Supergirl: Being Super (Tamaki/Jones)
(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)
Back at the library, looking for the next Ultraman, when I spotted a Supergirl book. Unlike other graphic novels, this one looked like it was made to be a trade paperback. Maybe it was, and maybe it was not. I just now, while searching for the image, saw images of the individual comic. The cover of this book is modified from issue #1, but this looks better.
However, unlike the recent Superman book I read, this is all one story, not parts of stories here and there. But I have to say that the fact that this was an actual comic first just makes it even more confusing. Not that I liked it less.
Supergirl is one of those charcters that has gone through many changes over the years. I remember when she was Linda Lee Danvers before she was Kara Danvers. My following her in the comics pretty much ends with Crisis in the mid 80s. And then there's the current TV show, which is completing its run. She's been a teenager, an adult, back to a teen and then allowed to age again. On TV, she has a job and a life.
This version starts off strangely. She apparently landed on Earh in her pod when she was about 8 years old with no memory of her past, even though she was 8. But she does have dreams. And she's found by Mr. & Mrs. Danvers, in a variation that I've never seen before, who take her in and raise her. And there's no mention of You Know Who until very late in the book. In every other incarnation, either Kara was sent off with Clark (and was either older or younger at the time), or she was on Argo City, which survived the destruction of Kryton for while before it, too, was doomed.
She has two Best Friends, and in what seems like boxes checked off, the minority friend, within the first couple of pages, makes it known she's a lesbian, which is a detail that while mentioned again, won't actually come into play for the remainder of the book, until a couple of pages at the end, which seemed tacked on to the story. Her other best friend dies and she can't save her because her powers are going wonky. It could be puberty hitting at 16, or maybe it's something more nefarious.
I enjoyed the book and it's a good YA title, but I wished that there had been more closure at the end, particularly with the new Kryptonian added, who apparently has been on Earth for 40 years and had no idea that Krypton is gone.
If I see another issue in this series, I might check it out. It was well-done even if it wasn't a Supergirl I know.
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