Supergirl - TV Tropes

"Baffled, Superman? Let me tell you my story, as my parents told it to me! When Krypton blew up, you were not the only one to escape alive..."

— Supergirl, Action Comics #252

"Lucy de Borgonia"

DC's first character named Supergirl is possibly Lucy de Borgonia, a South American princess who made her only appearancee in Superboy (1949) #5 (November, 1949). Wearing an orange-and-purple costume, Lucy had no powers but Superboy helped her fake them.

"Super-Girl"

As a test, they released Superman (1939) #123 (August, 1958), a story where Jimmy Olsen got three wishes. One wish was for a woman to keep Superman company, but though meaning well, this magical Super-Girl kept messing up her super-feats. Jimmy sadly wished her away when she sacrificed herself to save Superman from kryptonite, and was about to die anyway. (Note that in most later reprintings of this story, Super-Girl was intentionally miscolored to look different from Supergirl; originally, and as seen in DC Archives, she looked identical to Supergirl except that the skirt of her Mini Dress Of Power is red.)

Kara Zor-El (Linda Lee Danvers)

The issue sold well and the DC powers that be decided that Supergirl's time had come. Thus was born Supergirl - a.k.a. Kara Zor-El, Kal-El's cousin. She first appeared in Action Comics #252 The Supergirl From Krypton (1959) (May, 1959). At first, she was "Superman's secret weapon". As Linda Lee, an orphan at the Midvale Orphanage, she hid the existence of Supergirl from the world, secretly doing good and helping those in trouble.

Eventually, as the audience for heroic female characters increased, Superman judged her ready, and Supergirl was unleashed on the world. In The Unknown Supergirl, Kara was adopted and changed her name to Linda Lee Danvers; she gained her own supporting cast (secret-keeping parents Fred and Edna Danvers, love interests Dick Malverne and Jerro, best friend Lena Thorul, super-pets Streaky and Comet...), developed a friendship with Batgirl in The Supergirl-Batgirl Plot, and in Supergirl's Three Super Girl-Friends she became an occasional member of the Legion of Super-Heroes and love interest to popular Legionnaire Brainiac 5.

Very unusually for DC Comics (at the time), Kara's adventures in Action Comics were serialized from the early 1960s onwards rather than stand alone as was the general practice (including for Superman himself who she shared the comics with). Supergirl's status quo gradually changed over the course of the decade and she aged at a slightly slower than real time rate, going from a cute 15 year old to a high school graduate and then to a college student and later a career woman, moving and changing jobs constantly (she became a camerawoman in San Francisco, a student councilor in Florida and a soap opera actress in New York).

Power Girl

In the 1970s, a fateful decision was made: If Superman had a cousin on Earth-1, where Supergirl had long been established to live, why not one for the original Superman, Kal-L of Earth-2? Thus was Power Girl, aka Kara Zor-L of Earth-2, introduced in All-Star Comics #58 All Star Super Squad, (February 1976), with an origin much like Supergirl's, except for a Hand Wave to the effect that her capsule had taken much longer to reach Earth. Power Girl used an all-white suit which highlighted her breasts, large even by comicbook standards. ^note  She was instantly inducted into the Justice Society of America and soon became a fan favorite. See more on her own page.

The Crisis

Supergirl's monthly strip was published throughout twenty-six years in Action Comics, Adventure Comics, her first solo, Superman Family and her second self-named title. DC cancelled Supergirl (1982) in 1984, planning to launch a new title, DC Double Comics, starring Supergirl and Superboy.

But by the 1980s, Supergirl had fallen out of fashion with comic fans, and a number of creatives disliked the character and wanted her gone (even before the failure of her big budget live-action film), and editorial believed that Supergirl was a symptom of the longstanding decline in the Superman franchise, which had made the books a poor seller for DC Comics. In order to try bringing back Superman's uniqueness, it was decided that Superman should be the only surviving Kryptonian. So in Crisis on Infinite Earths #7 of the Crisis (October, 1985), Supergirl made a Heroic Sacrifice to help stop the villain's plan. But then DC decided to do a full-on reboot of the Superman franchise, resulting in the now dead Supergirl being declared to have never existed. In a bit of major irony though, the copycat Power Girl survived and was given a new origin story, as the granddaughter of an Atlantean sorcerer sent through time to the present day.

Matrix

Eventually, John Byrne decided to recreate Supergirl -lest DC loses the legal rights to the name- in the form of "Matrix", a shape-shifting purple creature who just so happens to take Supergirl's form. The new version first appeared in Superman (1987) #16 (April, 1988). Hailing from a pocket universe where Superboy existed (in order to keep the Legion of Super-Heroes universe from collapsing from the removal of Superboy from canon) and all life was destroyed by escaped Phantom Zone villains, Matrix followed Superman into the mainstream universe.

