Earth-50 is an alternate reality of the “Timmverse” which is designated as Earth-12. Originally meant to be a Crime Syndicate or Earth-3 style universe, the storyline would shift to be a bit more like The Authority. This universe is home to the Justice Lords, an evolution of the Justice League that came about as the result of Lex Luthor killing the Flash, Superman would retaliate with killing Lex Luthor. The Justice League (now Lords) would shift from reactive to proactive in their crime fighting and would turn the world into a police state. Along with the murder of Lex Luthor, Lord Superman would begin lobotomizing other League foes to prevent further crime from happening on their world. The Justice Lords first appeared in the Justice League episode titled “A Better World” but would have a few more mentions in Justice League Unlimited and would have a prominent role in the Justice League Beyond 2.0 comic storyline “Justice Lords Beyond”.
Kara In-Ze was present as Supergirl as part of the Timmverse so it is assumed her history would be similar in this universe. In the appearances of the Justice Lords Supergirl has not shown up but it would seem reasonable to assume that she would either join the ranks of the other Lords or be lobotomized in Arkham with any other super powered foe that defied the Justice Lords. Her joining the ranks of Lord Superman and the rest of the team is in fact just more fun to draw and the design for Lord Superman is just immaculate. I’ve taken elements of the Lord Superman design and mixed it with the JLU Supergirl costume for the Lady Supergirl shown here.
As with all my Supergirl in the Multiverse posts, this is my own artwork. Lady Supergirl is hovering above and looking down. Her eyes are glowing red to represent heat vision and her hands are on her hips. There are skyscrapers in the background towering up around her. The top right corner has a motif of Lady Supergirl’s S Symbol with a 50 on top of it.
Injustice: Alternate Endings is a one-shot story set in the Injustice universe. Written by Tim Seely, with Jose Luis & Daniel HDR on pencils, Jonas Trindade & Daniel HDR on inks, and Tony Avina providing colors. This comic was not released traditionally in comic shops and was instead paired with 4 of the McFarlane Page Punchers action figures as part of the second wave of Injustice figures. I got this comic along with my Injustice Supergirl action figure but from what I can gather, the Batman, Green Arrow, and Doctor Fate figures also came with this same book. These 4 characters all appear on the cover and in the story but I would argue that the story’s main focus is on Green Arrow and Supergirl. I have not personally played either of the Injustice games so some of my facts may be inaccurate but I have done some research in regards to this story so I have done my best to avoid any errors. From what I can tell, this comic takes place after the events of Injustice 2 and features an Alternate Ending to how the game might have played out.
Before we get into alternate timelines, Green Arrow spends a page catching the reader up on the events of Injustice and Injustice 2 before we get thrust into this alternate story where Superman didn’t get banished to the Phantom Zone and convinced Supergirl to his side. We meet our 2 stars as we see Supergirl flying a handcuffed Green Arrow back to the home base where she hands off the archer to be taken into custody. Supergirl then reports this to a Superman who is wired into a computer monitoring system and Supergirl realizes that her cousin is beginning to act much more like Brainiac. Leaving Kal with the words “I always do what needs to be done”, Kara then grabs Green Arrow and escapes the Fortress after fighting through many of Superman’s goons.
Kara tells Oliver that Superman hasn’t seemed fully up to snuff recently and Oliver suggests that he’s perhaps under the influence of magic and recommends the go to Doctor Fate to help sort this out and get the universe set back to rights. At the Tower of Fate, the pair are met with a very off looking Tower and a brainwashed Batman who has been sent by Superman to take them out. Green Arrow and Batman work out some of their feelings in a fistfight/argument while Supergirl tracks down Doctor Fate.
Supergirl finds the Doctor but realizes he’s blue now and apparently under the control of Superman (seems to be a theme on this universe). Superman tries to take Supergirl on one-on-one but due to his weakened state Supergirl is able to get the upper hand. She then “undoes the knots in the threads of destiny” as Doctor Fate puts it, but basically she’s just brute forcing a bunch of magic lightning and eventually sets the universe right again.
Ollie of course wakes up to his wife uttering another woman’s name before we get a couple pages of the universe being set back to right and we close out on a really nice hero shot of the new Justice League. To close out this book there’s a couple pages of ads, first of the Injustice series of comics, then other collected editions from DC, mostly Justice League and Crisis stories, a Dwayne Johnson Black Adam jump-scare, and finally an advertisement for the DC Universe Infinite app.
