90s there were 3 Superman spin-off ongoings, Steel, Superboy, and Supergirl. None of them had a Kryptonian, and all 3 were relatively successful. And in theory they could have had 2 more with Strange Visitor and the Eradicator, who was a human in a Kryptonian body. With the introduction of more Kryptonians in the mid-2000s, that was gone. In 2009, the only spin-off was Supergirl, and now there are no spin-offs at all. There were other issues at play, to be sure, such as Didio's unilaterally declaring Matrix erased from canon and the needless darkening of Kon-El's story. But why has there been so little effort put into creating new characters since then when before it seemed that DC had hit new character after hit new character? Why did Batman get to keep all of his male Robins, get back his female sidekicks, and an entirely new sidekick in Harper Row when Superman was reduced to just Kara and sometimes Superboy? Batman has the benefit of his side-characters not working the exclusion of each other except for maybe Damian. But with Kara, it is harder to then make new non-Kryptonian characters, and there's only so many Kryptonian sidekicks even the biggest fans of the silver age will accept. 'Team Superman' as it existed in the 90s is dead and going to stay dead.

Oddly enough though, Cir-El could still coexist with Kara even under these circumstances. Forgetting the reveal at the end of her story, Superman's daughter from the future also has the benefit of being a blood relative, and in theory can work at pretty much any point in his timeline. Which I suppose works if you want to take the term 'Superman family' literally.

Well, I disagree with a lot of this. I'm putting SoD's quotes in italics, because I can't work the quote system on these freaking boards.



What do I think of Matrix/Linda vs Kara Zor-E
There's really no contest. I prefer Superman's stepsister to his cousin by a huge margin.

Oddly, I really have no really strong opinion here.   But I have a couple hundred words of commentary anyway! 

To me Kara is a product of the Silver Age that, like Kandor, Krypto and the other pets, and bat-shark repellent, should have stayed there.

I certainly agree that the writers of such deathless classics as Extreme Justice, X-Force and Team Youngblood would probably be laughed out of Julie Schwartz or Robert Kanigher's office, and probably more forcefully expelled from Weissinger's. The Silver Age Superman required a delicate balance of writing talents... superheroes were treated as goofy kid-stuff, but their emotional problems (exclusion, loneliness, unrequited love) had to be treated with utmost seriousness.

I honestly don't see many writers in the extremely shallow '90s superhero pool that could pull that off... Although Peter David would be at the top of the list! He's always been good mixing goofy comedy with a solid emotional core.  

Luckily, some of the higher tier writers (Moore, Morrison, Kurt Busiek) have given us some great Krypto stories over the last couple decades.

(And lesser writers some... not so great Krypto stories. I love Krypto, but he's hard to write.)

The problems I have are numerous. The first is Krypton itself. When a race of people can become godlike just by going to another planet, and then gets wiped out because they refuse to do so, there has to be a serious problem with their society that causes them to commit this collective suicide.

Yep. Krypton-as-parable-about-unchecked-hubris has been true across every version.

Say what you will about Byrne's reboot, but his version of Krypton makes the most sense by far, is also the most alien version, and was nicely expanded upon by later writers with the Eradicator concept. In order to bring Kara back in the first place they had to retcon Byrne's Krypton out of existence in favor of the sillier Silver Age version first, thereby making many it impossible for many good stories from the triangle era to have happened. Superman being the only survivor is relatively easy to make work. The more Kryptonian survivors that are added the harder it is to explain Krypton in a non-silver age context.


Why? Honestly I'm not completely up on the minutea of early '90s Superman - although I agree that Byrne's Krypton was much stronger visually than the Silver Age version, and I personally liked it better.

But why couldn't they have just said "Hey, here's another survivor from John Byrne's Krypton!

Side Note: And it's worth noting that the '00s retcon certainly wasn't a return to the Silver Age Krypton - it might be slightly closer to the Silver Age version than Byrne's but it was a militaristic, classist society that really didn't bare much relation to any previous interpretations.


This wouldn't matter if it was the only problem I had with Kara as a concept. Silly origins can be worked around or ignored as need be.

