Powergirl shouldn’t have been made a kryptonian again.

[Bored at 3:00AM]

But if one is suddenly of atlantean origin, and the other is what ever Matrix-Supergirl was or an angle, it becomes really confusing if you don't follow the Supergirl Comics and one of them suddenly pops up in a comic you read...

I mean they went eventually back to both of them being cousins of Superman and one being from different earth at some point in the 2000s, but reading comics from the era between COIE and that point is for casual readers really confusing.

Which is why they switched back to the old origins for Supergirl and Power Girl as soon as Mike Carlin was replaced with Dan Didio, who understand that their backstories were pointlessly convoluted.

There's nothing that can be done about it now though. Those old stories are stuck with those versions of the characters. Casual readers will no doubt be confused by them, but Google has helped solve the problem a bit.

[king81992]

Karen, when done right, is a very different character from Kara. That’s the most important part - getting the attitude right and making sure Karen Starr the businesswoman is a strong element of the civilian side of the story does 90% of the work of making the character work.

There *is*, admittedly, a bit of an actual redundancy issue if she’s a Superhirl from a parallel Earth that’s not radically different from the main-line one; I usually don’t think the “redundancy” complaint should be taken seriously, but if it’s a parallel universe character to a main-line one that has a notorious track record of having writers struggle with her... it becomes an issue then.

The Earth 2 version works well whenever her world is gone and she can’t go back... but she admittedly doesn’t seem like a character who is served by the angst of that either.

If I *had* to change up her story a bit, I have two ideas: Karen Starr is the last Earth 2 refugee, but came to our world at an extremely young age and thus considers “our” dimension her home, or she’ the earliest successful attempt to clone a Kryptonian (in this case Supergirl), in some ways acting as basically a big sister to Kon-El, but due to odd circumstances, wound up more mature than her progenitor.

In both cases, I’d have Karen be raised by STAR labs scientist for whatever her adolescence was, with the idea being that for once, the scientists keeping a child secret was a good thing, as she’s mature enough to resist with them when Waller/the DEO/etc. find out about her and try to use her as a weapon. So her public ID thing, successful businesswoman career, and outgoing attitude are all derived from having been shut up in a laboratory for years, but raised by good foster parents, leading to her being a well educated social butterfly not afraid to use some celebrity when given a chance for it.

And she’d take “Starr” as her last name in honor of Starr Labs.

Karen is always distinct from Kara. Her personality is more consistent. Kara is either really nice or extremely obnoxious, angsty, mean or bratty while Karen is usually depicted as a fun loving mature woman who's trying to find her place in the world.

[king81992]

Honestly I don't think they should have kept her around post crisis.

Her changed origin was just confusing and it is not like they did much with her.

Letting her die in Crisis and have Supergirl survive would imo have been a better choise. And would have made Supergirl much less confusing.

The only confusing Supergirl is Linda Danvers. Kara despite her constant personality shifts is a fairly simple character.

[king81992]

Didn't they just try that with Donna Troy?

I don't get why anyone thinks Supergirl makes Powergirl redundant. Similar origins or powers doesn't mean much. They're very different in terms of personality and experiences. Who knows what's even canon anymore, but Powergirl has more of a history with the JLI and those heroes than with the Superman family - she's barely been part of that family of heroes post-crisis anyway.

The less said about Donna Troy's conflicting origin stories(especially the more recent ones, the better).

[achilles]

It's interesting that Johns, when he did the deed, teased a bunch of different origins for her, including a time-lost Andromeda of the LOSH, a Daxamite. There was also I think the daughter of Zod and Ursa or Faora or someone. Krypton 2, as Superman's cousin Kara Zor-L was the one that won; I suspect because it tested by far the most popular among fans. Or perhaps because he tossed a dart at a wall...

[achilles]

The only confusing Supergirl is Linda Danvers. Kara despite her constant personality shifts is a fairly simple character.

Well, there's also the "is my father evil this week or not?" thing she's had going from time to time.

[Phoenixx9]

Karen is always distinct from Kara. Her personality is more consistent. Kara is either really nice or extremely obnoxious, angsty, mean or bratty while Karen is usually depicted as a fun loving mature woman who's trying to find her place in the world.

I can see these points. I think Karen has been more consistent because right from the start, she was shown as decisive, in control and knew what she wanted (other than to how best use her powers and needed to join a group). Even her name and costume shows Karen's strength-of-character and independence of not wanting to be a copy of her older cousin, Kal-L.

[Will Evans]

It's interesting that Johns, when he did the deed, teased a bunch of different origins for her, including a time-lost Andromeda of the LOSH, a Daxamite. There was also I think the daughter of Zod and Ursa or Faora or someone. Krypton 2, as Superman's cousin Kara Zor-L was the one that won; I suspect because it tested by far the most popular among fans. Or perhaps because he tossed a dart at a wall...