From what I can gather, the canon universe that Green Arrow is trying to set right is part of the Absolute Justice ending of Injustice 2 where Batman’s team has overtaken Superman and gotten him secured in the Phantom Zone. The universe that most the story takes place in seems to be similar to the Absolute Power ending where Superman’s team wins and Superman brain washes Batman to do his bidding. In the Absolute Power ending Supergirl is shown to not take up Superman’s side however so it is a bit different in that respect. When I got the figure initially I was just expecting a reprint of one of the Injustice 2 comics so a brand new exclusive story that centers around Supergirl was quite a treat. I think Green Arrow fans would be equally as excited by this story but if someone picked up the Batman or Doctor Fate figures that also got paired with this comic I imagine they would be a tad disappointed due to the relative lack of content featuring either of those characters. I feel like this story helps reinforce Supergirl as a force for good even in a universe where Superman has used his power to rule and from what I’ve read it seems like that goodness is also present in her portrayal in the game. While I wouldn’t say this is an overly fantastic story, it is well written and it’s 20 pages of new story set in a universe that I really enjoy exploring that I got for free along with a really nice looking Supergirl figure.
Coming from a world of Injustice brought on by the Joker killing Lois Lane and the unborn child of Superman. This resulted in Superman killing the Joker and then turning the world into a police state and murdering countless other villains and anyone who opposed his rule. This created a major rift in the hero community with Batman leading a resistance against this new dictator-esque Superman. It would take 5 years for the resistance to finally overpower and imprison Superman. This storyline is that of the Injustice video game as well as the tie-in comics.
Supergirl of this universe wouldn’t show up at all until the Injustice 2 comic as well as the Injustice 2 video game. It was in the time after Superman’s prison sentence where a spaceship landed near Kahndaq. This spaceship of course brings Kara Zor-El to earth. Black Adam begins telling her about the events that transpired but did so in a way that built up Superman as a hero and Batman’s resistance as villains. She remains hidden as a secret weapon until the world is threatened by an AMAZO android and she swoops in to save the day. Supergirl would continue to fight alongside Wonder Woman and the rest of Superman’s side of the fight but would continue to prioritize saving lives.
As with all my Supergirl in the Multiverse posts, this is my own artwork. Supergirl-49 is crouched with a strained look. She is holding up a large pillar that is crumbling around her. Rubble is built up behind her. She is backlit with light rays shining through under her arm. The top right corner features a motif of Supergirl’s S symbol with a 49 on top of it.
Adventure Comics #424 was released in 1972 and was the last issue of Adventure Comics where the maid of might was the star of the comic. This story, titled “Crypt of the Frozen Graves” follows Linda much more than Supergirl as she is working at the KSF-TV station. Linda has been in contact with a Bruce Ryan who has been leaking information about his connection to the Frisco Syndicate to Supergirl (Linda’s heroic secret identity).
While Bruce had been giving Supergirl more and more information about the gang, he was starting to pull back on the information he was giving and decided to stop altogether when he gets shot at. This causes our heroine to take a different approach and talk to Bruce not as Supergirl but as Linda Danvers. As Linda she is able to play up her femininity to get close to Bruce Ryan and she notices that he is rather cowardly. His cowardice isn’t totally unwarranted and results in a grenade getting thrown at him while at dinner with Linda. Instead of trying to protect his date or get rid of the grenade, Bruce instead flees the scene leaving a live grenade in a full restaurant.
Linda thinks quickly however and throws herself on the grenade to save the other patrons at the restaurant. to protect her identity she is forced to act dead after having a grenade explode under her but she is able to slip away before the police arrive to ID her. Linda uses this encounter to try to scare Bruce straight, or at least make him a bit less cowardly. Linda, having not actually died, dresses as a ghost and pays the former gang member a visit. While Supergirl does her best to scare Bruce, the pair are met by another ghost (at least he seems like a ghost) who startles Supergirl and kills Bruce Ryan.
Back at work the next day, Linda is taken away by the Syndicate and brought right to Mr. Big himself, the leader of the Frisco Syndicate. Here she finds out that the Syndicate has been using teleportation technology to get rid of any witnesses and also how a supposed ghost broke in and shot Bruce Ryan earlier. Now with all the facts, Supergirl comes back down to earth, trashes the teleporter and gets the syndicate tied up for the appropriate authorities.
