Supergirl #8 // Review
Clark had it easy. He tended to be a bachelor. So he didn’t have to excuse himself in the middle of anything with his family in order to go save the world as Superman. There’s not concern about keeping a secret identity in an empty apartment. Kara had it worse. She was just a girl when she started saving the world. Her solution to that problem comes back to haunt her in Supergirl #8. Writer/artist Sophie Campbell and colorist Becca Carey continue a thoroughly enjoyable new series with Supergirl in an issue that takes a look back at some of the earlier lore of the Girl of Tomorrow.
Kara isn’t feeling well. The holidays have a tendency to make her feel a sense of loss. Lesla wants to cheer her up, but she’s not exactly certain how to do that. She’s still quite new to Earth culture. (She’s only just now seeing snow for the first time.) All concerns fade out into the background when the house in Midvale has a break-in. Someone came-in in the middle of the night and left without waking anyone. How could it have happened with the Cara and Krypto’s super-hearing?
Campbell’s writing paints big emotions in broad strokes. The fact that she's able to do this without oversimplifying, things is quite an accomplishment. There is a settle complexity to everything that's making it to the page. It's presented with a stark simplicity that makes it all feel so totally relatable and approachable. The emotional core of the series feels particularly strong in an issue that explores one of the more subtly unsetting aspects of the Silver Age version of the character: Kara’s robot double. What might have seemed like kind of a cool idea and some degree of Wish fulfillment decades ago con Rosses kind of a disturbing concept in the 21st century. It's nice to see Campbell going back and taking another look at it in a way that is more emotionally engaging than it is shocking or ghoulish.
The cuteness of Campbell's execution continues to be deeply appealing. The quaint, coziness of Midvale continues to be very inviting. Campbell exaggerates emotions without making them seem anything other than realistic. Campbell’s script firmly anchors the emotionality of the page in the script, so any exaggeration in the faces and postures of the characters seems more or less perfectly justified.
Theoretically Kara’s robot double could still serve as a extended member of the ensemble. As it is, however, Campbell has quite a few people in the ensemble. And trying to expand it too much more would threaten to imbalance things. Better to keep this particular character, a statement on the nature of heroism and the things that sometimes fall through the cracks of perception. It's not often that that sort of thing has an opportunity to truly be explored in a long running mainstream comic book properties. So many writers takes long running series and so many different directions that it's easy to forget so much of what's lost in the transition from one creative group to the next. It's nice to see Campbell taking a look at one aspect of Kara’s past in greater detail.
