Karen Starr Power Girl Appreciation 2021

[Stanlos]

Another question for you guys. Mind control. PG seems to be either completely vulnerable to mind control, or not at all. Max easily controls her, enough to get her to decimate the JLI, fortunately without any permanent consequences, while Saturn Queen....simply can't touch her mind and opts to try and execute her instead. All the while controlling Supergirl.

Which is it? Would that be a good power for PG; to be able to prevent mind control? Even if other Kryptonians can't? And isn't there a Kryptonian martial art that deals with mental combat, as well as one for physical combat? If she was an expert or master of those, it would give a good explanation as to why SQ couldn't do squat to PG mentally.

What say you guys, should she have this power, and how would you explain it and use in in story if you like the idea?

Because of the general sloppiness it is hard to say. But if this is Max Lord at point in time around or after Sacrifice then yes Max can control anyone not Sascha Bordieux and possibly Wonder Woman. It would seem likely that she would be susceptible as well after the Stupid that is Flashpoint and New 52. Previously she had the wisdom of Athena and the Eyes of Athena so no component of Max's control could take root. Now that she is this generic AF Xena in Wonder Drag with lesser versions of ....EVERYTHING there's no real reason she can't be

[iChepito]

Let's say that you were given the opportunity to write a Power Girl solo title...an on going, and given the charge to flesh out PG's Krypton and her role if any on it....and give her a mission distinct from SG or SM or any of the other Super Family. Let's also say that the only mandates are that she stays Kryptonian in some fashion. Nor would Krypton 2 as her home be a mandate, just....A Krypton.

What would you do? I'm assuming most, (like me), would prefer her personality would be intact, with a largely similar uniform----but this exercise is to do whatever you want.

What a great topic for discussion!

I don't have the best creative mind, but I would make her the daughter of General Zod before he had Lor-Zod with Ursa in Phantom Zone. She was born on Krypton with a different mother (Not Ursa) who died during destruction of Krypton. Same personality and uniform, but different backstory. I'm sure being General Zod's daughter would give her tons of interesting dynamics to explore with Kal, General Zod himself, Ursa, and even little Lor-Zod.

Not sure how she would escape the destruction of Krypton though.

[achilles]

What a great topic for discussion!

I don't have the best creative mind, but I would make her the daughter of General Zod before he had Lor-Zod with Ursa in Phantom Zone. She was born on Krypton with a different mother (Not Ursa) who died during destruction of Krypton. Same personality and uniform, but different backstory. I'm sure being General Zod's daughter would give her tons of interesting dynamics to explore with Kal, General Zod himself, Ursa, and even little Lor-Zod.

Not sure how she would escape the destruction of Krypton though.

Ooooh, now there's a sweet idea! I like the dichotomy of never quite trusting her, (well, I imagine Diana with her truth powers and J'ohn and other telepaths, assuming they could read her mind would trust her). With a character as powerful as a Kryptonian....that's BiG deal. Plus, if she's Zod's daughter...maybe he would have either trained her personally or had her taught by the best Kryptonian martial artists and military fighters?

Perhaps make her mother an El (L), so as to maintain the Superman connection more strongly. And since she's already sort of the Superman Family black sheep....why not to that to formalize it? Still the same person, but saddled with a notorious father.

Great idea. A nice bit of threshing out, and it could be a great comic arc. And it would give her a case for not getting her butt kicked half the time.

Escaping Krypton would be cake. Maybe she's military, and out on patrol. Maybe she's and astronaut out exploring the farther reaches of space? Maybe she's on an errand to the far side of Krypton's system?

[Ascended]

Bud, I'm not even joking, I'd be more inclined to read your pitch than I would have the writers in DC's stable. Don't sell yourself short.

You are too kind, good sir.

The other pitch I posted in last year's thread and got some decent buzz. I'll quote it here for ease of access:

I remember that, there was good sh*t in there. Tell you what, I won't sell myself short if you don't sell yourself short. Deal?