As the Peter David version proves.

However, there is yet another issue with having a second Kryptonian hero-the powers. Superman's godlike powers already make it more difficult to tell compelling stories about him. But when he's unique it is again easier to work around. He is the alpha and the omega.

That's never been true. Just Superman's vulnerability's are more emotional than physical, and his stories (at best) deal with moral/emotional stakes rather than the physical violence of, say, Batman.  Or Marvel.  

Adding another character with the exact same powers creates the exact same problems, only worse. Now there are two godlike beings for whom it is hard to write decent challenges.

If you're a terrible writer, sure. And since there have been plenty of terrible writers, Superman and Supergirl aren't like Batman and Robin. They have their own supporting casts and status quos, and don't really interact that much.


And the threats Kara is going to face are automatically going to be lesser in general than the threats Superman will face, because she is never going to be the 'greatest hero on earth' or one of the leaders of the JLA.


That hasn't really proven itself to be true, though. Superman has the Prankser, Terra Man, Toyman, Lois Lane's freaking eight year old niece. The Pre-Crisis Supergirl's villains were generally more powerful. Even the Luthor scientist types generally at least had Kryptonian tech on their sides.

Supergirl really didn't have much in the way of iconic villains, though.  I'm not incredibly well read on the '70s and '80s Supergirl, but I can't think of any enemies who had more than a handful of appearances.  And that really is a problem.  

And when she teams up with Superman to fight a greater threat than one of them can handle alone, what does she add? Heat vision? Strength? Flying around the world to make it go back in time? How interesting can a teamup between two godlike beings who have no differences in their powers be?

So have 'em go out for coffee. or have 'em fight a threat that can match their powers.*   Here's the thing -  in current comic writing, personality's matter more than powers.  The powers are window dressing for fight scenes and can change the stakes of conflict a little bit,  but they're not important to the characterization or story beats.  In the orignal Justice League stories Superman and John J'onzz were basically identical, power-wise, (and there was a lot of overlap with the rest of the team) but that didn't make the concept a creative or financial failure.

Or take Marvel's the Champions.  The Black Widow, Hercules (?), Iceman, the Angel (??), and the Ghost Rider (??!?)  Were completely different in powers, but didn't have anything to say to each other.  So the book tanked.  

(Although the New X-men, launched about the same time, didn't have much power overlap and they did okay for themselves!)   

*  Speaking as the World's Leading Expert on Team-Up books, I proclaim the above to be the fourth greatest issue of DC Comics Presents, and the Jim Starlin run to be, overall, the best the series has ever been. Team-ups between the two can, and have, worked just fine. They're just not very common, mostly due to the reasons you cited.  

(Their other team-up in DCCP fell on the good side of mediocre, however.  They're not all A + winners.)  

She is not unique, and by making Superman less unique she makes him less interesting.

Not to the comic buying audience, though. The original Captain Marvel was the most widely superhero perodical of all time, and he had Captain Marvel Jr., Mary Marvel, and Hoppy the freaking Marvel Bunny also on the stands while he was selling a million and a half copies a month. The She-Hulk, Toro, Impulse, Aqualad, Speedy (twice), the Blue Boys, Kid Devil, the entire cast of Mark Waid's Flash run and Namora all disagree with you.

Anyone who doesn't like Bill Everett's Namora is a bad person.

Heck, Ms. Marvel ended up being more popular than the spearside* hero she was derived from. And stealing his name, poor guy.  Now I don't see that happening with Superman and Supergirl... but then again, Supes doesn't have a TV show coming up.  So maybe.  

* It's the opposite of distaff. Look it up.

This is why I feel no one seems to be able to figure out how to write her. When she was introduced Superman's reaction was to drop her at an orphanage and make her his 'secret weapon.' Either they were ridiculously misogynistic or they had no plan.

To set her up with her own supporting cast and a status quo that was highly different from Superman's - and a call-back to Captain Marvel, because everyone back then was trying to hit Captain Marvel level sales - doesn't sound like "no plan" to me. And, God, I can't believe I'm saying this about a Mort Weissinger comic, but I... actually.... don't see how this set-up was particulzrly misogynistic.  (Now there's a sentence I never thought I'd use!)  

