Kara Zor-El/Supergirl Appreciation 2022

[Iopy]

Gates has said he was planning on continuing character development along the lines had been taking her during his run that got him canned off the book. Dan wanted angry resentful teen Supergirl. As Gates said in 2018:

I was fired off Supergirl summer of 2010. I was told the higher-ups felt I "wrote her like a 40-year-old woman," and they wanted someone who could write an angrier, "more youthful" Kara.

twitter.com/sterlinggates?s=11&t=ja36cGUJP2ykjB24BtRg6A

And Dan’s Superman group editor Will Moss was very clear about how DC wanted her portrayed when they did the New52 reboot:

I dunno how many of you have sisters, but when mine was a teenager, she was, as they say, hell on wheels. Always getting into trouble, always getting into fights (usually more with her friends than with her enemies), always managing to outthink authority figures (be they cops or parents), always hanging with a questionable crowd, always a new piercing or tattoo – just drama at every turn, and usually of her own making. Nowadays she’s a morally upright citizen. She’s got a dog and a cat, a boyfriend and she even just completed jury duty! But back then? Hell. On. Wheels. And that’s a lot like the Kara Zor-El you’ll meet in a couple weeks in SUPERGIRL #1

Dan was pretty clear about what he wanted. I would imagine anybody who was going to pitch to him was going to pitch a story that aligned with his stated views. And there aren’t a lot of ways to do that after you’ve spent a number of arcs making her more mature and responsible that don’t involve “turning evil” due to mind control, Joker Who Laughs infection, Red Lantern ring, and so forth.

I get Dan may have gotten tired of seeing these stories, but he was running things and set the table. He got more and more of what he gave the go-ahead to, and less of what didn’t get approved. Why would he expect otherwise?

[Vordan]

I personally prefer the angrier New 52 Kara over Gates take on Kara essentially being a younger FemClark, but Gates was able to write that fairly well. People enjoyed his take and his run is looked back on fondly. I don’t get why it had to be blown up just for the sake of blowing it up, that’s something Didio would often do to mixed gains. While it worked out for me personally, I think it led to trouble down the road since DC was likely always pushing to make Kara angrier and angrier which can cause people to stop sympathizing with her. That was New 52 Kon’s fate.

[Frontier]

I personally prefer the angrier New 52 Kara over Gates take on Kara essentially being a younger FemClark, but Gates was able to write that fairly well. People enjoyed his take and his run is looked back on fondly. I don’t get why it had to be blown up just for the sake of blowing it up, that’s something Didio would often do to mixed gains. While it worked out for me personally, I think it led to trouble down the road since DC was likely always pushing to make Kara angrier and angrier which can cause people to stop sympathizing with her. That was New 52 Kon’s fate.

Just because she upheld some of his core values and ideals (and has a secret identity with glasses) doesn't make her a FemClark in my opinion.

Especially because she still had a temper and plenty to angst about under Gates' pen, it just wasn't what I would call a defining characteristic.

Of course I'm probably biased because angry Kara isn't my ideal take.

[Vordan]

Just because she upheld some of his core values and ideals (and has a secret identity with glasses) doesn't make her a FemClark in my opinion.

Especially because she still had a temper and plenty to angst about under Gates' pen, it just wasn't what I would call a defining characteristic.

Of course I'm probably biased because angry Kara isn't my ideal take.

I personally just don’t think Kara should have

-A secret identity
-Adopted parents
-An interest in journalism

All of that is too similar to Clark. I think that if any of the Superfamily are going to struggle with mental health issues, Kara makes the most sense. She lost a world. That’s not something you’re ever going to just walk off. Happy go lucky Kara feels cartoonish to me the more I’ve pondered what the fallout of her surviving Krypton and remembering it would be. Do I need her foaming at the mouth in rage all the time and getting into fights? Nah, but the New 52 take on her where she didn’t love Earth and had issues helped separate her from her cousin. I liked that.

Probably why I enjoyed Tom King writing her, she’s the Super who works best for his style of writing

[Iopy]

Just because she upheld some of his core values and ideals (and has a secret identity with glasses) doesn't make her a FemClark in my opinion.

Especially because she still had a temper and plenty to angst about under Gates' pen, it just wasn't what I would call a defining characteristic.

Of course I'm probably biased because angry Kara isn't my ideal take.

I agree, angry Kara isn’t terribly interesting to me unless there’s a good story reason other than yet another mind control or the “teenage girls are just like that” canard (see the Will Moss quote.)

FemClark as a notion may be a core part of the problem, she’s the newcomer and she’s trying to adapt to a radically different culture. Clark is an immigrant who came as a baby, she’s a teenage refugee from a holocaust and everyone she’s ever known is recently dead. She’s not him, he’s her lifeline that a Kryptonian can adapt to this place.

[Frontier]

I personally just don’t think Kara should have

-A secret identity
-Adopted parents
-An interest in journalism

All of that is too similar to Clark. I think that if any of the Superfamily are going to struggle with mental health issues, Kara makes the most sense. She lost a world. That’s not something you’re ever going to just walk off. Happy go lucky Kara feels cartoonish to me the more I’ve pondered what the fallout of her surviving Krypton and remembering it would be. Do I need her foaming at the mouth in rage all the time and getting into fights? Nah, but the New 52 take on her where she didn’t love Earth and had issues helped separate her from her cousin. I liked that.