"Laurel Gand/Andromeda"

At the same time, DC ran into still another trouble. Supergirl had been a member of the Legion of Super-Heroes. Those stories still were in continuity, but Supergirl had been erased from existence. How did they solve this? In Legion of Super-Heroes (Volume 4) #5 (1990), Keith Giffen and other writers introduced Laurel "Andromeda" Gand, a Daxamite and Mon-El's cousin. Laurel was identical to Kara in all ways but name: she had her same powers, personality and attitude, was cousin to the Legion's inspirational figure (Mon-El pre-Zero Hour) and even dated Brainiac 5. After the Zero Hour reboot ("Postboot"), Andromeda was again a member of the Legion, but with a significantly different personality — she started out as a xenophobe like most Daxamites but eventually got over it, then became a nun after a spiritual experience with a "space anomaly," though she remained a member of the team. Subsequent reboots of the LSH have not featured her, though occasional visits have shown her to still be present in the Postboot LSH's universe. You can read more about her on the Legion's characters page.

"Kara of Odiline"

In the first Superman/Aliens crossover, written by Dan Jurgens, Superman finds a blonde, blue-eyed alien girl named Kara living in a floating city named Argo City, named after the original Kryptonian city since the inhabitants of Odiline -"Kara"'s homeworld- were big Krypton fanboys. Superman instantly took a liking to "Kara" and treated her like a long-lost close relative, but she was believed dead at the end of the crossover, and she was never mentioned again.

"Linda Danvers (Post-Crisis)"

Meanwhile, Matrix grew stale, and after several years Peter David was called in to retool her. In Supergirl vol. 4 #1 (September, 1996), Matrix traveled to the town of Leesburg, and melded with a troubled demon-worshipper girl named Linda Danvers, calling back to her pre-Crisis name. The fusion of the two resulted in an "Earth-Born Angel", a holy being with powers of fire.

Eventually, the "angel" aspect and the "Linda" aspect separated, with Linda keeping some powers of her own. This came at the same time that Supergirl was introduced in Superman: The Animated Series, so in a bit of media property alignment, Linda was given the cartoon Supergirl's costume. In Many Happy Returns, the final story arc of the series, Linda met the original Pre-Crisis Supergirl whose rocket somehow detoured to the Post-Crisis universe. David hoped to use the arc to kickstart a new series titled Blond Justice, and while the story sold very well, the new series was not to be. Ultimately, Kara returned to her universe, and Linda retired from superheroing. However, the success of Many Happy Returns, suggested that there was interest in the original Supergirl...

Cir-El

But first, a new character showed up; the Darker and Edgier Cir-El, who claimed to be Clark and Lois Lane's daughter from the future. She first appeared in Superman the 10 Cent Adventure #1 (March, 2003). However, she was a very unpopular character, and in short order her claims were debunked and she vanished into the timestream.

Kara Zor-El (Post-Crisis)

At this point, Dan DiDio rose to power at DC Comics. As urban legends goes, DiDio freaked out when he accidentally discovered Supergirl's convoluted origin of pocket universes and "earth angels" and made one of his first edicts to be DC bringing back the real Supergirl. (The success of the aforementioned Many Happy Returns arc probably didn't hurt either). A new Kara Zor-El was introduced, having crash-landed onto Earth just in time to be (re)introduced into DC Universe canon in Superman/Batman #8 The Supergirl from Krypton (2004) (May, 2004). In a twist, it was revealed that Kara was older than Kal-El when they lived together on Krypton, and had been sent into space in order to care for her baby cousin on Earth; her rocket, however, going off-course had meant she arrived as a teenager when he was an adult.

Since then Supergirl's basic identity in The DCU has held steady as Kara Zor-El. Confusion didn't end there though as her own named title was prone to constantly retconning Kara's backstory under a string of writers before finally settling down in Supergirl (2005) #35. This roughly coincided with being brought into the New Krypton storyline, dealing with several hundred Kryptonians appearing on planet Earth led by Supergirl's parents. The book finally managed to become well regarded and a stable part of the Superman Family of comics.

Around that time, Supergirl also appeared in Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes, in which she was stuck a thousand years in the future with the Legion (having made the Time Travel trip during a Time Skip in her own book, and then getting Laser-Guided Amnesia before she returned). To top it off, 2009 saw two different Supergirl mini-series: Supergirl: Cosmic Adventures in the 8th Grade, a toony-style book aimed at kids (the original writer had plans to write sequels retelling her Pre-Crisis story, taking her up to the 12th Grade, but a sequel was never greenlighted); and Superman/Supergirl: Maelstrom, another story co-starring Superman.

