Supergirl #1 // Review
Kara is kind of busy when she gets a call from her parents. (She’s up in the air. Literally. She’s taking a plane, but not in the way most people take planes. She’s actually carrying it.) Anyway...her parents have gotten leave from the D.E.O and so they’ve decided to head back to Kara’s home town of Midvale to fix-up the old place. THere’s going to be. house-warming party July Fourth Weekend. Kara’s in for a surprise in Supergirl #1. Writer/artist Sophie Campbell delivers an intoxicatingly fun opening for a whole new series with colorist Tamra Bonvillain.
Kara’s really reluctant to head back to Midvale. Hasn’t been there in a long time. Still...maybe she should give it a chance. It might be fun to go back to the old place. She even manages to find her old chromatic super-comb....the one that turns her hair from gold to brown and back again. So she can still pretend to be the same old Linda Danvers everyone remembers her as back home in Midvale. There’s somethign strange about it, though. There’s another woman back in Midvale claiming to be Supergirl. Clearly something strange is going on...isn’t there?
Tom King’s recent Supergirl mini-series was brilliant on a whole bunch of different levels, but it wasn’t embracing the full history of Kara the way Campbell is in the first issue of a whole new series. In the course of the first issue, Campbell seems to touch on nearly every single aspect of Supergirl’s long and complex history in a concise and infinitely appealing way. (Except for...y’know...the whole Crisis on Infinite Earths thing.) There’s a remarkable sense of concision about it all that firmly establishes all of those elements of Kara that make her so very, very appealing.
Campbell’s art mixes delightfully charming cuteness with powerful realism. Her line economy manages to strike a stunning balance between highly-detailed rendering and clever line economy. Supergirl’s overall appearance has changed quite a bit over the years. Campbell’s interpretation of Cara updates her sense of style, fashion and poise to perfectly reflect that of a college girl in 2025. There’s a sharp attention to detail that’s a great deal of fun to follow. The contrast between Linda Danvers and Kara/Supergirl is particularly impressive. There’s a clear distinction between the title character’s two personas that feels remarkably well-executed while still clearly representing the same person.
Okay...now that Campbell has returned Supergirl to those things which have made her so appealing over the years, she’s simply going to HAVE to do the same thing for Batgirl. There’s really no other option. Campbell is simply going to NEED to create a Batgirl series in which she’s a genius detective and librarian living in a cozy, little apartment in Gotham City. There really isn’t any other option on this. I’m sorry. I don’t make the rules. That’s just hte way that things are. If Campbell is going to be this good at returning a very, very cool Supergirl to the page, she’s simply going to have to do the same thing for Batgirl.