Probably why I enjoyed Tom King writing her, she’s the Super who works best for his style of writing

I mean, she's had a secret identity for as long into her existence as Clark has dating back to Pre-Crisis, so it's not like it's out of character. And that stuff was present in the TV show and in most adaptions of Kara, which help popularize it.

I do agree she doesn't need to be into journalism but just because she has a similar situation to Clark doesn't mean she has to come off like a female equivalent to Clark because she has an entirely different background and character so she relates to it differently.

Realistically what happened to Kara is something someone would never really recover from, or at least it would be far more difficult to process than what is usually allotted to comics or what stories are allowed to explore.

I don't really jive with the idea of Kara not loving Earth, at least not without the expectation that she would grow to love it unless you want Kara to be in space all the time. But I think that's limiting her character. Even with them trying to insert Kara post-WoT she's still on Earth because of course she is .

To each their own. True Grit Kara never quite worked for me .

[D.Z]

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Boop

[Quinlan58]

Still can't get over Tom King's Kara backstory being basically "let's mine almost every single origin story she's had for every single angsty thing we can get and then invent some of our own to take it up to 11". Like fam, apparently neither Pre-Crisis nor Post-Crisis Kara had it bad enough, it had to be worse.

Anyway, Siegel gave her adoptive parents, in one of the best Silver Age Superfamily stories IMO, so that's as canon as I'm ever going to see anything. And if she has adoptive parents, a secret identity follows. Interest in jounalism, though? No, that's going way too far. For her, for Jon, and for any Super-verse character that's not Clark, Lois or the Daily Planet crew (Lana may or may not get a pass).

Also yeah, if that's Didio's base idea for Kara that he encouraged everyone to follow, it is indeed not surprising he got the pitches he got.

[Digifiend]

I mean, she's had a secret identity for as long into her existence as Clark has dating back to Pre-Crisis, so it's not like it's out of character. And that stuff was present in the TV show and in most adaptions of Kara, which help popularize it.

I do agree she doesn't need to be into journalism but just because she has a similar situation to Clark doesn't mean she has to come off like a female equivalent to Clark because she has an entirely different background and character so she relates to it differently.

Realistically what happened to Kara is something someone would never really recover from, or at least it would be far more difficult to process than what is usually allotted to comics or what stories are allowed to explore.

I don't really jive with the idea of Kara not loving Earth, at least not without the expectation that she would grow to love it unless you want Kara to be in space all the time. But I think that's limiting her character. Even with them trying to insert Kara post-WoT she's still on Earth because of course she is .

To each their own. True Grit Kara never quite worked for me .

Kara should be similar to Starfire. Fish out of water when she first arrives on Earth, but later gets used to it. And she ought to be in her 20s too, she should be Dick's generation, not Tim's.

Kara should also have a niche as the expert in all things Krypton (tech, language, etc). Clark was raised on Earth, he learned that stuff only as an adult. Kara was brought up on Krypton.

As for a career... something scientific. What jobs did she have pre-Crisis?

[marhawkman]

I personally just don’t think Kara should have

-A secret identity
-Adopted parents
-An interest in journalism

All of that is too similar to Clark. I think that if any of the Superfamily are going to struggle with mental health issues, Kara makes the most sense. She lost a world. That’s not something you’re ever going to just walk off. Happy go lucky Kara feels cartoonish to me the more I’ve pondered what the fallout of her surviving Krypton and remembering it would be. Do I need her foaming at the mouth in rage all the time and getting into fights? Nah, but the New 52 take on her where she didn’t love Earth and had issues helped separate her from her cousin. I liked that.

Probably why I enjoyed Tom King writing her, she’s the Super who works best for his style of writing

YEah, Red Lantern Kara was great!

[Vordan]

YEah, Red Lantern Kara was great!

I certainly thought so. Get why people prefer a more “traditional” Kara but I’d prefer to differentiate the Supers from each other as strongly as possible.

[Frontier]

I certainly thought so. Get why people prefer a more “traditional” Kara but I’d prefer to differentiate the Supers from each other as strongly as possible.

I suppose it's Kara and Karen because one has a skirt and the other has the leotard .

[marhawkman]

I certainly thought so. Get why people prefer a more “traditional” Kara but I’d prefer to differentiate the Supers from each other as strongly as possible.

Wait... if these are the twins... who's the witch?

[Hypo]

Wait... if these are the twins... who's the witch?

Full image includes Silver Banshee:

https://twitter.com/DeniseFanta/stat...26160074846209

[Primal Slayer]

We had angry Kara when she first re-appeared in DC and it's something she was working on and getting over by the time Gates got the character so it didn't make sense to make her go completely backwards. Of course they could've just made her more like a super powered Cordelia whose just snarky in general after dealing with her anger issues but New 52 was just a giant retread of what we already had gotten.