Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION Dr. Gym'll's Cultural Rarities Supergirl by Sophie Campbell

I'd been eagerly awaiting the 1st issue of this relaunch.

My initial impression is that it's cute and full of charm, and I'm loving Sophie's new, cleaner art style, but...there's something lacking, and I don't quite know what it is.

I'm not into the Ninja Turtles, so I didn't read Sophie's writer/artist run on that series. Which leaves me with nothing to compare her Supergirl writing to.

Maybe it's more the editor's fault than Sophie's, because the most noticeable fault in the script is how continuity-unfriendly it is to readers like me, whose only prior experience with a Supergirl series is Peter David's run from 1996 to 2003.

I'll keep supporting Supergirl for now, at least until the Legion relaunch, whenever that turns out to be.

Some of Sophie's other credits include works like Wet Moon, Water Baby, The Abandoned, and IDW's Jem and the Holograms with Kelly Thompson.

Personally? As someone who loves Peter David's Supergirl and feels Sterling Gates and Jamal Igle were the last creative team who GOT Kara, I can honestly say Sophie's work so far has been a breath of fresh air. DC's seemed intent to make Kara either miserable as Hell or were trying too hard to capture synergy for the CW show .

I feel like Sophie genuinely cares about the character and actually knows what she wants to do with her. The first's laying the groundwork for the vibe and the initial setting while giving us a clear idea of who Kara is - she wants to do good and is figuring out what that is while trying not to feel like she's stuck in her cousin's shadow.

Thanks for listing a few of her other works, Sarky.

I loved her work on Jem with Kelly Thompson. I still have the trades.

Perhaps I'm being too impatient with Sophie. As you pointed out, the groundwork must be laid before anything else.

I thought the first issue was fun. I wasn't blown away by it, but it wasn't a decent set up and an interesting mystery plot is introduced. I really have no idea what the current Supergirl's continuity is, but wasn't too bothered by that in reading the issue.

Continuitywise, I'd say the only thing that really threw me was the reference to Dick Malvern. Since that was such a big subplot during Peter David's run, it made my mind go in a thousand different directions as to how much, if any, of that run is still canon.

I think Sophie might've been referencing the Young Love story from Solo where he also died.

Wouldn't it be hilarious if it turned out Peter David's Supergirl was still canon as well and there were two completely separate Dick Malvernes who fell in love with two completely different Supergirls and died?

It'd be even funnier if Midvale and Leesburg were rival towns and they fight over who has the better Supergirl.

I have slightly more familiarity with the Pre-Crisis Supergirl than the Post-Crisis Peter David version, so the mention of Dick made me think this series was going to really deep dive into the original Kara, while still working to fit into the recent stories with the DEO. I had forgotten about the Post-Crisis version of Dick.

So my mind wondered if this "fake" Supergirl was going to be some Rebirth version of Lasla-Lar.

I am as confused as anyone but looking forward to seeing more.

FTR, while it wasn't awful, her Turtles run left me completely cold, and I ended up dropping it after reading through the entire previous 100 issues.

Supergirl continuity is a Hawkman-level radioactive wasteland. Since Waid put her back in the Silver Age, she's been introduced three times (SA, Loeb, New 52) as a newbie, while the Midvale thing was "new" to the then-present version in Rebirth (don't even think about the continuity rewrite that took place during that run with Superman Reborn, it didn't affect that book as badly as Superwoman).

Did she die in Crisis, then get resurrected some time in the 2000s era? Did she lose all her memories in the process and that's why she was a newbie that whole time, before getting them back (more) recently [please ignore the Loeb evil personality stuff]? Basically, at most, you can get a high-level-summary version that knits things together, as long as you don't mind that the details don't fit if you actually look at the stories.

[We'll ignore the Matrix and PAD Supergirls for this - they could just have existed as separate characters.]

Well, no doubt her continuity will be straightened out permanently and for all time in the New History of the DC Universe!