Incredibly depressing and indicative of some pent-up anger against the world, sure, but no worse than poor Superboy, Jimmy, or Krypto got.  Poor, poor, poor Krypto.  

When she finally came out, her solos floundered because she was just Superman-lite and people were already getting that from Superboy. When they brought her back in 2004, they 'updated' her by making her whiny teenager #4765, then turned her happy-go-lucky for some reason, and by the reboot her series was selling sub-20k. I admittedly haven't been following the Nu52 version at all, but I have to wonder what went so wrong that her solo got itself cancelled right when the hype for the first Supergirl tv series was supposed to be starting. She had to be written out of Smallville. And her tv show is already reminding people of the SNL Black Widow skit before it officially starts, and the supporting cast, with the exception of her sister, is not Kara's but Clark's. Jimmy Olsen, Cat Grant, Lucy Lane, Sam Lane? It's Superman's world and Kara just lives in it.


Oddly, I don't particularly disagree with any of this. I don't think the problem was "Superman-lite" though, as that comic company's had trouble marketing female heroes.

I hear over and over how Kara is the 'real' Supergirl, the 'iconic' Supergirl, the Supegirl 'everyone knows.' But neither the sales nor the fandom seem to support that. The longest running Supergirl series only featured her in a couple of issues. Her own series start out selling well, but so did the PAD series and they relatively quickly deteriorate to the same sales the PAD series ended with or even lower. And if you check on places like Fanfiction.net, the Supergirl fandom is pretty much dead. Exactly one story has been updated since July, and 0 have been published since then.


No fictional characters are real!

I don't spend a lot of time on fan-fiction.net, so I'll take your word for it.

But you're absolutely right that the Peter David series was the longest running Supergirl title - and you can tack on another fifty-odd issues if you count Fallen Angel - and that the Kryptonian Supergirl has never been a particualrly strong seller. But see below...

In truth I'm not as against Kara as I'm making it seem. In a silver age context I can accept her and even occasionally enjoy her stories. In Elseworlds stories I have no problem with her at all. And I liked her guest appearances in the BQM Batgirl series. But none of that makes me want to read stories about her, either by herself or especially alongside Superman. I guess in theory someone like BQM could make her work, but in my opinion to date no one has.

I can't help but feel that the reason for Kara's place in DC since 2004 is not her own merit or popularity, but the same Silver Age nostalgia that I feel played a big part in ruining DC over the past decade.

I don't see it.  Stuff does gets reverted/recycled all the time in superhero comics, but  I don't see the current cycle of reversions reflecting the '55-70 era, particularly. Grant Morrisn's Action comics was (supposedly) based on updating the '40s version of the character. The Bat-Family of titles have nothing to do with their Silver Age versions, which were detective stories first and foremost. The Silver Age version of the Flash is the Flash again, as opposed to the Silver Age Flash's sidekick being the Flash so if you realllllllly stretch it I guess that might be a point?   Hal Jordan is Green Lantern again, which sucks. (He's never been one of my top 3,598 favorite Green Lanterns.) But his status quo is completely different than any Pre-Crisis version. The angsty teenage Supergirl - which, side note, I thought was awful  - doesn't have much to do with any of the Pre-Crisis versions, and her Krypton is not the Silver Age Krypton.

Speaking as someone who would LOVE to see a return to Silver Age values like a diversity of genres and greater variety of tone and story structure, I wish we'd have far more Silver Age nostalgia.

Here's the thing.   

It's not nostalgia.  It's money.  

Her comics don't matter. The original Supergirl was created to secure a trademark and to expand the demographic reach of the Superman family.  (The Peter David version, sadly, was created because he had a strong idea for a character and wanted to discuss some religious ideas which aren't generally touched on in mainstream comics.  Sadly, in corporate land, that's a strike against him.)  

And she was very successful at that. The fact that her comics haven't done so well is irrelevant. She's still a useful trademark that can sell lunchboxes, pajamas, and halloween costumes.

