"Men, Women and Dogs"
Supergirl has had at least three wholly separate and distinct incarnations since the Crisis on Infinite Earths, probably more but I stopped paying attention after Flashpoint. This discussion is about whichever Supergirl existed in the DCU in 2021. I recently finished reading The Silver Age Supergirl which left off when she was a 19-year-old sophomore in college. In Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, she is 21 years old and it is not difficult (for me, anyway) to pretend this is the same Supergirl two years later. Nothing in this story contradcts it (so far) and much confirms it, so I'm just going to work under that assumption. The series is written by Tom King and I started to read it before on a month-to-month basis, but King's writing can be kind of dense and I lost the story at some point but vowed to return to it and read it in its entirety someday. That day is today.
The story opens on a planet orbiting a red sun and is narrated by a young girl named Ruthye Marye Knol who is destined to become Supergirl's sidekick. Ruthye narrates the story in a comically formal and verbose style. She is the only daughter of a poor rock farmer. She has a mother and six older brothers. One day, a man who identified himself as Krem of the Yellow Hills stopped by their farm. He requested and was granted shelter for the night, but the next morning a fight ensued over the subject of the new king. Ruthye suspects that Krem was a kingsagent sent to test their loyalty, but in any case, he killed her father and, for some reason, left his valuable kopis blade in his chest. Ruthye intends to barter that blade to hire someone to kill Krem of the Yellow Hills.
To that end, she rides to the nearest town and approaches a likely candidate to hire on those terms. The man agrees to undertake the quest, but changes the terms somewhat. Rather than allowing Ruthye to travel with him and take posession of the sword when the job is complete, he simply takes the sword and promises that the job with be done. As he is leaving the bar, a blonde woman at a nearby table stops him. She is wearing a leathern longcoat, has a white dog with her and is obviously drunk. They fight, and the woman retrieves Ruthye's sword, but her garment is torn in the process revealing a red and yellow "S" shield beneath. Then she passes out.
She awakens sick to her stomach with a hangover. Ruthye attempts to hire her but the woman refuses, explaining that she simply sought out a world with a red sun so that she could get drunk on her 21st birthday. Now she needs to get back to her responsibilities at home. she leaves Ruthye behind, but Ruthye follows, catching up to her at the landing site of her spaceship. Ruthye doesn't know what a spaceship is, but the auto-launch sequence has already been engaged by the time she arrives. They debate a bit further, when suddenly Supergirl is struck in the chest by an arrow, which has been fired by none other than Krem. Word had gotten to Krem that Ruthye was looking for someone to kill him, so he and a friend tracked her to this spot.
When Krypto sees that his mistress has been shot, he runs toward the bowman to attack. But Krypto doesn't realize he is powerless under a red sun (or maybe he does and attacks anyway), and is taken out by an arrow as well. Supergirl gets up through sheer force of will, and is shot in the chest with two more arrows as she advances. Fighting both men (with three arrows in her chest!), she manages to take out the one. At that point, Krem chooses the "better part of valor" and beats a hasty retreat. Unfortunately, he runs directly into Supergirl's spaceship just as the auto-launch sequence completes and the ship takes off. Ruthye is left behind with Supergirl and Krypto lying wounded in the dirt.
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ISSUE #2 - "Wounded, Stranded and Impotent"
It occurs to me that I have not yet mentioned this series' artist, Bilquis Evely. Her style reminds me very much of one of the Kuberts, if not Joe than at least Adam or Andy. In any case, her style suits the story very well. The style of prose Tom King has adopted for this project reminds me quite a bit of Neil Gaiman's, and it likewise occurs to me that my poor summaries don't convey that. Can't be helped.
The second issue opens with Ruthye and Supergirl traveling aboard a haulferry to the planet Coronn, the closest planet in a solar system with a yellow sun. (A "haulferry" is the cheapest, slowest kind of long-distance transportation, like a "space bus.") Ruthye relates several incidents which happen along the way in her own uniquely humerous style. Along the way, cowardly aliens seeking revenge on Superman seek to take their anger out on Supergirl, but even powerless she manages to defeat them. At one point, the haulferry encounters a Karpane, which is a giant space dragon. The pilot (or "driver") calls upon Supergirl for help, but they have not yet gotten close enough to a yellow sun for her powers to have been restored. She asks the passengers if any of them have any reds. ["Reds" are Red Kryptonite encased in dissolvable lead, a controlled substance. "Most peaple take it," supergirl explains, "thery get weird visions about transforming into things. Kryptonians take it, the visions come true." She finds one, takes it, and is transformed into a flaming, winged space creature and defeats the Karpane dragon.