Another question for you guys. Mind control.

This is always a weird, tough power matchup (flying brick v. psychic). Virtually impossible to write with any degree of real consistency.

There's different kinds of telepaths, right? The ones who just knock you down with raw psychic might, like Hector Hammond, the ones that are sneakier and more subtle, like Max, ones that use your emotional state against you and ones that attack your ego directly....and all have their strengths and weaknesses, and some are better suited against some types of people than others.

In Max's case, yeah I can see him controlling Karen. He's sneaky; he said he spent months slowly working his way into Clark's brain, using a light touch, learning his way around....made me think of someone burrowing under the castle fortifications; slow going but it'll get you past the defenses. If Max had tried a heavy handed takeover attempt, I feel like Clark would have felt it and fought back, and probably win. Max's telepathy is "powerful" but not "strong" if that makes any sense? And Max knew Karen fairly well, he'd know how to approach a mental attack with her, and if he could get past Clark's defenses I don't see why he couldn't manage it with Karen.

She likely is more resistant to telepathy than Clark is; she's endured hardships even he hasn't, possibly had training he hasn't,and she's stubborn as hell, even more than he is. But I don't think she's anywhere near mentally invulnerable.

So the Kryptonian martial art you mentioned is called something like Torkavim Ro, and it encourages a degree of focus and self-awareness that makes telepathic attacks more difficult. And in my hypothetical PG series that'll never happen, you can be sure that Karen trained in it. Like a lot of kids who go to "karate class" she probably didn't stick with it too long, but long enough to have a semi-solid foundation in self defense.

[achilles]

To clarify my bit about telepathy or the like, I wasn't suggesting she has precisely those powers, but through the discipline of the mental martial art of Krypton, this first post being an example.

http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=138328

The idea being that while she may be an expert at those martial arts, they can only enable defense within her own mind, or perhaps offense if she's drawn into another's mind. So, in other words, if a White Martian attacked her mentally, it wouldn't work because she could fight back very well. But she could not similarly attack the White Martian, (though I assume a good dose of heat vision might help). Also, that particular martial art IIRC would also enable her to know when someone is trying something.

[marhawkman]

Well I wouldn't take it personally if you skipped my Galatea arc. But you'd miss out on some deep dives into Karen's character and history.

So, okay, the way I'd approach the Galatea thing.....most versions of ancient Krypton have a clone war that decimated civilization and left a deep stigma against cloning and genetic engineering right? And Karen would share that bias. She doesn't like "copies." And where is she? On a whole world (a whole universe!) that's a copy of the earth she knew, surrounded by copies of people she loved. Sure, it's alternate dimensions and not clones, but in a illogical, emotional way, it *feels* the same. And that's part of why she keeps the Kents at arm's length despite getting along with them, it's why she struggles to put down roots. And to make it even worse, here, *she* is the copy. It makes her feel like a clone, and is something she'd lowkey struggle with that ties into the other aspects of the "imposter" themes that run as undercurrents in her personality.

heh, the old pre explosion Krypton was a scary place. One thing not discussed in the more modern takes(usually) is the question of whether the Kryptonian military the see Superman have to worry about was actually there to deal with off-world threats, or if they were fighting other Kryptonians. Yeah... in several of the older stories they mentioned that Kryptonopolis was in a state of war with Erkol, and it wasn't a quick war either. It's not even a "civil" war. it's rival factions fighting to determine dominance.

Fun fact: some of the old-school zoners.... were NOT from Kryptonopolis!

What a great topic for discussion!

I don't have the best creative mind, but I would make her the daughter of General Zod before he had Lor-Zod with Ursa in Phantom Zone. She was born on Krypton with a different mother (Not Ursa) who died during destruction of Krypton. Same personality and uniform, but different backstory. I'm sure being General Zod's daughter would give her tons of interesting dynamics to explore with Kal, General Zod himself, Ursa, and even little Lor-Zod.

Not sure how she would escape the destruction of Krypton though.