Merchandising brings in vastly more money than comic sales. And the financial side is much more important to DC Time Warner. "Superman's girl cousin" is an easy concept to grasp, and an easier concept to slap on a pair of underoos than.... cult member who is also an alternate reality clone? Or something? God, I read your review yesterday and I'm still not clear what this version of Supergirl's origin is.  

Now, I'd agree with you that this version of Supergirl was the most creatively successful. But she's not as good for merchandising, so she's not as useful from a corporate perspective. It's not nostalgia. It's money. (It's always money.)

I just wrote a full-sized review of issue 5, only to have the page not load and lose the whole thing. Since I don't have time to do it all again, here's an abridged version.



Supergirl in Chemical Imbalance

Supergirl visits her other parents' the Kents (Yay!) who notice that she's changed even though she doesn't tell them what happened. Leesburg hasn't gotten over the events of Final Night and is going through a heatwave. Chemo, a kaiju-sized walking slime monster, wakes up and starts causing destruction just by existing. Supergirl tries and fails to fight him, but he sense that she is different from regular people and telepathically asks if he is alive or can be alive. Panicking because Chemo absorbed her into his slime body and she has no air, plus the danger to the town, Supergirl says that he can't ever be alive even though she doesn't know if it is true or not. Despairing, Chemo self-destructs, turning into rainwater that relieves the heatwave.

The Kents are always a plus for me, and I like that even in a 'lighter' issue they still deal with the consequences of what happened before. Not covered in the brief summary, Supergirl is getting into Linda's old habits like skateboarding not because she has to do it to keep her cover, but because she feels like it. The first full-fledged A-

Make sure you click on "My Profile" "Profile" "Edit Settings" "Save Drafts." That will keep the stuff you're working on from


With the 'return to the silver age,' dc had a very funny way of going about it. The introduction to the Identity Crisis trade, which featured major characters being raped and murdered, and the JLA deliberately altering the memories not only of criminals but of fellow heroes, describes it as 'a love letter to the silver age.' For whatever reason, DC decided about 10 years ago to be 'the silver age, but grittier!' and ultimately that led to them having to reboot again.

Identity Crisis was a love letter to the late bronze age, at best. It was a direct sequel to the story in Justice League # 166 from 1979.  That's the late bronze age, not the Silver Age.  And it featured Deathstroke, a character created in 1982.  

I've heard the "DC is going back to the Silver Age!" thing before, and it seems like a combination of ignorance (like the Kandor thing), selective reading, and just plain 'ol pissy-assed fan outrage by people who enjoy being offended by stupid things.  

Scanning though the New 52 Titles:

Wonder Woman is a completely new take on the character.
Hawkman is still based on the Golden Age version, right?  I haven't been keeping up.  
Superman is a weird mix of everything from the last 50 years.  
Hawk and Dove are based on their '80s versions.
Flash actually does seem fairly close to his Silver Age incarnation.
Swamp Thing reverted back to his bronze age version, but still every story reflects what Alan Moore was doing in the '80s, with the Parliament of Trees as major players.  
Green Lantern is most rooted in the early '80s Green Lantern Corps stuff.  
Earth Two is a new take on Golden Age characters.  
Batgirl is closest to her early bronze age version.
The Teen Titans are closest in membership to the Peter David and Geoff Johns versions from the '90s and '00s.  
Superboy is... I'm not sure.  Not really his '90s version.  The Luthor clone stuff is from the mid '00s, right?  
Nightwing... has Nightwing ever been centered in Gotham before?  I'd count that as a new take on the character.  
Aquaman does seem a little bit Silver Agey.  
Superman in Action Comics was supposedly a call-back to his Golden Age roots.
Batman is... well, everything but Silver Age.  A little bit of '40s, a little bit of '70s, still quite a bit of Dark Knight Returns, and still a lot of '00s.
Suicide Squad is a grimmer, grittier, and stupider call-back to the '8os John Ostrander series.
Supergirl is closer to her Silver Age version than the '90s version, but still having her fly around without a secret identity leads to a very, very different take on the character than the Silver Age version. 
Green Arrow is closest to his Golden Age/early Silver Age version.  
Stormwatch is basically the late '90s Authority. 