In a touching scene, Supergirl teaches Ruthye how to wash her hands. Later, when Ruthye is being harassed by an unruly passenger, Supergirl quickly takes care of the situation without being noticed by anyone, including Ruthye, "despite [her] eyes being keenly pointed in the direction of the incident." Supergirl's powers are returning. It is only at this point, 22 pages into the issue, that King reveals how Supergirl survived the first issue's cliffhanger ending. Through sheer force of will, Supergirl removed the arrows from her own chest. The arrows were tipped with hunting poison (she would later learn), "which didn't affect people too bad, but it was killing the animal." Ruthye, too, was injured when Supergirl's spacecraft took off with Krem inside. Supergirl put Ruthye over one shoulder and Krypto over the other and took them both back to the city.
The mender explains that he will need a sample of the original poison (each hunter mixes it differently) in order to save Krypto's life. Supergirl admits that, in the chaos of the moment, she could not even recall what Krem looks like, but Ruthye does. "She asked if I was still determined to track down the murderer of my dear father and kill him dead," Ruthye narrates. "I said I was and always would be. She asked if I was still offering a fine sword for aid in that mission. I again gave indication that this was still the case. And at that point, Supergirl acepted the offer."
ISSUE #3 - "Modest, Calm and Quiet"
Only three issues in and I'm already starting to regret the pace I set for myself of reading only one issue per day. I'm enjoying this series so much I am eager to finish it, but there are advantages to reading one issue a sitting. For one thing, each issue is episodic, with its own beginning, middle and end. Reading one at a time gives me the opportunity to reflect on each story before moving on (and I do think about each one) and to attempt to anticipate where the story is going. An eight-issue mini- series is the comic book equivalent of those short cable TV "seasons"; I don't "binge watch" those (in the popular sense of the term), and I must content myself to let Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow play out one issue, one episode, at a time.
As the third issue opens, Supergirl and Ruthye have been on the planet Coronn for three weeks, pursuing Krem of the Yellow Hills. Their search has led them from the big cities to the seemingly quiet small town of Maypole. Ruthye's first page narration provides some wonderful foreshadowing. She is telling this story from some time in the future, which helps to preserve my conceit that "Woman of Tomorrow" takes place some two years or so after the end of the Silver Age Supergirl Omnibus v2. Neither the officials or the locals of Maypole are particularly helpful to Supergirl and Ruthye on their quest. It soon becomes apparent that Maypole is a highly segregated town, the blues and the purples, or at least it was recently; now there are no purples to be found. Supergirl begins investigating what happened to the purples and inadvertantly puts Ruthye's life at risk. She does uncover what happened to "Purpletown" as well as Krem's involvement in it. It's not pretty, but is exactly what you would expect. He became involved with "Barbond's Brigands" who offered him passage off Coronn on their ship.
Ruthye is such a perfect sidekick for Supergirl it's going to be difficult to picture one without the other after the conclusion of this mini-series.
I hope Krypto's okay.
ISSUE #4 - "Restraint, Endurance and Passion"
Supergirl and Ruthye travel to the planet Parnatt on the edge of the Kollow system, following wake os destruction left by Barbond's Brigands in pursuit of Krem of the Yellow Hills. They find an infant on a field of battle, the only survivor to be found in a field of corpses.
On the planet Incolm, a small moon that circles the planet Escalm in the Piattts Galaxy, Supergirl interviews a survivor of the Bragands' raid whom Krem had hacked to pieces.
A week after that, they made their way to Tilluis, a vaction destination for one of the royal galactic families, where they find a single worker digging hundreds of individual graves. The mayor has assured him that, if he finished before suns-pass, they won't need a mass grave like other planets got. Besides, his daughter's body is out there somewhere, and he would prefer it if she had her own plot, even if he doesn't know which one it is. Supergirl offers to help, but the man refuses on the grounds that it's his duty. Supergirl insists that it's her duty as a neighbor to help, which convinces the man to accept. She digs the remaining graves at super-speed and even manages to locate his daughter by matching their DNA.
On the planet Urrralann, Supergirl helps a woman named Irasaan deal with the loss of her family.
At that point, Supergirl reconsiders her decision to allow Ruthye to travel with her. They argue and Ruthye wins, for now.
Next they visit Tyrrrcoomn, a world which keeps meticulous records of everything that happens on their planet. Up until that time, they had seen only the aftermath of the Brigands' massacres, but this time Supergirl witnessed it all and came away visably shaken. (Ruthye was spared, having fallen asleep.) They are catching up.
On the planet Yahllahh in the Vexz system, Supergirl and Ruthye witness the stoning of a captured Brigand. "I know he surely desreved his fate," observes Ruthye, "But I had some thought you'd save him." "Did you?" responds Supergirl.