This feels like a good idea for a not-Powergirl new character. As for how to survive? Just borrow from Karsta Wor-Ul's story. Krypton used to have a space navy, but most of them died because they were in orbit of Krypton when it exploded. Not ALL of them were though. And that's how Karsta lived.

Another question for you guys. Mind control. PG seems to be either completely vulnerable to mind control, or not at all. Max easily controls her, enough to get her to decimate the JLI, fortunately without any permanent consequences, while Saturn Queen....simply can't touch her mind and opts to try and execute her instead. All the while controlling Supergirl.

Which is it? Would that be a good power for PG; to be able to prevent mind control? Even if other Kryptonians can't? And isn't there a Kryptonian martial art that deals with mental combat, as well as one for physical combat? If she was an expert or master of those, it would give a good explanation as to why SQ couldn't do squat to PG mentally.

What say you guys, should she have this power, and how would you explain it and use in in story if you like the idea?

In Star Trek, they use the idea that telepathy has multiple forms and some do things others don't. There's multiple angles you could take. Need familiarity, maybe some people just can't read her at all. My personal fave, and one that's been used in a way in DC: she thinks faster than most people and thus the telepath has to find a way to match that speed in order to affect her properly.

Oh, surviving the explosion of Krypton is no great feat. One of my suggestions (that I don't insist on), was for Kara to be a lifelong wannabe astronaut and explorer, in which case she probably was not even on Krypton when it went the big sparkler thing. Or perhaps she was Krypton's version of a super-soldier on patrol. Or any of many other ways. This is of course for the classic PG, not any of her clones ...so I was not directly responding to the post save to suggest ways of surviving the explosion. Maybe as part of the supersoldier treatment, (assuming anyone at all besides me finds that at all interesting, and also assuming whatever the Kryptonians used was vasly more advanced and powerful than Captain America's stuff plus "vita rays", (an aside, I LOVED Evans as Cap), they used a more advanced version of the Doomsday treatment available in on infusion instead of having to kill her over and over as with Doomsday, and obviously is couldn't physically deform her as it did Doomsday. Again, just throwing out thoughts here to see if I'm getting it wrong or not.

Above all, however, her personality must not change. It's what attracted me to the character in the first place, not the drawings, not the powers, though in someone named "Power Girl" you'd better justify that name constantly.

When I said "explosion" I was talking about how the lab where Max Lord created Divine exploded. He'd made two clones of Power Girl, but the second one was still in stasis. Maybe she was a backup incase Divine died or something? who knows?

BUUUTT!! Since this is a clone we haven't actually seen do anything, she doesn't have a clearly defined personality already. Heck you could make her a sappy sweet nerd who annoys PG by being too nice... if you wanted to. Also, Max tweaked Divine's DNA to change her hair color, so this clone wouldn't need to look exactly the same as PG either.

I don't know if this would satisfy you misgivings, which are ones I do agree with. My thought was having whichever clone, Galatea due to its classic origin for me, not just be a bad guy. As I said, making her manipulated and brainwashed, (something I'm willing to accept in a new born clone, but not the classic PG, who gets that too often, making her seem weak minded, which she's not), and the having a story where instead of the JLU solution of fighting without even trying to talk her down or understand her or show any compassion to someone where after all, SG was dealing with an older version of herself....very callously; the real PG actually helps her get better mentally.

One fan-theory is that the JLU Powergirl.... IS Galatea. The idea being that when Supergirl beat her senseless she didn't die. In a weird way she was trying to make the world a better place... albeit a VERY misguided one. So.... it's not a huge stretch to think she might change.

This was a thing I had a real problem with. Silvana allows as how it's...EASY to clone a Kryptonian, and a fully functional one at that. I would prefer that it's impossible for any human, even Luthor or Silvana, and get it right. Yes, yes, they showed the failures, but my point it that cloning a Kryptonian should be nearly impossible. Even Darkseid shouldn't be able to do it that well, (for practical reasons as well as several stories have shown.

