In the Post-Crisis era of DC Comics, specifically in the first dozen or so years right after Crisis on Infinite Earths there was a clearly defined fact from editorial and the creative teams that Superman would be the sole survivor of Krypton and there would no longer be bottle cities or Phantom Zone criminals or super powered cousins. Even with this in mind, and the Kara Zor-El Supergirl dying in Crisis, this did not stop DC from bringing the maiden of might back into comics although she does exist in a different form. The Supergirl Saga from 1988 looks to introduce this new Supergirl to readers.

John Byrne was the driving force behind the re-introduction of Superman in the post-crisis era where he did much of the writing and penciling of the titles for around 2 years (the Superman XL blog did a great breakdown of how many stories Byrne wrote and drew here). The Supergirl Saga was told across 3 issues, Superman (vol. 2) issues 21 and 22, along with The Adventures of Superman #444 between them. John Byrne wrote all 3 of these issues and did pencils for the 2 Superman books. Jerry Ordway has story and pencil credits on the Adventures issue, John Beaty inked on Superman, Dennis Janke inked Adventures, Petra Scotese colored all 3, and lettering was provided by John Costanza and Albert De Guzman on Superman and Adventures respectively. One of the main things I noticed about these books when tracking them down for my collection a few years ago was the really nice cover dress with the banner reading “The Supergirl Saga” at the top. This makes the storyline really easy to track down and spot in back issue bins, at least it would if Superman 22 (part 3 of the trilogy) also had the banner at the top, which it doesn’t for some reason. Everywhere clearly lists this issue as part 3 of the Supergirl Saga, but for some reason the cover didn’t get the memo.

Again, this wasn’t a huge issue and these comics are pretty easy to find in back issues, but make sure you know what you’re looking for when searching for the final chapter. I would definitely recommend seeking out originals of these books too, especially those with Byrne pencils. Several years ago when I read these issues initially, I did so on the DC Universe Infinite app and wasn’t particularly wowed by the art and didn’t really get what the big deal about Byrne was, but when reading them in their original newsprint format, some of the artwork really pops (again, Superfan XL did a fantastic post about this subject). There is something about certain artists and how they approach comic book art that is clearly influenced by the final product and there are a few artists that really worked the newsprint into their artwork that doesn’t get translated when the comics get digitized and Byrne (especially here) is one of those artists., although I’m sure Scotese’s colors are a huge part of the difference too.

The story begins on a desolate earth with a domed city and a Lex Luthor in charge of the final residents of this planet. These residents look to another world through view screen where they see none other than Superman. Superman is flying through the clouds when he notices that someone is following him. He expertly uses his powers to grab and confront this stalker and he finds out that he is facing a Supergirl. This introduction seems to parallel the cover to Action 252 which feels like a live homage without being too blatant.

Here the Supergirl reveals she can shift her form and turn invisible, and above that she also reveals that she is Lana Lang. through some confusion which we later realize is amnesia, Superman and Supergirl realize that this isn’t the Lana of this earth, but that Supergirl is the Lana of a pocket universe that Superman visited briefly before. He also finds out that while it was only weeks for him, it had been a decade for the pocket universe.

The pair are transported to the pocket dimension now and we get to properly meet Lex Luthor and Superman finds out the devastation that has happened to the world. Superman visits his pocket parents graves and recounts his previous adventure in the pocket dimension and we find out the pocket universe never had a hero other than Superboy. After this, Lex tells Superman of how his world came to be a desolated landscape. Apparently, after the deaths of Martha and Jonathan, Lex came to Smallville to see if his scientific genius could be useful in assisting Superboy and unfortunately Pete and Lana inform him that Superboy left for the future years ago and never returned. Lex went back to Superboy’s childhood home and started exploring his lab to see if he could find a way to reach Superboy in the future. Lex is contacted through a time viewer by a trio of characters who claim they are Kryptonians trapped in a Survival Zone.

They convince Lex to release them and Lex hoping for a trio of superheroes, instead he meets the Phantom Zone villains. A gang of criminals too dangerous for Krypton, was sentenced to life in the Zone. In a cruel twist of fate, this allowed them to survive Krypton’s destruction. The Zoners make quick work of destroying the planet, taking out armies, felling cities, and eventually drilling holes to the center of the earth which evaporates the oceans and destroys the atmosphere.