"DC is going back to the Silver Age" might be convenient short-hand for fans who don't care about terminology and are mad that comics aren't catering to their personal chidhood nostalgia.  (Instead catering to someone else's childhood nostalgia!  How terrible!  What an awful, awful insult!)  

But the term Silver Age means something, - generally '55-70, give or take a year.  

(Although I only use it as an adjective, and I think the term is overly superhero-centric and, therefore, or limited use.  If I'm writing professionally about comics history I generally used specific decades "The 60s Superman" or "50s War Cotmics" rather than the ages.)  

Mainstream comics are based on a constant cycle of experimentation and reversion.  But it doesn't focus on the Silver Age per se, and I don't see it being based on the creator's nostalgia as much as bean counters cynically trying to manipulate adult fans nostalgia.

(This can totally work on me, though.  I am all in for the Sugar and Spike relaunch.)  

So I assume the Matrix version will be back at some point -  Simply because the Superman books were incredibly popular when she was a major player, and DC will figure that plenty of people will have fond memories of that time period.  Letting a property lie fallow for a bit and then bringing it back can (Often!) result in huge returns over a long time (ala Green Lantern) or at least huge short-term sales (Like the Superman's cousin version of Supergirl, which was a huge hit in the mid '00s.... for a year or so.)  

Issue 6



Trust Fund

We open in the middle of a fight between Supergirl and Rampage. Throwing punches while flying is apparently disorienting for Supergirl, because she flies them into a river and passes out underwater. Rampage, looking a little worse for wear, so Supergirl must have put up a fight, climbs out of the water with no concern for Supergirl's well being and starts chasing a woman driving down the highway.

In Leesburg, Superman arrives and starts repairing some of the damage the fight had been causing. Dick Malvern, who was introduced the previous issue, is impressed but soon convulses in pain from an unknown condition while Buzz watches him.

We cut to the past in the Danvers' home. Linda is helping with the dishes, but she and her mother are arguing over Sylvia's desire to set her up on a blind date. Fred starts complaining that Linda is going back to her old confrontational ways after being the 'perfect daughter' since being saved by Supergirl, and it devolves into a shouting contest with Linda storming out before she accidentally blurts out her secret.

Elsewhere, Kitty Faulkner, a minor character from STAR LABS, is going over business with her colleague Christine Bruckner. It quickly becomes apparent that the two women are romantically involved.

At the Daily Planet, Clark discovers that Kitty is under investigation for stealing funds from STAR and decides that Superman had better warn her.

Linda sulks in a park after the fight with her parents, and the boy from issue 4 comes over to her and starts talking about strangers and how even people in the same family can be strangers. Linda agrees and mentions how keeping secrets can do that before she realizes that she's talking to a stranger herself. Then the boy disappears and Dick Malvern shows up. They talk and bond a little before Dick starts complaining about his father and about how people can do horrible things with the best of intentions, giving killing in the name of god as an example.

Back at the plot, Kitty finds out about the investigation and quickly realizes that it was Chris who stole the money and used her private information to frame her. Unfortunately for Chris, Kitty has a super-powered alias, Rampage.

We finally return to where we were at the beginning with Supergirl waking up and flying out of the river before she drowns.

Superman catches up with Rampage and tries to reason with her, but she hits him so hard he lands back in town.

Rampage catches up to Chris' car and forces her to jump out of it before Supergirl arrives. However she does no better than Superman did. Rampage is about to smash Chris when Superman grabs her arms. After reasoning fails again Superman decides to just let Rampage at Chris, to everyone's shock. He reasons that since they can't protect her 24/7 Rampage will get her eventually and this is more merciful.

In the end Rampage can't go through with murder, which is what Superman prayed would happen.

Later, Kitty is still in trouble because of after it became clear that she wouldn't kill Chris any chance of a confession went out the window, but Supergirl decides to pull a Batman to force a confession and all's well that end's well.

