Kara Zor-El/Supergirl Appreciation 2022

[Frontier]

Thsts cool,so what would be the next super movie after this one iyo?

I think it's the JLxRWBY crossover movie.

[SuperX]

I think it's the JLxRWBY crossover movie.

Thsts a good entire DC movie ,but what about one super specific ,had superman,Jon,and now Kara,what's next ?

[StarSpangledMan]

You get that at NYCC? Nice!

Well a lucky someone got it from NYCC, I just saw it on Twitter.

[Frontier]

Thsts a good entire DC movie ,but what about one super specific ,had superman,Jon,and now Kara,what's next ?

JL Warworld.

[Vordan]

[Frontier]

This definitely seems more popular/getting more fanart than the WoT costume did.

[ohfellow]

This definitely seems more popular/getting more fanart than the WoT costume did.

Not surprising. This is a slender, youthful Supergirl. The "other" one has been drawn older, and thick, like a tank. She's bulky, big, and in some panels, with masculine jaw and other features.

These will be small thumbnails I am afraid, but here are the most recent renderings. I'm ignoring all the yellow and all the blue and just looking at the character herself.

Sampere:

Supergirl Dark Crisis.jpg

Supergirl Dark Crisis 2.jpg

Federici:

Federici.jpg

And more in the next post.

[ohfellow]

And Lapham:

Lapham 1.jpg

Lapham 2.jpg

Lapham 3.jpg

I guess David Lapham has fans. It's his style to draw many women that way. His Natasha, Enchantress and Lia are pretty huge, and Thao-La is oversized in some panels too. but his Supergirl is the biggest of the bunch.

These appearances matter, because where else has Supergirl appeared lately but Dark Crisis and Action? The answer is World's Finest by Mora. But those are flashback stories.

Actually what everyone is drawing is from the closing pages from the Woman of Tomorrow - which was supposed to be set decades in the future. Those final pages of a short-haired, bulky woman of tomorrow have been taken to be the reference for the Supergirl of today.

People loved Bliquis Evely's work, but it led to this restyling, aging and bulk that is unfamiliar and is almost a new character. And that's why everyone is happy with Mora! It's the only entirely recognizable "Supergirl" character artwork currently being produced.

[Vordan]

This definitely seems more popular/getting more fanart than the WoT costume did.

The whole family has been getting a ton. I’ve got a couple Kenan pics saved for his 2023 Appreciation thread lol. But I prefer Kara with longer hair over the bob Evely gave her.

[Frontier]

The whole family has been getting a ton. I’ve got a couple Kenan pics saved for his 2023 Appreciation thread lol. But I prefer Kara with longer hair over the bob Evely gave her.

Hard same.

[ohfellow]

The whole family has been getting a ton. I’ve got a couple Kenan pics saved for his 2023 Appreciation thread lol. But I prefer Kara with longer hair over the bob Evely gave her.

Of course there are major exceptions to everything as lots of young women keep their hair short, but long hair is not typical of more mature women. At what age do women stop wearing their hair long? A web search seems to come up with a general agreement of mid 40s.

It's not a question simply of "style" choice - the new reference for most current art is the middle-aged Superwoman that Evely drew at the very end of the Woman of Tomorrow series.

Evely actually started that series with a long-haired 21-year-old Supergirl (she added a wave but that's all), but ended the series decades into the future, and change in hair style was a natural way to illustrate that it was a decades-older Kara.

It would be interesting if we could find out from the Superman family and Dark Crisis editors (Brittany Holzherr and her boss Paul Kaminki) how old they think Kara Zor-El currently is, but DC editors only tweet promotional material and congratulations to creative teams, at most.

[The Frog Bros]

Thought this was an interesting look from the inital reveal but man, the more versions of this I see, the more I like it. Not necessarily my fave, but I think its pretty damn solid.

[OBrianTallent]

Thought this was an interesting look from the inital reveal but man, the more versions of this I see, the more I like it. Not necessarily my fave, but I think its pretty damn solid.

I feel much the same way...not my favorite but a really nice look for her (not to sound like a broken record, but if they added a half cape, this MIGHT become my favorite.)

[Frontier]

She looks good, I just don't think it comes across much as a Supergirl look aside from being distinctly Kara with the hair.

[Badou]

I went on a bit of a rabbit hole looking at how old Supergirl was in parts of the Silver and Bronze Age and I stumbled across Superman Family #200 which came out in 1980. The issue is set in the future where all the individual stories revolve around Clark and Lois' wedding anniversary. In Supergirl's story, where she goes by Superwoman now, she is the governor of Florida and she decides to go back in time to take pictures of Clark and Lois' important moments together. She also encounters a time beast in the timestream and fights it. A pretty fun little story, but an interesting small part of it was that Kara is married to someone whose face is covered in shadow and it is never revealed who this person is.

You are only given a few clues to who this person might be. One is that they are friends with Clark and Lois and they will be at their party, and two is that the word detective is emphasized. This made me think of Dick Grayson as a possibility. He was also at their party, was on the cover of the issue with Bruce, and fits the first two clues.

I've never really seen this mentioned anywhere before, so I found it a bit surprising. So I looked around the internet and found the letter column for the issue and it seems even readers back in 1980 were curious who this mysterious person was. Dick Grayson was mentioned a few times and Bruce Wayne, Peter Barton, and Dick Malverne were all names that were brought up. Gerry Conway himself said he didn't really have anyone in mind, but it seems even a number of DC's staffers thought it was Dick Grayson though.

Kind of an interesting to stumble across something like this 40+ years later. This Superman Family #200 even came out before New Teen Titans #1. So Starfire didn't exist yet and a Dick Grayson didn't have any kind of prominent love interest at the time where maybe people were more likely to think it was him here.

Credit to this person's blog for having the letter column and even asking Gerry Conway themselves about it a several years ago where he said he didn't really remember who he had in mind at the time now.