Smallville is saved by Luthor’s genius. He had previously built a protective dome around the city to fend off the criminals attacks. Thankfully his dome also protected against a lack of atmosphere and while billions died, Smallville survived. Lex took it upon himself to seek out the Superman who had once visited the universe long ago. Experimentation on Lana Lang imbued her with powers which Lex hoped would aid her in her trip to another universe but he would have to give her amnesia in case she encountered anyone fiendish before she met Superman.

Now that we’re all caught up, Superman is ready to take the fight to Zod and his followers. Superman and Supergirl take on the trio head on but Supergirl suddenly turns to pink goo (more on that later). The Phantom Zone villains make quick work of the humans fighting against them but thankfully this is just a distraction so that Superman can get to work on Lex’s real plan. Superman heads towards Superboy’s lab where he finds a piece of Gold Kryptonite. Quex-Ul attacks Superman in the lab and would almost be able to overtake the man of steel if not for the gold rock he just found. The gold kryptonite negates Quex-Ul powers and now that Superman has the upper hand, he traps him in a box and flies off to meet the other villains.

Zod and Zaora think they can make quick work of Superman but are quickly proven wrong when approaching him and the gold K in his cape. This too renders them powerless and now Superman has a box full of 3 powerless Kryptonians and a dead planet. He returns to Lex Luthor who with his dying breath explains to Superman that the Supergirl he met was not the original Lana Lang but instead a clone based on the Matrix of Lana’s DNA made out of protoplasm. He also tells Clark that Lana died soon after the Phantom Zone criminals escaped and that the Matrix Supergirl has no idea that she isn’t the real Lana.

With the death of Lex, the planet is now devoid of all human life. As such Superman takes on the role of judge, jury, and executioner and kills the trio of fiends with green Kryptonite. Superman realizes that the Matrix is still alive, although very weak, and returns here along with himself to his own universe. Superman is broken up about killing the Phantom Zone criminals and lets the Kents know that he needs to take some time to think but also drops Matrix with them and Lana so that she can hopefully get a good upbringing in the same way he did.

I feel like the ending comes rather quickly after the battle between the criminals and Superman begins and the destruction of Smallville to the killing of the criminals all seems to move rather quickly. It seems to not really give enough time to characters like Bruce Wayne, Ollie Queen, and Hal Jordan of the pocket universe since they’re killed off so soon after their introduction. The final issue not having the “Supergirl Saga” banner does make a bit of sense because she’s turned to goo and quickly taken off the board at the start of the third act of the story and Superman 22 really isn’t about Supergirl. I’m not certain another issue of the story was needed, but the pacing does seem a tad inconsistent.

When reading through this story this time I noticed that while the Matrix Supergirl is extraordinarily different from the classical Supergirl, Byrne really added a lot of references to the Kara Zor-El Supergirl. First off, the domed city of Smallville, surviving after the destruction of the rest of the planet has a striking similarity to Argo City of the silver age. I mentioned earlier that her initially interaction with Superman mirrors the cover and introduction of Supergirl from Action Comics #252 with Superman looking equally as shocked in both instances. Zod and his cohorts call the Phantom Zone the “Survival Zone” when trying to convince Lex to free them, a clear reference to the Survival Zone which Zor-El and Allura survived after Argo’s fall (read more about the Survival Zone here) The last similarity I noticed is more retroactive, but it puts Matrix in a similar position to Power Girl where they are each the last survivor of an entire universe. This part of Power Girl’s story doesn’t really come into play until after Infinite Crisis however when she realizes she’s the last survivor of Earth-2 when Kal-El dies.

There are a couple bits of convoluted storytelling here that kind of stick out when really paying attention. Like why does Supergirl need to look like Lana? Is it only because Superman wouldn’t trust her unless she was a familiar face? I think this would bother me less if she continued to have a similarity to Lana in continuing stories, but she doesn’t, she just sort of visually becomes the pre-crisis Supergirl up to and including when she would later merge with the earth-borne angel Linda Danvers a few years later. It also felt very convenient that the Kryptonite in the pocket universe didn’t affect Superman. This was probably something that was explored in the earlier pocket universe storyline but it just seemed like an easy out. Also if the Phantom Zone criminals got rid of all the Kryptonite, how did Superman find green-k to kill them at the end? I can believe Superboy having a secret piece of Gold K stashed in his lab that the Zoners could have overlooked, but Superman specifically uses Green Kryptonite when executing the criminals and it’s not explained where he found it. I also don’t understand why the green K takes them out when they’re powerless. The pocket universe is clearly based on pre-crisis continuity to some extent, and powerless Kryptonians weren’t affected by Kryptonite (except Kryptonite-X which took out Argo City).