Next they found themselves on the planet Ecvick, reputed to be one of the most peaceful places in the universe. The monks of Ecvick sat still when the Brigands came. Feeling the urge to scream, Supergirl had to leave lest she cause damage to the temples that are left. After that, supergirl felt the need to fly into the heart of a nearby sun. Ruthye provides an overview of who Supergirl is and what she means to her which is simply beautiful, but too lengthy to transcribe here.
Whatever happened on the planet Nycillan was too horrific for Ruthye to record.
Again, Supergirl broaches the topic of leaving Ruthye behind on the grounds that she's too young to witness such attrocities, and again Ruthye objects. "How many years did you have when you first saw terror?" Ruthye asks. "I was a girl," admits Supergirl. "You were a girl. Fine. And what, then, am I?" This argument convinces her and Supergirl allows Ruthye to continue.
These summaries of mine are perfectly adequate, I suppose, to convey the basic plot, but don'tt scracth the surface of the story being told by the combination of words and images. If you are reading these posts and you haven't read the Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow series, my advise to you is to stop reading them and buy the tpb which was released a couple of weeks ago and is probably still on your LCS's "New Releases" shelf.
ISSUE #5 - "The Lake, the Trees, and the Monsters"
I realize now that I stopped reading on a month-to-month basis with #4, exactly halfway through. Everything from this point on will be new to me. I thought I had lost the story; I hadn't realized how episodic in nature this series is, mixed in whith everything else I read.
Supergirl and Ruthye finally catch up to Krem but he is prepared for them. He casts a Mordru Globe at them, a spell which transports the target billions of miles away. Mordru Globes are rare because, for the globe to manifest, "one needs the dedication and desecration of thousands of bodies slain with no other purpose in mind," a prerequisite for which Krem certainly qualifies. Because the globe is magic, Supergirl has no defense against it, and she and Ruthye suddenly find themselves on a world with a green sun. Whereas a Kyrptonian loses his or her powers under a red sun, a green sun actually causes them intense pain. Supergirl recognizes the planet as Barenton, a call-back to "Superman Under the Green Sun!" (Superman #155, 1962). I don't have this comic in my collection, but HERE is an online summary. "God, people... #%@$@&% hate Kal," Supergirl observes.
Barenton is a world of dinosaurs, and Supergirl immediately loses her powers. When Superman was trapped there, he managed to last 45 minutes before being rescued by the Justice League. The sun is high in the sky and Ruthye estimates ten hours until it sets and Supergirl's powers return. The lay of the land is a circle of barren hills surrounding a valley with a freshwater lake at its center. Ruthye's instinct is to help Supergirl to the lake in hope that the water and the greens there will aid in her revival. I don't think I've mentioned it before, but this version of Supergirl has a mounth on her, often letting a curse or two fly in times of stress. As they make their way across the desert plain, avoiding predators the entire way, Ruthye says, "#%#@," to which Supergirl weakly responds, "Hey, that's good. You used... that just right... proud of you... but... don't tell... Kal I taught it to you... he'd be... judgy. Sometimes I see... why... people #%#@&$ hate... him..."
By the time they get within sight of the lake, they realize it is surrounded by dinosaurs. The only thing to do now is wait for sunset, which Ruthye estimates is now nine hours away. Superman lasted only 45 minutes and described it as the most painful experience he'd ever had and that it was the closest to death he ever got. This from someone who faced Doomsday. Ruthye draws her sword to defend the unconscious Supergirl, waiting for the monsters to come. One finally does. This story, as I have previously noted, is narrated by Ruthye from some point in the future. But, although verbose, she is not generally given to making long speeches during the course of the story itself. I'm going to transcribe her monologue as she fights the velociraptor-like dinosaur because it reveals her character.
"You should be made aware, this is a sword of great worth! And... and I put forward no exaggeration when I state it will cut unmercifully deep! I warn you, you... you're better off not feeling the chill of its iron slitting into your gut! [The creature lets loose a mighty roar, nearly knocking her back.] Yes... yes, it is an impressive bray, I admit as much. And hearing it now, I... I do indeed fear your wrath. You may take some pride in that. But... b-but I am not one who lets her f-fear hinder her actions. Indeed, if anything, my resolve is d-doubled in the knowing that I have brooked your attempt to petrify me. And... and have heartily withstood it. And I will take some pride in that."
She fights the monster and manages to kill it... just barely. The sun, she notes, is still high in the sky. After her ordeal, Ruthye decides to take a rest, lies down beside Supergirl and closes her eyes. she suddenly becomes aware that a wing of "pterodactyls" are devouring the "raptor." (The collective noun for pterodactyls is "wing"; need I add I looked it up?) One of the flying reptiles sees the two of them lying nearby and decides to make a meal of them. Ruthye barely reaches her sword in time, but is at a great disadvantage. Suddenly, a delerious Supergirl sits up and takes it out with a blast of heat vision and manages to say, "Hey, was that... that's a... it's a... #%@$&#@ bird... No... it's a plane... or... no... it's super... gir...," before she slips back into unconsciousness.