The story isn’t quite over yet however, we get 1 more page of Linda back at KSF-TV where she tells the team she’s quitting and blames the death of Bruce Ryan for her abrupt departure. Although us readers know it’s actually because of her brand new “Supergirl” title starting up that she’s leaving. That’s right, after nearly 4 years as the star feature of Adventure Comics, Supergirl is now getting her own brand new comic magazine! As such we also have to say goodbye to some of the frequent supporting cast members including my favorite, Nasty Luthor.
Unfortunately Nasty doesn’t get a whole lot to do here as she does in previous apperances. She is however still antagonistic to her co-worker Linda Danvers as they are both shooting for the same promotion at KSF-TV. It is also stated by Linda that she thinks Nasty let slip to the Frisco Syndicate about Bruce Ryan being a rat and therefore causing the death of Bruce. It’s hard to say if Nasty actually did such a thing or if Linda just lashed out at her in anger. I wouldn’t put it past Nasty to pull a stunt like this just to beat out Linda, but there isn’t much in the story itself to support it. This is also tragically the final issue where Nasty shows up and she doesn’t even get a proper send off in my opinion.
While none of the letters or the ads in this issue really caught my attention, there was a backup story here titled “The Invasion”. This is a brief 6-page sci-fi story following an undefeated crew of alien invaders on another mission to invade and conquer a planet called “Earth”. While the first 5 pages are all building up this crew as a major threat to our planet, there is a very well executed twist at the end where we find out that the invaders are actually quite small and are taken out by an average Joe watering his lawn. He then spots the invader’s spaceship, but due to its small size he guesses it’s a toy and discards it which of course eliminates this terrible threat before it can even be known.
The creative team on this book, Steve Skeates, Tony De Zuniga, and Bob Oksner all did brilliantly and led to an engaging story, although as Supergirl’s final adventure in Adventure Comics it felt rather underwhelming. Aside from the final page, this story could’ve easily been any other issue of the series and I would’ve much rather had Nasty Luthor play a larger role in the story to really secure her as a rival to Linda. All in all, a perfectly serviceable Supergirl story with plenty of good Supergirl and Linda Danvers moments. Join me next month for another random look at a single issue from my personal Supergirl comic collection.
This universe I feel is best described by Pariah in the pages of Crisis on Infinite Earths when he says “Such a strange world this one is — unlike most other earths. A cosmic anomaly…No duplicates here.” This of course refers to the fact that this universe doesn’t have a Batman or Superman or Wonder Woman like many of the other universes in the multiverse. This universe (originally called Earth-6 before being re-designated 48 after Convergence) hardly has any heroes actually, only 3 have ever been explored, Lady Quark, Lord Volt, and Princess Fern and up til just a few years ago Lady Quark was the only of the trio to really get any depth to her character. This is of course due to the universe being obliterated in the first Crisis with only Lady Quark surviving.
As mentioned above, this universe doesn’t have any of the heroes from earth-0 which means it doesn’t have a Supergirl. That of course hasn’t stopped me before. Princess Fern, Liana, is the daughter of Lady Quark and Lord Volt and as you may guess she has powers over plants. As we’ve done with other universes (Earths 39, 40, and 41 come to mind) taking the prominent hero of the universe (Lady Quark here) and giving them the “Superman” role would allow for their female descendants to take up the role of “Supergirl”. I mentioned that this universe was rather unexplored until recently, and by that I mean that it was featured rather prominently a few years ago in Harley Quinn (Vol. 4) in the 28-37 range. Here we see Harley looking after the 13 year old Liana as a favor to Lady Quark and Liana is shown as rather headstrong and quick to act but she still isn’t developed very far. The universe is shown to have OMACs (from earth-51?) and also large mountable dalmatians (from earth-17?) which seems odd but probably just the creative team having fun with the multiverse.
As with all my Supergirl in the Multiverse posts, this is my own artwork. Princess Fern is controlling vines and riding on top of them as she travels over the futuristic city on Earth-48. The top right features a yellow square representing Princess Fern with a 48 on top of it.
The Daring New Blog of Supergirl 