Well real-world cloning rules require a living cell for cloning to work. Sticking dog DNA into a cat cell for example... will that even make a viable organism? If you don't have a Kryptonian cell... good luck with cloning. But if you DO... welll suddenly it's a lot easier. In fact in DCAU this is part of the way Galatea was created. Hamilton had a TISSUE sample from Kara, not just DNA.

And fix the Kryptonite thing. Prime isn't effected by it because all the stuff from his universe is gone and there is none of hit kind in the main universe. But PG is effected by Kryptonite from any universe, (except red Kryptonite, which does nothing to her for some reason.) Either PG is NOT effected by alternate universe K, or Prime IS. I hate inconsistency just for the plot purposes.

Superboy Prime is a reflection of a DC timeline/universe variant where Rao was what became unstable and incinerated Krypton instead of the planet exploding. Thus in that universe there is no Kryptonite. Him being stronger than most Kryptonians is a reflection of how in some old stories Superman had feats of strength that are ridiculous even by comic book standards. But those are from this specific version of the character.

[marhawkman]

Ok soo... I think the key with using Powergirl in future stories is simple: who is she?

The original was... an alt-u Supergirl. It worked for that story, but it worked because of years of continuity behind it, and it's REALLY hard to adapt because of that. Sure, it's a viable backstory, but.... it is a really LONG backstory to re-tell.

But... on the other hand... is it the same character if the name and backstory are different?

Arguably the DCAU Supergirl, despite having a different name and being born on a different planet then her main universe counterpart is nearly the same character. If you plot the genealogy(which, yes, actually did get written out both times), she's at worst a cousin, maybe a half sister. (In-Ze was the maiden name of Kara's mother in the main U) So the differences are mostly superficial.

Sooo... how different is it ok to make Powergirl's origin? The name? well.... as we've seen over the years, it's pretty common for Kryptonians to have similar names. (Karsta, Allura, Car, Lara, Thara, etc...) So... it's not too far of a stretch to have two Kryptonians named Kara. Honestly, I think it'd work if you had Kara Zor-El and Kara In-Ze as cousins living in the same city. Maybe they were named after the same grandmother or something? We've seen that Kryptonians do that sort of thing sometimes.

The various clone variants... they're not fundamentally BAD ideas... but... they lend themselves to making a secondary character. Like Robanker said, they're defined by their connection to the person they were cloned from. Kon-El is kind of an exception in that A: he got used in comics a LOT, and B: he's never been "exactly" the same. So... throwing in characters like Galatea or Divine would be neat... but would have to wait for after Supergirl and Powergirl are established.

[Agent Z]

I don't know if this would satisfy you misgivings, which are ones I do agree with. My thought was having whichever clone, Galatea due to its classic origin for me, not just be a bad guy. As I said, making her manipulated and brainwashed, (something I'm willing to accept in a new born clone, but not the classic PG, who gets that too often, making her seem weak minded, which she's not), and the having a story where instead of the JLU solution of fighting without even trying to talk her down or understand her or show any compassion to someone where after all, SG was dealing with an older version of herself....very callously; the real PG actually helps her get better mentally.

Another possibility is for Darkseid to come up with a working, though entirely homicidal PG clone and unleash her on the galaxy. Perhaps even a more powerful PG. Eh, just spitballing here, waiting for you guys to sanity check my "ideas". All too often I think I have great ideas...that aren't. I suspect the same thing happens at DC, but they won't point out why they're wrong. If I'm wrong, though, I hope you guys point out all the flaws in my thinking and even offer suggestions for improvement.

BTW, I should point out that at no point did I envision any version of a PG clone sticking around. Whether dying heroically, or simply leaving for parts unknown, I don't see them as much more than a one or two time feature.

I'm not sure how much compassion you can have for someone who has callously murdered several people and is trying to kill you presently.

[achilles]

I'm not sure how much compassion you can have for someone who has callously murdered several people and is trying to kill you presently.