Nah. He knew he was going to tie her in to Kal-L and Earth 2 Lois returning in Infinity Crisis.

The fact that her villain during her origin teasing was Psycho Pirate, the only Earth 2 villain, that remembers Earth 2 is the smoking gun.

[king81992]

I can see these points. I think Karen has been more consistent because right from the start, she was shown as decisive, in control and knew what she wanted (other than to how best use her powers and needed to join a group). Even her name and costume shows Karen's strength-of-character and independence of not wanting to be a copy of her older cousin, Kal-L.

The only times Supergirl is depicted with a consistent personality is in the cartoons and TV show. Otherwise, she's all over the place.

[SiegePerilous02]

The only times Supergirl is depicted with a consistent personality is in the cartoons and TV show. Otherwise, she's all over the place.

Is that really all that different from other characters who have been around that long and gone through as many reboots?

[superduperman]

I think the question comes down to: How attached are we to her having a Superman connection? If the Superman thing isn't a deal breaker, you could give her whatever origin you want. Have her be from another planet that orbits a red sun. Whatever. But if she HAS to be connected to Superman, then the E-2 connection seems like the only real viable option or some Supergirl clone. She spent most of the eighties and nineties having no real connection to Superman and was mostly a JL character. Are we fine with that as fans? As it stands right now, she doesn't have that much of a connection to Superman other than her past. Even when she was part of the JSA, they didn't interact all that much except during team ups.

If the E-2 thing is a deal breaker then my suggestion would be to have E-2 take place in the past. Have them be a few decades behind the modern day so that you don't have a bunch of centurians flying around. And Karen gets stranded on E-1 somehow. Or chooses to stay to establish her own identity. There's all kinds of ways of doing this. DC just seems to have a thing about making things as unnecessarily complicated as possible. I'm kind of of the opinion they should have just gotten rid of her in COIE instead of working backwards to find some excuse to keep her around. Especially if all they were going to do with her was use her as filler material for the JL. But I'm also of the opinion that the only way to fix the current continuity is to go back to the pre-Crisis continuity and move forward so make of that what you will.

[Captain Craig]

In my mind she has no supplanted Hawkman with most convoluted we can't just stick to one origin/history for a character. Donna Troy a close second.
Hawkman seems much more resolved of late and as long as DC doesn't muck with it again and has some editorial fortitude the character will be fine going forward.

Personally I don't like Power Girl as Kryptonian, it has always seemed forced (like making Angela the 1/2 sister of Thor at Marvel, but I digress).

[Agent Z]

In my mind she has no supplanted Hawkman with most convoluted we can't just stick to one origin/history for a character. Donna Troy a close second.
Hawkman seems much more resolved of late and as long as DC doesn't muck with it again and has some editorial fortitude the character will be fine going forward.

Personally I don't like Power Girl as Kryptonian, it has always seemed forced (like making Angela the 1/2 sister of Thor at Marvel, but I digress).

Her backstory has only ever been changed once. It's far more consistent than Donna or Hawkman's.

[blackwarrior]

There are times when I think it will be better if they had taken the adoptive alien cousin from the sister planet route like the Kara In-Ze from Argo in DCAU or the Kara from Odiline in the Superman/Aliens storyline. Other times, I think they should have leaned into the Superman's cousin from a destroyed parallel world however I don't know if the OG Earth-2 works now that the retcons (Convergence, Earth 1985) imply that it may still exist somewhere in the multiverse. Given Kara's origin as Clark's older cousin who left Krypton as a teen, I wish the writers would have explored that angle a bit by having Karen be from an earth or timeline where her and Kal-El arrived on earth at the same time. It may not be as good as the OG but it could help explain her affinity to the JSA, why she's a Power and not a Super, and probably open up new stories for the two Karas.

[achilles]

The Earth 2 thing isn't even necessary IMO. If that bothers DC, make her an El in the main universe. Any El, from any time period up till Krypton's destruction. She can be an explorer or military officer from the past, stuck in some sort of stasis. Or make her from Earth Prime like Superman Prime if you still want her from another universe but don't really plan on using it for anything save to determine her power levels, make her the good cousin of the evil Prime. To be honest, there are so many possibilities with Power Girl that could work; it just needs DC to try one. That's PG's biggest upside; since she's had relatively few stories about her, she's still much more of a blank slate for a good writer to come around and make their version of her the definitive version.

Or...if you want to be bold, go with that daughter of Zod and whoever thing. Not sure I would, but it's there if someone wants to try.