And Where Exactly Have You Been, Miss Zor-El?

[alixtii]

Is it just that I have more Marvel comic books, and am generally more familiar with that universe, or is DC's recent continuity even more confusing than Marvel's (which is pretty bad itself)?

I really want to read Supergirl/Oracle fic, and decided the only way I was going to get some was to write it myself, but I really can't get Kara's timeline straight. Stuff happens. then she goes to the future, then she comes back, and more stuff happens? I mean, I have five Supergirl trades at this point (the Batman/Superman where she is introduced, two Supergirl and the Legion of Superheroes, and two volumes of her own title) and spent a good hour on Wikipedia and Google this afternoon, and I still can't for the life of me figure out what she's been doing in between, not to mention trying to synchronize it with Babs' timeline.

69% GeekMingle² - Free Online Dating

For comparison, when I told it I was a girl, I got only 68% geek.

Comments

[bastardsnow.livejournal.com]

How is the 2nd Supergirl trade? I've got the first one, and enjoyed it well enough, but I kind of had the feeling that, well... it wasn't going to be a strong franchise.

Though that Batman/Superman is, IMO, quite good.

And I'd be interested in reading Supergirl/Oracle.

[alixtii.livejournal.com]

I'm sure plenty of people will feel that the trade just sucked and that I'm being over-generous when I say that it's not really the fault of the characters or the writers. But the thing is, as alluded to above, Kara (and I think this may be true for all the characters) really gets screwed over by the whole Identity Crisis/52/One Year Later thing. The second Supergirl trade draws from, in addition to her own title, JSA Classified, Superman, JLA, and Superman/Batman, and still completely fails to provide any coherent picture of exactly what's going on. Kara's story starts out as a continuation of Loeb's storyline, with her assimilating into both Earth society and the system of superheroes, then apparently she goes to the future, then somehow she gets in the Bottle-City of Kandor.

Not to mention that the Kara that we saw in the 31st century is, in terms of both writing and art, more wholesome and otherwise different (not quite so skinny, for one) than the one we see in the other titles.

The Kandor storyline isn't bad, I don't think (again, I think plenty would accuse me of being overgenerous) but it comes out of nowhere in the context of the trade (and due to the One Year Later thing, I think that was probably true for those following the issues too), and it seems rushed--by the time one has gotten oneself oriented, Kara's not in Kandor anymore and it takes a couple of re-reads to figure out why. The whole thing just feel rushed; it really needs to have a trade to itself instead of just taking up pp. 79-148 of the trade (and the pun isn't very funny), and should have been a four to six issue arc instead of just getting three issues. (Then again, the Kandor arc is kind of painful, so maybe we should be glad it was only three issues.) The very last issue of the trade, "Big Girl Small World," in which Kara has returned from Kandor and has to deal with her role and identity on Earth, is IMHO excellent, but in the context of the trade it's too little, too late, with too little connection with anything else going on. The only reaction one can really have to the trade as a whole is "WTF?" Somebody has to introduce the editor to the Aristotelian unities.

I like the new version of Kara and her character-concept, although her anorexia is frustrating and I go back and forth on her rather self-objectifying fashion sense (I do think it can be read as part of the character instead of just pasted on, and it's an interesting character trait in the context of an indestructible teenage superheroine), but I do like the vision of adolescence--emo, angsty, and potentially self-destructive, but with the potential to work through all that--that peeks through when the title's at its best. It's just that Kara rarely gets enough time to breathe during all of these events going on in the trade to actually be a teenager.

So I think it's mostly the fault of DC's editors screwing up the continuity. (I do get the feeling that outside of Birds of Prey DC has less clue what to do with its female characters than Marvel does.) I sort of doubt it will ever be a strong franchise from a marketing perspective, but I do think it has the potential to tell a great story. I really do love Kara.

My advice would be to, unless one really cares what Kara was doing during the Infinite Crisis/52/One Year Later (and if one does, Candor presents a fragmented vision at best; I'm still not sure what other issues I need to figure out what was going on), one's best bet is skipping the Candor arc completely and seeing if one can get an issue of "Big Girl Small World" (Supergirl #9) by itself from somewhere, which pretty much catches up the reader as much as one needs (Kara's on Earth, she used to be in Kandor, she's angsty) and would put one in a position to follow the Supergirl on Earth continuity following that (presumably any subsequent trades will pick up right after it), which I'm hoping will be good.

I want Supergirl/Oracle so badly!

[bastardsnow.livejournal.com]

That's... really odd.

Anyway, if you want to see DC handle a female character well, I really really suggest you pick up Manhunter. It's *excellent*.

[booster17.livejournal.com]

She turns up in Superman/Batman, and then gets her own title for a while which is basically her first trade. After that, Infinite Crisis hits and she sees Superman before heading off into space with a group of heroes (think that's reprinted either in a Superman trade or that second Supergirl trade). At the end of Infinite Crisis, there's this great big rift in space/time out in space, causing various effects - two heroes get merged together, Hawkgirl ends up 50 feet tall and Supergirl vanishes into the time stream and turns up 1000 years later with the Legion.

She spends however long with the Legion but eventually is sent back to our time, appearing during the World War Three seqments of 52 (the weekly comic telling the story of what happened during the missing year before One Year Later). After that, she and Power Girl go off into Kandor and your trade resumes. So basically, she was missing for 50 weeks before she came back.

You think this is bad to work out - I'm basically keeping a running checklist of what goes where for Countdown - which is weekly!