While I don’t love this story, I do really like the Matrix Supergirl and this story did a good job of setting her up. There is also something charming about a pile of goo that gained sentience and thinks it’s Lana Lang. Over the next couple weeks I’m going to cover a handful of other Matrix stories so if there are an that you;d like me to cover let me know!

Last month for Supergirl Surprise I made reference to the H’El on Earth storyline when I covered Issue 24 of this series. And now the random number generator has given us a story right in the middle of the H’El crossover. This comic has Argo flashbacks, H’El giving some major red flags, and a brief trip to Kandor so follow along as we look at “Into Kandor” by Mike Johnson, with Mahmud Asrar doing pencils and inks, Scott Hanna and Marc Deering helping with inking, Dave McCraig colors, and Rob Leigh lettering.

The story opens with a flashback to Argo city where we are introduced to a childhood friend of Kara’s named Tali. Tali seems like she could be a fun character to follow up on and she’s referenced as being Kara’s best friend. The pair are flying Tali’s new aircar through Argo and Kara very nearly annihilates a sky bridge. The pair safely land and we find out that Tali and her family are moving to Kandor. This flashback fades into Kara in her undersea fortress reminicing about her past where H’El appears out of nowhere.

The following pages are full of H’El presenting Kara with an absurd amount of red flags that Kara doesn’t pick up on because she’s blinded by the notion that H’El can actually bring Krypton back to life. The most egregious red flags that I noticed were the panels shown above where H’El refuses to tell Kara the details of his plan because he’s worried if he tells her she wouldn’t agree to follow along, and him shrinking her down into Kandor without warning.

Once we get into Argo we find out that H’El isn’t able to shrink into Kandor the normal way and instead has to astral project. Again, this feels like a red flag. Once in the bottle city, Supergirl quickly finds all the Kandorians in stasis (this was normal for this iteration of the city) and is then met with H’El astral projecting himself into the city but instead of looking how we’ve come to know him, he is apparently seen as how he looked before Krypton was destroyed.

H’El actually says here that he is presenting himself in this form so that Kara would trust him more (RED FLAG). Some Brainiac robots attack, Kara finds Tali in stasis, and the pair make their way to Kandor’s Central Power Station to get what they came here for. In what could have easily been a reference to an omegahedron, H’El tells Kara that the Quantum Crystal that is powering Kandor is what they need to take to see his plan through. Supergirl initially pushes back against this plan because the Kandorians need it to survive, but H’El manipulates/convinces her that the bottle city of Kandor will no longer exist since it will be properly sized on the newly restored Krypton if H’El’s plan works.

Kara is back to full size out of the bottle, H’El is back to his disgusting self and Kandor is without power. H’El starts monologuing because he thinks Kara thinks he looks gross now after seeing his “original” body, but he uses this pity to convince her to carry through with his plan that he hasn’t told her any details about. And then they kiss for some reason.

There is a lot of the New 52 Supergirl series that I didn’t enjoy when reading it, and H’El on Earth is pretty close to the top of parts that I didn’t like. I don’t like H’El and I don’t like him being presented as a romantic interest for Supergirl and I didn’t like Supergirl being on the wrong side of the story for so much of it.

As I mentioned earlier I really liked Tali’s introduction here. I always love seeing Kara’s life on Krypton and pre-explosion Krypton in general. Tali and Kara seem to have a great friendship and with her being one of the in-stasis Kandorians she does potentially still exist in current canon and could show up again with the prominence of Kandor in current Supergirl comics. She has a similar vibe to Thara Ak-Var who filled a similar pre-destruction Kryptonian friend of Kara. She would also come back into Kara’s life through Kandorian shenanigans during the New Krypton saga. Unfortunately we haven’t seen Tali again since this appearance (unless she showed up again later in the H’El arc that I’ve forgotten).

I didn’t notice any particularly interesting ads this time out so I will be signing off here. If you would like to check out the previous Supergirl Surprise entries, check them out on their dedicated page here.