Power Girl (Post-Crisis)

Meanwhile, Power Girl had gone through some changes as they tried to figure out what to do with her. In Secret Origins #11 Ancient Histories (February, 1987), Kara was given a new origin as granddaughter of the ancient Atlantean hero Arion, and her own mini-series Power Girl (1988) followed soon after.

Post-Crisis Kara was recruited for the Justice League Europe branch and had her powers decreased (due to a Deus ex Machina lifesaving operation). She developed a new edgy, ultra-feminist attitude to let her serve as the resident shit-disturber on the JLE team (which was briefly retconned as being the result of allergies caused by diet sodas). She was made a businesswoman with her own computer company, mystically pregnant caused by her Atlantean grandpa, and most humiliatingly, was given a short-lived vulnerability to "natural, unprocessed materials" by Chris Claremont that was so silly and stupid that it was quickly dropped as soon as it was established.

Eventually, she found a home in the ongoing Justice Society of America series, and now that she was being focused on by a single writer, she started to gain some consistency. In the series, it was revealed that she wasn't Atlantean after all — but that left the question of what she was.

In Power Trip (2005), the surprisingly simple answer was revealed: she was... Kara Zor-L, the cousin of the Superman of Earth-2. As the Earths were being merged, she had somehow fallen through a crack in time, emerging in the new universe unchanged, and the inconsistencies in her powers and origins since then had been side effects of the universe trying to fit her in. (Note: She is specifically from the Earth-2 that existed prior to Crisis of the Infinite Earths. A new Earth-2 that's like the old one appeared after Infinite Crisis but it has its own Power Girl). Shortly after, DC released her first ongoing, Power Girl (2009).

Post-Flashpoint Kara Zor-El

In 2011, the Flashpoint event rebooted the DC's universe. Since Supergirl had to start from square one again, DC took the chance to streamline the character: Supergirl is Kara Zor-El, Superman's cousin from Krypton who crashed to Earth much later and only remembers her cousin as a baby. Her personality is angrier and edgier than preceeding Karas' to emphasize her alienness in contrast to her Earth-raised cousin. There have never been other Supergirls.

After managing her grief and her anger issues -ironically by becoming a Red Lantern in Red Daughter of Krypton-, Kara was retooled to make her closer to her then-ongoing live-action counterpart. Thus, she moved to National City, took up the Kara Danvers civilian name and started working for the DEO and Cat Grant as attending high-school in Supergirl (2016). As the Supergirl (2015)'s show's popularity waned, though, DC began to drift away from this status quo until dropping it completely. Around that time, DC released another mini-series: Supergirl: Being Super.

In 2020, Supergirl's solo book was cancelled after fifteen years of almost uninterrupted publication; though DC released a new miniseries, Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, wherein Kara was quietly aged up. Since then, her own title's loss has been counterbalanced by making her again a regular cast member in her cousin's stories.

DC's 2022-2023 Crisis events altered Supergirl's backstory -together with the entire universe's- once again, retconning back into canon her Silver Age origin (but keeping being the "older than her cousin" 2004 tweak), and restating her heroic sacrifice against the Anti-Monitor is actually remembered by everyone.

In 2023 DC released an one-shot issue Supergirl Special as a prelude to Supergirl getting again her regular backup feature in Action Comics (2016) #1070 (November, 2024).

In 2025, a new ongoing, Supergirl 2025, was announced as part of the Summer of Superman event. The series will be written and illustrated by Sophie Campbell.

Post-Flashpoint Power Girl

Meanwhile, on Earth 2, Power Girl is also Superman's cousin from Krypton. However, she started her career as Supergirl, her Superman is dead, and she wound up stranded on the main Earth for several years. She co-starred in Worlds' Finest (2012) with her best friend, Huntress (who, much like PG, started out as a sidekick in E2, having been Robin to her dad Batman). Before returning home, Kara meets her counterpart and discovers they have a strange bond due to their status as Alternate Universe counterparts of each other. Ultimately, this version was Put on a Bus together with her entire universe when the Earth 2 line was dropped in 2017.

The character remained in limbo for several years during which DC occasionally dropped hints of the imminent return of the original Power Girl. In 2023 she reappeared with no fanfare (the fact that she was gone for years, during which an alternate universe version was running around the place before abruptly disappearing, was not acknowledged in-universe, and may have been undone by the same Cosmic Retcon mentioned above) and a new personality shift. Even though she is more integrated in the Superman family than ever, she is moodier, angrier and whinier, constantly complaining that she is ignored by everyone and treated as Supergirl's inferior copy. She also appears in Justice Society of America (2022), where she is none of those things (maybe angrier) and has apparently been around since the seventies in universe. Finally, she got another ongoing in Power Girl (2023).