As the sun slips lower in the sky toward the horizon, Supergirl awakens and wants water. She is determined to walk to the lake, despite the danger. Ruthye has to physucally restrain her for her own good. Just before the sun sets, another dinosaur appears seeking an easy meal. Ruthye fights valiantly, but the dinosaur gets past her and snaps at Supergirl. At the very last second, Supergirl's arm juts out and stop the monster short. "Nnn..." she groans with the effort. "Forty... 45 minutes... What a little @%#@." The sun has set and they are now able to leave the planet under Supergirl's restored power.
UP NEXT: Zor-El, Allura, Argo City and... Comet?
I can hardly wait!
ISSUE #6 - "Home, Family and Refuge"
This issue tells two stories in parallel. First, Supergirl cathes up with Krem again and he casts another Mordru Globe at her. She tries outrunning it at first until suddenly, surprisingly, she jumps onto the back of a caped horse named Comet. Second, Ruthye relates the story of Supergirl's origin. On the way from Barenton to Urrralann, Supergirl told Ruthye her story. She barely survived her last encounter with Krem, and if she didn't survive the next, she wanted someone to know. The story is basically the same, but with some details changed (for the better, I think). As Ruthye put it: "I'm sure you've heard it. But you didn't ever hear it from her." The story is told against a backdrop of flashbacks interspersed with scenes of Comet attempting to outrun the Mordru Globe. Finally, Comet has traveled so far and so fast that he has led the phere into a dimension where magic doesn't exist, and Supergirl pops it like a soap bubble. the shee returns to Urrralann to confront Krem.
ISSUE #7 - "Hope, Help, and Compassion"
Supergirl and Ruthye have taken Krem into custody, but the Brigands are in hot pursuit. Supergirl decides to make her stand in ordbit of the world Florinine, since rechristened "Kara's Beach." Bilquis Everly really outdid herself this issue, from the space-pirate ship with the solar sails to the idyllic planet in which all manner of tropical fish and jelleyfish "swim" in the atmosphere. Ruthye's narration confirms that she is relating the story from decades in the future. Supergirl leaves Krem tied to a palm tree on the beach with Ruthye guarding him, and Comet guarding Ruthye. Krem has not yet revealed the secret to saving Krypto's life, and may not if Ruthye has anything to say about it. While Supergirl fights the Brigands in low orbit, Ruthye removes Krem's gag and confronts him. The issue alternates between Ruthye's story on the planet and Supergirl's in space.
We learn the details of Ruthye's father's murder from Krem himself, who is not at all repentent. Krem is confident that either his men will prevail or, if they don't, he will at least be in the hands of the good and kind Supergirl who will not harm him. He goads Ruthye into nearly taking his life, but Comet intervenes. Meanwhile, Supergirl has been defeated by the Brigands, who have a supply of Kryptonite. They have formed some of the Kryptonite int chains, and one piece into a bullet. Comet seems to sense that Supergirl is in danger, but won't go against her command to protect Ruthye. Ruthye guesses the reason for Comet's distress, and insists that he help her. Once Comet has flown away, Ruthye draws her sword to slay Krem.
To Be Concluded...
ISSUE #8 - "Ruthye, Supergirl, and Krem of the Yellow Hills"
Ruthye likens herself to a soldier at war, not an executioner passing judgement. Consequently, she frees Krem from hos bonds and places the sword in the sand equidistant between them. Scenes of their fight are interspersed with Supergirl and Comet's fight against the Brigands. Supergirl is successful in defeating the Brigands and driving them away, but Comet is mortally wounded and reverts to human form as he dies. Ruthye, plausibly, defeats Krem but is unable to execute him. Supergirl returns to the beach and takes over for her. Supergirl reveals that Krypto is fine; she made up the stuff about needing Ruthye to accompany her. As Supergirl is about to do the deed, Ruthye stops her and relates to her all the lessons she learned, one by one, from the previous issues.
Then the scene flashes forward 300 years. Supergirl has become the titular "Woman of Tomorrow" and Ruthye is an old, old woman. The narrative we have been reading is from Rythye's book. The ending of the book is not what really happened, however; only the comic book reveals that. I could simply tell you what happens, but doing so would rob you of the experience of reading it for yourself.Good series. Recommended.
I really liked this book, though I know two big Supergirl friends online who detested it. I enjoyed Ruthye's narration, I enjoyed the episodic nature of the storytelling, I liked the different shades we saw of Kara's character. And, of course, Evely's art was out of this world.
I guess some people would rather see Supergirl eat a cupcake.
Oh, they didn't like that one either!
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