Superman and Supergirl have a heart to heart. Both used questionable methods in ending this issue's conflict, her interrogation and his 'she's all yours' line, but Supergirl reveals that she saw Superman shield Chris at superspeed, confirming her faith in him. He is worried and asks why she chose to base herself in Leesburg, and she brushes him off.

Back at her apartment, Linda tells her mother that she trusts her and that she can set up the blind date, but also that she should wait because there might be another guy she likes.

Dick is taking pills to help with his condition when Buzz comes to offer help.

My thoughts: We come to a turning point with this issue, where the personal life of Linda Danvers becomes more interesting than the battles Supergirl fights in. The merger and the possibility that Supergirl may have stolen Linda's life add an intriguing layer of tension to the family squabbles.

While nothing about it was bad, and after Buzz and Luthor Supergirl can empathize with what Kitty was going through, even the 'trying to kill your ex-lover' part, that connection wasn't explored enough. It looks to me like this story largely served as an excuse to feature Superman with his classic powers once in the series before the electic powers thing started. It's good that they went 5 issues without him, but it's still nice to see the Superman/Supergirl friendship.

Overall, great side-stuff, and an ok main plot. B-

Identity Crisis is "a tribute to the Silver Age" only for people who either 1) don't know when the Silver Age was; or 2) don't know what a tribute is.

Or possibly both.

On the upside, I quite liked Blevins cartoony-yet-illustrative style. I need to read the non-Bill Sienkiewicz New Mutants some day. And there were some cool design choices, and quite a few effective "page turns"

On the downside...

Yeah, this is the one where Mary Marvel gets molested-in-passing by a cop.

Back when I first joined the CBR boards, there was a big to-do when Joe Rice threatened to push Peter David on the ground (or something) because of this issue. Peter David freaked out - note that several members of this community have had negative online interaction with Mr. David - there was a big back and forth...

I'm not saying you should threaten physical violence, but this story really does blow. I appreciate CoD restraint in only giving it a "C".

The major problems:

1) It is extremely hard not to trivialize sexual assualt when it's part of a story about women parading around in their 'jammies and shooting lasers out of their eyes. "Abuse of power by authority figures" is a fine topic, but some things are best approached at a distance with symbolism and metaphor rather than having a dude try to touch Mary Marvel in the swimsuit area. Superhero comics should work on a bigger canvas than the ABC Afterschool special.

2) Moreover, superhero books do not deal well with moral ambiguity. IF your going to tell this story, it's much better to end with the perp punched in the face and thrown in jail, rather than play it as "He said, she said" and end with no real ending.

3) If you're going to write a story about sexual assualt in comics (which is probably a mistake) in an ambiguous manner (hereby compounding the mistake) you should at least make it actually ambiguous, and not have a character with the wisdom of Athena - right? S I forget? Hera, Artemis, Z I forget?, Athena, Minvera - on one side plus make it clear that the cop did "bad touch" her AND GOT AWAY WITH IT in the last panel.

4) Mary Marvel is a terrible choice for this story - The Marvel's Universe have always been more comedically stylized than realistic - David is trying to tell stories with them that they are (to put in mildly) not designed for. in his defense of this issue Peter David calls her "so Silver Agey" which is, obviously, part of a conspiracy to drive me nuts since Mary Marvel made exactly 0 appearances between 1953 and 1973.

Conversely, I didn't have as much problem with how Mary was acting - Although I suspect I've just built up a tolerance to "superheros act stupid and fight" scenes... And I don't think I can defend it as good writing. But I think the root problem is that the story shouldn't have been told at all, so the characters had to be made damn near unrecognisable to make them fit.

But I liked the back-up story, too! I'm not too familiar with Jennifer Graves but she has a cool kind of Becky Cloonan-ish style. And I'm always tickled when corporate creators stick in plugs for indy comics. "Gray Bullets!" Heh! It was a nice, upbeat, character piece after the terrible, downbeat, should-not-have-been-editorially-approved-what-the-HELL-were-they-thinking main story.

Still, I'm glad I reread it. When I make my list of the the worst team-up books ever, this is a strong contender.