There's that, but Galatea was cloned and conditioned to be Hamilton and Waller's weapon. Which BTW was just a plot point in Stargirl; that she could see the good in people. Not saying PG would have to be Wonder Woman in that respect, (assuming Diana isn't in her killing moods), but at least a decent person. Of course there, PG was Galatea. Had she coexisted with Galatea...I'm pretty sure she'd at least try to get through to her.

[marhawkman]

There's that, but Galatea was cloned and conditioned to be Hamilton and Waller's weapon. Which BTW was just a plot point in Stargirl; that she could see the good in people. Not saying PG would have to be Wonder Woman in that respect, (assuming Diana isn't in her killing moods), but at least a decent person. Of course there, PG was Galatea. Had she coexisted with Galatea...I'm pretty sure she'd at least try to get through to her.

Yeah, having Galatea as PG would be kinda like a female version of Lobo. She's fine with killing and often wants to kill people just for the annoyance value. But usually doesn't, because well... most people she'd rather not kill. She never actually had killing as plan A.

[achilles]

You know, I can only think of one person PG ever directly killed for sure...an alternate universe Joker who found his hand buzzer doesn't do much to Kryptonians, but plenty to Jokers.

Can you think of any other for sure times PG killed someone. I mean for the big seven in the League, the list is pretty long, but PG?

[marhawkman]

You know, I can only think of one person PG ever directly killed for sure...an alternate universe Joker who found his hand buzzer doesn't do much to Kryptonians, but plenty to Jokers.

Can you think of any other for sure times PG killed someone. I mean for the big seven in the League, the list is pretty long, but PG?

True... that is something that makes Galatea different from PG. Hmm I remember some of the bad guys in Public Enemy died. Oh.. right... I think it was Major Force. But that was mostly an accident. Batman and Superman were both like "lol noob, people with that superpower origin explode when their suits get breached" Yeah, PG punched Major Force hard enough to make him go boom IIRC.

But yeah PG yells at people a lot more than she actually hurts them most of the time.

[achilles]

If one day you won a lottery that allowed you to put Power Girl together with one to maybe five Marvel characters in a story set in either universe.....who would they be and why?

I'd like to put her with Cap, who IMO would impress the hell out of her. Or Thor, for obvious reasons. Maybe the TV version of The Defenders. Maybe Hulk for nostalgic reasons having to do with the old DCU message boards where there was a poster called Hulk who kept going on about "white underwear girl", which was his shtick.

Not Captain Marvel though.

[marhawkman]

If one day you won a lottery that allowed you to put Power Girl together with one to maybe five Marvel characters in a story set in either universe.....who would they be and why?

I'd like to put her with Cap, who IMO would impress the hell out of her. Or Thor, for obvious reasons. Maybe the TV version of The Defenders. Maybe Hulk for nostalgic reasons having to do with the old DCU message boards where there was a poster called Hulk who kept going on about "white underwear girl", which was his shtick.

Not Captain Marvel though.

I'd have Ultragirl as one. Hard to say what others. maybe some of the super-skrulls that survived Secret Invasion?

[Ascended]

You know, I can only think of one person PG ever directly killed for sure...an alternate universe Joker who found his hand buzzer doesn't do much to Kryptonians, but plenty to Jokers.

Can you think of any other for sure times PG killed someone. I mean for the big seven in the League, the list is pretty long, but PG?

Not off the top of my head, no. I feel like Karen has threatened to do it, and meant it, but I don't remember her ever actually doing it?

Unless we count things like parademons, anyway. Those things are sometimes shown to be sentient but they look like monsters so nobody seems to count them as a "kill."

And I'm not sure I even count "Old Man Joker" as a kill. Memory of that scene is fuzzy but I don't recall Karen killing him on purpose, she just grabbed his hand. Maybe she was saving Helena from being electrocuted? I forget. Either way, I don't recall her killing Joker with intent, at most it's unintentional manslaughter....and as far as hero codes go I don't usually count that as "killing."