By Way of Trade: Supergirl

Back in September, thanks to DC’s Zero month, I gave the Superman zero books a shot and like them a lot. Due to this I decided I was going to commit to reading the Suerpman: H’el on Earth storyline which will cross-over into Superman, Supergirl and Superboy. To give myself a better background on the New 52 Supergirl character, I picked up the Supergirl: The Last Daughter of Krypton trade. To my surprise, quite a fun read.

Supergirl: Last Daughter of Krypton

 I am immediately drawn (rim-shot!) to the art and colors of this book. The covers and inside art by Mahmud Asrar are elegant and beautiful. Combined with Dave McCaig‘s colors, this book is breathtaking. Mahmud and Dave have been added to my favorites and I will follow them wherever they go from here on out.

So far I think this is my favorite incarnation of the character. This book has a couple things going for it that I really like. Unlike her cousin Kal-El who has lived out his entire life on Earth and calls it home, Kara believes that just 3 days ago she was living it up with her parents on Krypton. She does not feel the love on Earth and she doesn’t want to be here. From what I can tell having only read issues #0–6 and 13, she doesn’t even know English. She only speaks Kryptonian! She might be able to verbally communicate with about half a dozen people on Earth. (I love this handicap) She is alone, frightened, treated like garbage, doesn’t want to be here  and doesn’t trust the one person she should, her cousin. She is a wild-card and I love it.

I’m also in love with the new villain that has been introduced. In the same mold of Lex and quite possibly more unethical, Simon Tycho is an extravagant billionaire scientist that makes a living extracting artifacts that enter the Earth’s atmosphere and selling them to governments. Of course he keeps a little for himself for crafting proprietary technology out of alien tech. We are introduced to him right away as, of course, he is the first to find Kara’s spaceship and he steals it. Besides Tycho, we are introduced to the World Killers which are Krytonian DNA  science experiments with the goal in mind to breed… literally… world killers.

This Supergirl is the complete opposite of “Hi I’m Kara, Kal-El’s cute and adorable cousin, let’s go play superheros.” and its pretty bad-ass. I’m fairly confident that I will continue to read this title for awhile after H’el on Earth concludes and I will definitely continue to read as long as this creative continues to stay on the book. They are doing a bang-up job.

UNTIL NEXT TIME… I’m always searching for new reads and I’m pretty happy about picking this one up. Thanks to DC’s Zero month I gave the Superman titles a shot and think I found a winner. On a side note I’ve decided to drop some other titles that are less interesting to make room for trying out a few Marvel NOW! titles. Yes, I said it. I have decided to commit to picking up a few Marvel NOW! books and give them a 6 month shot each. I will try out Matt Fraction on FF & Fantastic Four, Jonathan Hickman on Avengers & New Avengers, as well as Mark Waid on the Indestructible Hulk. Of course I will try others out here and there. (Red She-Hulk… meh) Leave a comment or hit me up on twitter and let me know what Marvel Now! titles you are reading.